David Cameron really rubs his victory in on Angela Merkel
  • Pete Souza / The White House
  • Cameron, Obama, and Merkel took a break from their G8 talks this May to get to the real work of watching a soccer shoutout

I know that every time I write about soccer a good 90 percent of you think “damn hipster” and scroll on down the page, but just hold on: today’s big soccer game is of great social and political import! You know that whole imminent global recession? The one caused by really profligate Greeks (and Spaniards and Italians, &c) borrowing way too much money, then Germans turning out to be real hard-asses about getting paid back? Yeah, that one, the one that’s throwing America’s biggest trading partner (Europe) for a loop and ruining your 401(k) all over again.

Well, good news! It’s being settled today—with a soccer ball! Loaded with the kind of geopolitics we haven’t seen since the Miracle on Ice, today’s big Germany-Greece game in the European soccer championship pits an efficient powerhouse guaranteed to dominate against ragtag overachievers no one really thinks about, just like in the real Eurozone crisis. Germany isn’t just favored to win this game, they’re supposed to win the whole tournament. So this game is a mere formality, just a chance for the Germany to express its almost feudal dominance over this serf of a country. Unless . . . it isn’t . . .