Germany yesterday wept bitter tears as tempers flared over the 0-2 loss to Italy by Jurgen Klinsmann's young national side at the World Cup but took heart in the host nation's surprisingly long run.
"It's a pity. It was a great game," said Chancellor Angela Merkel, who sat next to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi in the Dortmund stands on Tuesday night for the semi-final match.
"Unfortunately it wasn't quite enough. But this team can still accomplish a lot," she said.
The top-selling Bild newspaper also tried for a glass-half-full view with the banner headline "We are crying with you! You are still heroes" around a giant photo of Klinsmann, head in hands.
President Horst Koehler told the newspaper that Germans must try to sustain the new-found patriotism they discovered during the tournament, when for the first time since the war waving German flags and singing the national anthem were accepted as natural gestures of healthy national pride.
Meanwhile German fans vandalized Italian restaurants and torched garbage bins after the host nation's defeat, police said yesterday.
Some 25 fans stormed into an Italian restaurant in the central town of Quedlinburg and knocked over chairs and tables.
In Stendal, also in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, some 40 German fans targeted an Italian ice cream parlor.
In nearby Magdeburg fans ripped the flowerboxes off the windows of an Italian restaurant.
The police said 150 troublemakers torched garbage bins and smashed bottles in Hoyerswerda in the eastern state of Saxony.
Police spokesman Jens Baehr said seven people were arrested and later released.
A brawl broke out between about 200 people in the western city of Zweibruecken , but nobody was seriously injured. Twelve people were arrested.
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