Enlarge image
A winner and a loser: Kylian Mbappé and Robert Lewandowski
Photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images
I've spent a lot of time with nice Polish women and wonderful French people over the past week.
When I watched the round of 16 yesterday, France against Poland, I had to think of them.
How I talked to the Poles about Malbork and to the French about Macron.
I saw Lewandowski and Mbappé running across the pitch and suddenly wished that both teams would progress.
This feeling comes over me in some games, very rarely.
The quiet wish that in the end everyone is happy and nobody is sad.
Perhaps these are late consequences of my childhood.
We didn't play Monopoly at home, but rather Save the Pond, a cooperative dice game from Ravensburger.
The aim of the game is to protect a pond against an investor who is rolling in with his excavators.
Together we rolled the investor from the nature reserve.
In the end everyone was happy, nobody lost.
A victory for us as a family, but especially for the frogs and dragonflies.
Yesterday the French cheered and the Poles buried their faces.
There is the joy of victory only alongside tears of defeat.
This is standard sport brutality.
That evening I wanted to defy the laws of nature, France and Poland should both have won.
Against the Qatari investor with his excavators or against Hui Bu, the World Cup mascot.
But life is not a Ravensburger cooperative dice game, life is more like monopoly.
