Everyone loves to have a horse in a race, and the European Championship is to the World Cup as the Belmont Stakes is to the Kentucky Derby - a lovely accompaniment.

All sport aficionados pick their favorite team and then ride it as far as it will go. Some choose on the basis of the three "esses" - style, substance and success - however, even from far-flung Australia (and like so many others from down there), mine was chosen by birth.

As kids in the southern suburbs of Adelaide we used to run around like rabid rabbits and play all manner of bang-bang war games. In lull periods, when desperately scoffing down a vegemite sandwich and an ice-cool lemonade, my mates would relate great tales of heroism about their grandfathers who fought in World War II in exotic places like the Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea.

I had no such stories to relate because my grandfather died during the war fighting in Europe for Germany.

My father, Siegfried Karl (which is about as German a name as you can get), was too young to remember his father, but passed on his name, Karl, to me and I have done the same for my son, Liam Karl, out of some sort of family honor and naive form of continuity, but I only ever saw one picture of papa and, sadly, in my youth, never sought to know more about Papa Glaser.

My nana remarried soon after the war and my "step-grandpa", who also fought for Germany and showed the bullet wounds in his belly to prove it, carried Klara, Siegfried and young Horst Frederick, my uncle, to a new world and life in Australia.

They settled in the popular German destination of Adelaide and lived among a large community of their compatriots. They cleared the land, built their houses and, strangely enough, wanted their children to be more Aussie than German maybe it was their way of getting away from the horror of war and simply begin again.

My father was called Charlie and uncle Horst became uncle Fred as the family acclimatized from the snowy Black Forest to the scorching heat of Adelaide.

Charlie became so "Australianized" that the one time I asked him to help me with my German homework I got all but one question wrong gee, thanks, dad; think I could have done that on my own.

Dad didn't regale me with stories of great (West) German soccer triumphs because he didn't know any; he followed Souths in the Aussie Rules. I had to discover German soccer on my own - the grand Cup heist of 1966, Gerd Muller, Franz "Der Kaiser" Beckenbauer, et al - and, as Australian soccer was about as useful as teats on a bull at that time, the red, gold and black became MY team.

Now, the Socceroos top my list with Germany a not-too-distant second.

I will always be Australian, but a large part of my spirit resides in Jamaica with my son and his mother.

However, I can still smell my nana's spaetzle, kartoffel puffers, wiener schnitzels with red cabbage and sauerkraut, schwartzwald torte and apfel streusel in melancholic moments.

The German part of me will never fade.

OK now, giddy-up Germany and go win that cup.

Tym Glaser is a senior sports copy editor whose German ancestors hail from the tiny Schwarzwald town of Klosterreichenbach. He can be contacted at tymglaser@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/03/2012 page8)