WAlways down to the subway, again every few meters a volunteer hand showing the way, again every three minutes a train, greets the groundhog every day – or: the World Cup in a continuous loop. The same can be said of their soundtrack. And apart from the fact that music is of course always a matter of taste, after four weeks in Qatar you have to say: That’s good and bad at the same time.
The bad first: was the pop voice murmuring “Live the passion” from the speakers in the station? Or was it just something like that? It doesn’t matter, something with love, life and passion anyway, like all these football songs from the building block of feelings. In Qatar they also like to add “Hayya hayya”, which means “Welcome”, and while the walks to the stadium are short, they can seem quite long when the song starts over for the third time. Sterile sound with a sterile atmosphere outside, it fits, there aren’t any bars with screens where you could watch football.
But that’s for the better: Inside, this World Cup can really be heard, and that’s not just due to the state-of-the-art sound system. Not bad even before the first German game: “Welcome to the Jungle”. Very different, but also very good: Elvis, “If I can dream”, in front of France against Morocco. And then the World Cup standards: Tiësto with “The Business”, basses in the stomach pit, as one usually knows from the disco: “Let’s get down, let’s get down to business / Give me one more night, one more night to get this.” We would love to have more! Or The Weeknd, “Blinding Lights”, for example, ran in the half-time between Germany and Costa Rica, you thought the World Cup was really starting, “Ooh, I’m drowning in the night”, but after that Germany was at home the song still in my head.
It’s true that the DFB Gianni Infantino no longer wants to vote. But maybe he can still ask him to share his playlist for the home EM.
