A tale of two worlds

THERE were actually two World Cups taking place over the past four weeks: the one in Germany and the one Germany were in.

A billion people watched the first one on television; millions here became emotionally entangled in the second.

Occasionally the two overlapped — as in that epic semi-final in Dortmund — but mainly they ran happily in parallel. To understand the distinction it helps to have been in Berlin on the eve of the World Cup final itself, at the same time Germany were playing Portugal in Stuttgart in a third place play-off.