Commentary: The glimpse

(SZ) Football king Jürgen Grabowski, hero of Eintracht Frankfurt, has had a career without scandals. There was only one instance of irritation: After the 1974 DFB Cup final, he somewhat prematurely swapped shirts with his opponent from Hamburger SV. At the time, the Hamburg club had an advertisement for the spirits brand Campari on his shirt, and so it came to be that Frankfurt cup winner Grabowski, wearing an HSV jersey with a Campari logo, is seen in the victory photos, raising the trophy towards the sky. At least Campari was thrilled with the grand entrance and donated a few bottles of the bitter liqueur to Grabowski.

Swapping shirts is an ancient football ritual. A moment of give and take, the final chord of many great battles. That's what it's all about: not taking credit for borrowing, but for borrowing. One moment the players were still opponents, but after the final whistle they swapped their sweaty work clothes. The moment when Pelé and Bobby Moore swapped shirts at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico was unforgettable. Because the tournament was broadcast in color, the whole world saw how brightly the canary yellow Brazil shirt shone in the hand of the Englishman Moore. But because football is also a business, even swapping shirts can serve to increase profits. England's Steve Hodge had the right instinct at the 1986 World Cup when, after the match against Argentina, he asked the great Diego Maradona to swap shirts. Maradona had just scored the most beautiful World Cup goal – and a second one, with the help of the hand of God. Hodge later had the jersey auctioned for 8.8 million euros.

The phenomenon of shirt swapping also exists in the realm of wild animals, where the hornet clearwing – actually an unsuspecting butterfly – dons the hornet's striped doublet to appear more threatening. This behavior came to mind when, on the first Bundesliga weekend of the new season, field reporter Katharina Kleinfeldt from the TV channel Sky stepped out from behind the scenes and encountered professional football player Marco Friedl. Friedl, captain of Werder Bremen, had just been knocked out of the stadium with his team by their opponents from Frankfurt with a 4-1 win and had then swapped a Frankfurt shirt – which he wore to appear before the reporter. Mrs. Kleinfeldt mistook the unsuspecting Bremen player in a Frankfurt shirt for a threatening Frankfurt player. "We won 4-1 today – is that the opening win you were hoping for?" There stood the beaten defender Friedl, his gaze searching for meaning, the wrong number on the back and the wrong crest on the front. Jersey swapping, a sub-form of dressing up, makes losers look like winners—that's its deeper meaning. The bitter truth, however, is that it only happens after the game, when the spoils have long since been distributed.