With World Cup, Germany scores at home

Coming back 15 years later, it took me a while to be sure it was the same street. Flags were flying from every house and children were playing everywhere even though Germans had supposedly stopped having them. The World Cup, the most prestigious soccer competition on the planet, seemed to have made the country happy.

Now, a year after the biggest media event in history began, there is much evidence to show that was true. Possibly no World Cup ever did more for its hosts.

To begin with, the World Cup seems to have inspired Germans to have kids, a great feat given that last year their birthrate hit its lowest point since World War II. The average German woman had just 1.36 children.

But last summer something happened. In Berlin, for instance, 20% more babies were born in March 2007 than in March 2006. It's hard to disentangle the effects of nights of beery celebration from Germany's economic recovery and the incentives now being paid to new parents.

Admittedly, the birthrate had begun soaring even before March. Most experts say the new fertility has nothing to do with the World Cup. Perhaps even the parents aren't sure.

A larger and more profound effect: Germany's brand improved, probably for the long term. The German foreign ministry has put together a triumphant slide show demonstrating this. In January 2006, the Anholt GMI Nation Brands index ranked Germany sixth out of 35 countries. In September, just after the World Cup, the same index ranked Germany jointly atop with Britain. The 25,900 consumers polled in the 35 countries raised Germany's ratings for its people, culture and tourism.

Also in September, the German Marshall Fund surveyed people around the world and found that they rated Germany second most favorably of 12 countries mentioned. Only Spain scored higher.

But even more significant than Germany's improved image among foreigners is its improved image among Germans. In the Pew Global Attitudes survey of June 2006, at the start of the tournament, people around the world were asked for their opinions of several countries, including their own. Almost invariably, they rated their own countries much higher than foreigners did. In the cases of China and the United States, the gap between domestic and foreign perceptions was embarrassingly large.