German footballers in the making

Last night, on his 6th birthday, Titus went to his second week of football training. World cup fever clearly infected at least ten other little boys, who were all to be found careering round a miniature pitch in the gloaming. There was a change of goalkeeper every five minutes, which I could well understand as, apart from the fact that attention spans at this age are notoriously short, it was also quite chilly, and there were thousands of mosquitoes trying to join in too.

Husband CG joined forces with the trainer yesterday, the latter having implored the former to help him out. It's true that managing a dozen kids who all want to be the next Schweinsteiger/Podolski/Klose but have absolutely no idea of the rules is quite a challenge. Rather than finding themselves a good place away from the opposing team and urging their team mate with the ball to pass, they tend to tackle the ball away from their own players, as all are only concerned with one thing - scoring a goal.

CG had things well under control when I arrived to pick them both up. The other trainer - let's call him Rolf - was loping around rather ineffectually blowing on his whistle. You could see that he would have had a nervous breakdown without CG's support. Titus was bristling with pride to have his Dad there and my heart swelled with love for the pair of them. In the space of ten minutes there were five fouls, eight corners, ten throw-ins and various tantrums. The ball was probably in the right place for ten percent of the time, and I'm being generous. But it was a joy to watch, with the backdrop of Kloster Schlehdorf and it's twin onion towers only adding to the charm of it all.