Tom Stoppard’s monumental play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” opens with the scene of the title characters flipping coins.  No matter how many times the coins are flipped, they always come up heads.  The play into which they are thrust without any real sense of their purpose always ends the same.  Always executed in England; it never ends any differently.

Similarly, no matter how many times the Zionist’s Guide to the World Cup (ZGWC) tries to rationalize contemporary Germany’s relationship with Israel and its attempts to reconcile the historical debt imposed by the Shoah, the result is invariably the same. The ZGWC finds it impossible to cheer for the Mannschaft. Even one ignores the fact that the current German national anthem has the same tune as the earlier iteration entitled “Deutschland Über Alles,” the truly multi-ethnic team which lines up to sing it before matches is, invariably, Judenrein.  Hence, Livano Comenencia’s 21st minute equalizer was received with........

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