selective perception

have just started reading football against enemy by s. kuper at last. 2 quotes from chapter two.


"The two teams, in short, summed up the way the Dutch wanted to see themselves and the way they saw the Germans. We were like Ruud Gullit and they were like Lothar Matthaeus. There were obvious flaws in this notion, and so, to make it fit, the Dutch briefly forgot their own discipline, their own stadiness, and their own intolerance of Turks and Moroccans and Surinamese like Gullit."


"... Several charter flights to semi-final were annuled, as fans saved for the final against Germany. Against Denmark, whole sections of the stands stayed empty. Naturally the Dutch lost. They were just too arrogant. Peter Schmeichel, the Danish keeper, noted the rage that they barely bothered to slap hands when Bergkamp scored their first goal. After the game they were distraught: Germany had beaten Sweden to reach the final...
The Germans lost the final, and in Copenhagen, the Danish players and the crowd sang, 'Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland'. They had been occupied too.