day: Mr. Reif, you have traveled far and live today with Swiss passport in Zurich. What does home mean to you?
Reif: I was born in 1949 in Upper Silesia Waldenburg, in 1956 my family emigrated to Israel, two years later we moved to Kaiserslautern. Everywhere I went, I had to learn the language anew. In Germany, I came in the first class as an eight-year-old - a traumatizing experience. My search for identity eventually ended with the realization that I could never afford something like a geographical home. Today home is where my family is.
One day: Did you forgive your mother for putting you temporarily in Tel Aviv at a boarding school run by Belgian monks, because without Hebrew the regular elementary school was out of the question?
Reif: She made up for her "mistake" when she registered with the FCK in Kaiserslautern. Football is the most universal language of all, and because I was a pretty good footballer everyone soon listened to me. For that alone, I stand in eternity for this sport.
one day: Her hero was the Dutchman Co Prins, who played from 1963 to 1965 in Kaiserslautern. Why he?
Reif: Prins was a sloppy genius, a flamboyant guy who had his jersey hanging over his pants, who had leisurely bottoms down and drove through the city on a big American sled. I wanted to be like him. But when I wanted to coolly leave my jersey over the trousers in the final of the West Palatinate championship against the great rivals from Pirmasens, the referee refused with yellow. I obeyed, lost my magic and we lost the final.
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Marcel Reif: "Every game has its special moments"One day: Her father was Jewish, many family members were murdered during the Holocaust, he survived scarce. He never told you about that. Did that hurt you?
Reif: How could I be angry with him for that? On the contrary, it was brilliant and heroic to spare us children. He wanted to prevent that we each German for a perpetrator. So I became a wonderfully protected and growing up in luxury economic miracle child.
One day: It was not until ten years after his death that you learned details of his past through intensive discussions with your mother.
Reif: She told me that "a great German man" had rescued my father from the train to the extermination camp. Later I got out that it was the industrialist Berthold Beitz. I wrote him a letter, he invited me to him. When I met the man without whom I would not have existed, I could not come up with a reasonable word. At some point he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said, "It's good." Madness. After his death in 2013, I had the honor to write his obituary for SPIEGEL.
one day: Why did you end up in ZDF sports in 1984?
Reif: Because of Dieter Kürten. And because I was badly offended.
one day: Insulted? How so?
Reif: I had been working as a political reporter for the station since 1972, and I had high hopes for the post of London correspondent. Because that did not work and I was extremely hurt, I was very receptive to the advances of the newly crowned sporting director Kürten. So I ran with flying flags to the sport.
one day: And were abgewatscht to welcome by the emperor.
Reif: (imitating Franz Beckenbauer) "Now you have such a magician there, what's his name, he's mature or something like that, he talks wonderful political comments, but he'll just let him get away from football." In the "gym"! I sat at home in front of the TV and thought: That's it with your career. But Kürten did not let that irritate me at all, so I soon made peace with Franz.
one day: SPIEGEL author Norbert Seitz referred to you after their World Cup debut in 1986 as "Saloppformulierer and Lockermann".
Reif: Oh, those few injustices that I experienced back then, I wish everyone. At the latest after the 1990 World Cup, I was uncritically the number one for ten years. If I am there after a nice attack "Ui, ui, ui!" called, everyone knocked me on the shoulder the next day. The great Rudi Michel once gave me some wise advice: "You can only have 50 percent of the viewers on your site."
one day: It felt like 99 percent on April 1, 1998 in their legendary dialogue with Günther Jauch, when a goal overturned before the game of Real Madrid against Borussia Dortmund. "An early goal would be good for the game," they said. Jauch said: "The first goal has already fallen." Jauch once called it an "evening of anarchy".
Mature: Correct. And I'll be eternally grateful to Günther for rescuing me from the media suicide when, in panic, I began to rant about Spanish centralism. Nevertheless, I assumed that they would blow our ramblings around our ears. But Jauch cheered after the end of the broadcast: "We'll get a prize for that." That was the Bavarian TV Award . But in the meantime, I was offended by all the praise. After all, I was a reporter, not a clown.
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Marcel Reif, Christoph Biermann
From an acute angle: Football reporter out of passion
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one day: Your most emotional game?
Reif: Presumably 2003 in Manchester, the Champions League final Juventus Turin against AC Milan. Shortly before, my father had died. Milan won the match and at the award ceremony the cameras showed the proud Paolo Maldini how he greeted his father Cesare with the trophy in his hand. I just said, "Dad, look." After that, only two minutes of silence was with me.
one day: Which nation is number one on the microphone?
Reif: The English, still. My former Sky colleague Jan Åge Fjørtoft, who played a couple of years on the island, always greeted me with Kenneth Wolstenholme's legendary commentary on the 1966 World Cup Final: "They think it's all over! "I have always wanted to use language in football as precisely and to the point as the Englishman can do, and once I was close after Oliver Kahn had taken the last penalty in the Champions League final in 2001:" Kahn! Bayern! "I still like that today.
one day: No other commentator has as polarized as you, the features section has always praised you in the sky, among football fans were alternately as Bayern, Dortmund or Schalke haters. How did you handle this extreme feedback?
Reif: Since I always have to think of my recently deceased "gym" colleague Werner Schneyder, I once asked how he gets along with all the malice in the social networks. With his graceful Grazer accent, he replied, "I do not care what any of that idiot thinks." Once I turned on the prosecutor's office when someone threatened to burn my family. He should not get away with it.
one day: Why did you end your career in Germany in 2016?
Reif: Not only because of that, but also after a derelict Dortmund had a mob circling my car and rocking it back and forth against Derby Dortmund. My wife sat in the passenger seat, her eyes scared. That's when I said to myself: Maybe it's better if you stop. I did not want to do that to myself.
one day: Have you ever seen the perfect football?
Mature: In 2011, Barcelona played such an incredibly good half at Wembley against Manchester United that we all looked at each other in disbelief because we were sure we had seen the best football ever. But the ball keeps rolling, and every game has its own special moments. If I felt that as a reporter, then everything was fine.