Love Quote by Franz Beckenbauer

Beckenbauer’s line is a neat piece of sports-world candor: the World Cup isn’t just a tournament, it’s a showroom. He frames the event as “the ideal platform” and puts “new stadiums at its heart,” treating architecture like a broadcast signal. In that phrasing, football becomes infrastructure PR, and the stands become proof-of-competence in concrete and steel.

The intent is promotional but also defensive. Germany in the 2000s was eager to be seen as modern, open, and frictionless after reunification’s economic aftershocks and amid anxieties about globalization. So the tournament is cast as a controlled moment when the country can be watched - and judged - on its own terms. “Positive and exceptional” is brand language; it’s not about culture in the messy sense, but about perception management.

The subtext sits in the repeated “location” and the pointed “above all of course” before “highly capable economic location.” That “of course” is a tell: the speaker assumes the real audience isn’t fans but investors, corporate partners, and foreign media. The stadiums are less temples of sport than credentialing devices: look how efficiently we plan, build, host, secure, transport, and entertain. Even the word “capable” is doing political work, implying reliability, discipline, and administrative competence - the kind of traits that attract capital and soften national stereotypes.

Coming from Beckenbauer, an athlete turned power broker, it’s also a wink about who modern mega-events truly serve. The beautiful game is the hook; the nation-state and its economy are the product.