[vladimir998]

Well, you know it’s a different world when people with names like Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski are called GERMANS.

[NCjim]

And when people with names like Barack Hussein Obama are called natural born citizens of the U.S.

[longjack]

Well, you know it’s a different world when people with names like Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski are called GERMANS.

That's almost as bad as Carl Yastrzemski and Joe Dimaggio being called Americans.

[antiRepublicrat]

Well, you know it’s a different world when people with names like Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski are called GERMANS.

The German/Polish thing is closely intertwined. Klose comes from a heavily German part of Poland, and his dad is ethnic German. Podolski is from around the same area, and his grandparents were German. These two could have played for Poland, but decided to play for Germany. Even Michael Ballack would have been Polish had he been born on the other side of the river of his border town. Ethnic populations and borders in that region have been pretty fluid for a long time.