In our column “Green space”
Christof Siemes, Anna Kemper, Oliver Fritsch and Stephan Reich take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of
TIME on the weekendissue 12/2024.
The outgoing coach of SC Freiburg saved one of his greatest strokes of genius (sorry, it had to be) for his farewell speech: He gave the world, the German language, us a new word. It’s not that easy because there are already so many. The Grimm Dictionary alone, by far the largest of its kind, has around 320,000 entries; it documents High German vocabulary and its use since around the middle of the 15th century. And then last Monday the son of a butcher and studied historian, who grew up in Eimeldingen, simply sat down in front of the camera and said in his southern Baden voice signature dialect: “I am full of gratitude and happiness that I was able to experience all of this.” He pauses briefly before the new word, as if he were still searching for the appropriate expression for the historical moment, then he throws it out emphatically: “Frohnis.” Not with two long vowels like in Frohni’s white wine and asparagus pasta, which you can find on geile-rezepte.de. But with a short -i, as in confession. Understanding. Legacy.
