1. Podolsky was very ambivalent about scoring two goals against Poland. If you watched teh game, you could see that he didn't celebrate either goal. He was -- as he confessed both before and after the game -- torn.

2. Any fobjective football fan (or "calcio" as the Italians call it - "kick") agreed that Germany didn't "deserve" their victory over Turkey. It wasn't just the German press and political class trying to be polite to their Turkish residents/citizens. Just as in 2002, when the US ran the Mannschaft all over the pitch, and the German press prcoalimed them lucky to have won at all. It wasn't political correctness, but fair analysis of the game.

3. Foreign-born players playing for a different national team is hardly new. The great Alfredo Distefano, considered by many as the greatest footballer of all time, played 31 matches for Spain in the late 1950's. Omar Sivori, also Argentine played for Italy in the 1960's and Jose Altafini, of Brazil played six games for Italy as well, just to name a few.

4. The great Ernst Happel, for whom the Zurich Stadium is named, was an Austrian who coached the Dutch in the 1960's. The "Danubian school" of football was exported throughout Europe in the 1940's and early 1950's and it wasn't uncommon for coaches from another country to coach national teams.

Sorry to poor cold water on your otherwise keen observations about the fact that football is truly a global sport. Although perhaps the example of "Newell's Old Boys", a fairly well-known football club founded in 1903 in Argentina is a good hint that it has been this way for over a century.