Thanks, Ard Mhacha, for remembering. Germany will play with black ribbons for the hero of my youth and the only sportsman for which I ever have (and will) shed a tear has died yesterday: Fritz Walter. Each country has a few sports heroes with names that are instantly recognisable even decades after they have finished competing. Germany had about six of them and now one of them is gone.

A German writer once said something like: Three men have helped to speed the recovery of Germany after the war, politically it was Konrad Adenauer, economically it was Ludwig Erhard, but emotionally, it was Fritz Walter. That's only a very small exaggeration.

His brother's first name was Otmar, by the way.

Wolfgang