‘We could be in 2006 again’: Germany recalls glory days

A new football coach and team stir hopes the country might relive its fairytale World Cup summer 18 years ago, after defeats on the pitch and economic and political challenges

Sometimes a goal can lift not just the crowd inside a stadium but an entire nation. It was 18 years ago ago on Sunday that Germany’s left-back Philipp Lahm took a punt from outside the penalty area that pinged off the Costa Rican upright into the back of the net just six minutes into the opening game of the 2006 World Cup, which Germany was hosting.

Lahm’s wonder goal jolted to life a competition that has gone down in German folklore as the “summer fairytale”: four balmy weeks in which Germany cast aside its gloomy, world-weary tendencies and shed its sporting image as a joyless juggernaut. Even though eventual winners Italy cut the fairytale short – and perhaps precisely because there wasn’t a dream ending for the host nation, the tournament left behind a country transformed in the eyes of the world: less threatening, more friendly and more at ease with itself and its past.