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WORLD CUP FINAL 2014

BRAZIL

Germany basks in World Cup glory

Germany basked in the glory of their fourth World Cup on Monday after a nail-biting victory against Argentina. The Local rounds up the reaction throughout the day here.

Germany basks in World Cup glory
The victorious German team finally get their hands on the trophy. Photo: DPA

Jogi FM

Germany coach Joachim Löw's hometown in the Black Forest is honouring its favourite son in a special way. Schönau im Schwarzwald is now called "Löwnau", at least for a few days.

As a teenager, Löw played for FC Schönau 08, the begin of a football career that peaked – for now – in Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium on Sunday night. The coach still lives in the tiny town of 2,300 people.

The town is also considering more serious ways of honouring the coach. The Stuttgarter Zeitung reports that the town council will discuss making Löw an honorary citizen or naming a street, a square or even the local stadium after him.

In a similar move, local radio station Baden FM rebranded itself as "Jogi FM".

 

Early morning for fans

Fans who want to be among the first to welcome the German team back from Brazil will have to get up extra early. There is limited space for visitors on the observation deck at Berlin's Tegel airport, which will open for the public around 6am, according to RBB broadcaster.

While taxiing to its parking position, the plane with the German team on board will be showered with water by airport firefighters.

The Fan Mile at the Brandenburg Gate will open at 7am.

The entertainment programme, starting at 8am, will include "Höhner," a band singing in Kölsch (Cologne's local dialect), and Andreas Bourani. His song "Auf uns" (To us) became an unofficial anthem for German fans during the World Cup.

Fans should be at the Fan Mile no later than 9am and arrive via S- and U-Bahn station Potsdamer Platz. Organizers expect up to 500,000 fans on Tuesday.

When Germany last won the World Cup in 1990, 20,000 fans welcomed the team on Frankfurt's Römer square.

A word of warning: There is no S-Bahn service between Zoologischer Garten and Friedrichstraße, meaning the only way fans can get to Hauptbahnhof is with regional trains.

U-Bahn station Brandenburger Tor could be closed due to congestion long before the team arrives.

For those working or just wanting to avoid the crowds, ARD and ZDF will be broadcasting live from the airport and the Brandenburg Gate.

The Local will also be covering the event live. 

 

Holiday for some

Hundreds of thousands are expected to welcome the German team in Berlin on Tuesday. Among them will be 500 employees of a Berlin IT company who have been given the day off by their boss.

"The entire company will have tomorrow off for going to the Fan Mile," said Lars Gurow, spokesman of internet service provider Strato.

The company's service phones will be manned by volunteers who will get an extra day of vacation in return.

Workers this afternoon are preparing Berlin's Fan Mile for tomorrow's celebrations:

Payday for German football

Winning the World Cup? Priceless. But that does not mean Germany's players will return from Rio without a monetary reward.

The German Football Association (DFB) will pay the 23 players who travelled to Brazil €300,000 each. Eight players already received €200,000 each for having been selected in the squad for all of Germany’s World Cup qualifying matches.

DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach said the association would pay the money “with pleasure”.

The bonuses will not hurt the German FA, which itself will get a record €25.6 million from World Cup organizer FIFA, compared to €18.3 for runner-up Argentina.

The DFB expects a €3 million net profit from the World Cup which it will share with German football clubs.

When West Germany won the World Cup for the first time in 1954, each player went home with 2,500 Deutschmark – the equivalent of around €5,000 today – a television set, a leather suitcase and a motor scooter.

 

Win kick starts stocks

Back to the economic benefits of the victory, Germany's main stock index, the DAX, is trading 0.76 percent higher today so far.

Records on social media and TV

Twitter users sent out 618,725 tweets a minute after Sunday night's World Cup final, more than ever before in the social media network's existence.

And the 280 million Facebook interactions – including posts, likes and comments on the World Cup – marked an all-time high for a sports event.

Germany's 1:0 victory over Argentina also set records on German TV. More than 34.6 million people – or 86 percent of all TV viewers on Sunday night – watched Germany play Argentina on ARD broadcaster.

That number does not include the millions more who watched the match at public events and in bars and restaurants around the country.

The last TV record had been set just five days earlier, when 32.5 million viewers saw Germany's 7:1 semifinal win over Brazil.

 
This guy seems to have it all…
 
 
 
Stamp of approval

A special stamp commemorating Germany’s victory last night has already been designed.

"This year I dared to hope very early on that our team would take the title," said Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

"It's wonderful that the team turned this dream into a reality. I hope that this stamp will remind many citizens of the immense joy the team has given us."

The 60 cent stamp, marked "Germany Football World Champion 2014", will go on sale Thursday after the first commemorative copies are presented to the coach, players and team staff.

Graphic designer Lutz Menze told German national news agency DPA that the image shows footballers running, but not their faces in order to honour the whole team, not an individual.

Menze said that producing a stamp usually takes six months, but that he was only contacted by the government after the tournament had already started.

 
Four-star jerseys
 
Fans wanting to update their Germany jersey after last night's World Cup victory will need to show some patience. The new shirts featuring four stars – one for each of Germany's World Cup wins – are already sold out on Adidas's website and in stores.
 
Adidas had produced a small batch of the four-star jerseys before the final against Argentina. 
 
The company said it started producing new jerseys in China in the early hours of Monday and expected stores to stock them later this week.
 

 

A boon for Berlin?

Berlin's economy senator expects the German team's success in Rio to benefit businesses in Berlin, she said in a statement on Monday. 

"I know investors always want to go where winners feel at home. Germany shines as the country of World Cup winners. And when somebody abroad says Germany, they mean Berlin. I'm convinced we'll have even more potential investors knock on our doors now," said Cornelia Yzer.

Yzer said Tuesday's victory celebration, which will be featuring Germany's players and coaches on a stage in front of the Brandenburg Gate, will be a boon for the capital.

"The image factor of these pictures is tremendous and will make us an even more attractive destination for tourists," Yzer added.

Fan violence

Two people were allegedly murdered last night during the celebrations: 

https://www.thelocal.de/20140714/two-football-fans-murdered-in-germany-during-world-cup-final

Party time
 
In the hours following the game, Hamburg's S-Bahn painted two trains with the slogan, "We congratulate the World Cup winner!" Passengers will see the message for the next few weeks, the S-Bahn said.
 
Some great pictures coming out of last night's celebrations in Brazil and not just from the players' Twitter accounts.
 
Schweinsteiger with his partner Sarah Brandner:
 
 
 
And here's Sami Khedira with his girlfriend Lena Gercke.
 
 
The German team will arrive at Berlin's Tegel airport at around 9am on Tuesday on board a special Lufthansa flight with the flight number 2014.
 
They will then take a bus to the capital's Fan Mile where they are expected to take to the stage at around 11am for an hour to celebrate with tens of thousands of  fans. 
 
Organizers said the stage would be expanded with a 20-metre catwalk, placing the players in the middle of the crowd.
 
Some stats

The official World Cup statistics are in, confirming Germany's place at the top of world football in 2014. No other team ran as far, passed so well and scored as many goals.

Germany's 18 goals topped 2014's tournament, just ahead of Netherland's 15 goals.

And although the team's goal machine Thomas Müller fell just short of the tournament's top goal scorer title, he ran further than any other player, putting in just under 84 kilometres over the tournament – a double marathon.

Overall, the team played 5,084 passes, 4,157 of which (82 percent) were successful. This was the highest percentage of all teams which made it past the group stage.

Captain Phillip Lahm made more passes than anyone else, 651 over the whole tournament, 562 of which were received by his team mates.

Happy and tired

Around Eberswalder Straße in the Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin – where thousands celebrated Germany's victory in the early hours of Monday morning – everyone The Local talked to told the same story.

"I'm very happy," said Bernd, 53, from Berlin. He never doubted the German team would win the World Cup, he said: "We had the best team."

"Awesome," said Sven, 22, when asked how he felt. Still wearing his Germany jersey from the night before, he was just on his way home. We partied hard last night," he explained.

Maria, 31, a Ghanaian living in Berlin, said she was very happy for Germany. "They deserved it,” she said.

She was proud her country's team had managed a draw against the future World Cup champion in the group stage, she added.

Mailin, 24, expressed how many Germans felt on Monday. "I'm happy and tired," she said. After the game, she and some friends had gone to Kurfürstendamm to watch the traditional motorcade of German fans and celebrate their team's triumph.

Few signs remained at Eberswalder Straße of the previous night's celebrations, when the usually busy intersection had been taken over by fans.

Only a few pieces of glass had not been cleaned away yet, a reminder that some fans had started throwing bottles in the middle of the celebrations.

Outside the big cities, German fans also celebrated their team's victory. In Velten, a town of 12,000 just north of Berlin, more than 30 cars formed a motorcade as dozens of fireworks lit up the sky.

Selfie champs

Not to be outdone by Rihanna, Chancellor Angela Merkel also ensured she was pictured with the trophy and stars.

Rihanna had a good time last night at the German World Cup party if her Twitter feed is anything to go by…

Football veteran Franz Beckenbauer has praised Germany coach Joachim Löw and prophesied a golden future for the national side. 

"Joachim Löw did everything right. The German team fully deserved to become World Champions, because they were the best team in the tournament," the legendary former coach and player, who raised the world cup for West Germany in 1974, told Sky Sports News on Monday. 

"It was the team's success. We didn't have a Messi or a Ronaldo, we had no outright superstar. The superstar was the team." 

Here’s some international press reaction to the game:

Two major Spanish newspapers focused on the fact that Germany is the first European team to win a World Cup on South American soil.

"Germany conquers America" was the headline in national daily ABC.

El País, meanwhile, ran with "Germany wins like never before".

Spanish sports daily As ran with the headline: "Götze did an Iniesta" – a reference to the solitary scored goal by Andrés Iniesta which won Spain the World Cup in 2010.  

“Super Mario!” hailed Denmark’s TV2, while the country’s Politiken newspaper said: “All of Germany parties like it's 1990”.

“The whole of Germany is World Champions,” said Austria’s Kurier newspaper, while Österreich newspaper focused on Chancellor Angela Merkel visiting the players dressing room to congratulate them after the victory.  

Italy's leading daily, Corriere della Sera ran with the headline: “Champions (also) of the world,” in a reference to the fact that in Italy Germany is seen as champions of economics, politics and social services too.

Norway's Dagbladet, meanwhile, lead with "Germany turned upside-down."

Honks and high fives

Bleary-eyed fans awoke after late-night street parties, fireworks and honking motorcades across the country, with ecstatic fans singing 'Oh, it's beautiful!' and chanting 'Super Deutschland!' into the early hours.

Bayern Munich star Mario Götze struck in the 113th minute of a gripping battle at Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium as Argentina superstar Lionel Messi's hopes of emulating Diego Maradona ended in defeat.

"It's unbelievable what we have achieved. Whether we have the best individual player doesn't matter at all. You just need to have the best team," said delighted Germany captain Philipp Lahm.

"We started this whole project, of course, ten years ago," said Germany coach Joachim Löw.

"Now its a product of many years, beginning with Jürgen Klinsmann back then. We carried that on. I think our great strength was that we got continuously better over these years, even if we didn't go the last step.

"We knew that champions make this last step at some point to finish the job."

The coach reserved special praise for winning goal-scorer Mario Götze.

"And Götze is a player who can play anything, he's a wunderkind. He has incredible potential and outstanding technical capabilities." 

Newspapers hailed "Super Mario" Götze as the country's new "football god" and showered praise on the new national heroes, the first to win the title for a reunified Germany, who are due to be welcomed home on Tuesday at Berlin's landmark Brandenburg Gate.

"It's an unbelievable feeling," said Götze after the game. "I don't know how to describe it. You just score that goal and you don't really know what's happening after that.

"It'll be a party with the whole team and the country. It's a dream come true to win the World Cup, especially in Brazil."

PHOTO GALLERY: Fans party all night long

Bayern Munich's Sebastian Schweinsteiger took the opportunity to thank former club coach Uli Hoeneß, imprisoned earlier this year for tax evasion.

"A special hello to Uli Hoeneß, without whom none of us would be here," he said. "We're thinking about you and believe that everything will be alright and send our support."

With four World Cups, the European powerhouse is now just one behind Brazil's record tally of five.

The tournament earlier saw Germany crush Brazil by a humiliating 7:1, and the hosts lost Saturday's game for third place 3:0 to the Netherlands, sealing the fate of national coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, whose contract Brazil's football confederation decided not to renew, according to local media reports.

Germany's win nonetheless sparked an explosion of joy in Brazil, which had been dreading the prospect of South American rivals Argentina winning the title on its territory.

"Thank God, thank God that Germany won," said Caio Ferraz, 45, a Brazilian looking up at the stars on Rio's Copacabana beach.

Argentines reacted with tears, cheers and violence after the dream of a third World Cup title slipped through their fingers, as clashes between hooligans and police ended a massive Buenos Aires street party.

SEE ALSO: Germany vs. Argentina player ratings

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