System Metternich posted:

I was 8, didn't give a drat about football and was at my cousin's for her 7th birthday. My aunt had had the idea that all children should design their own T-shirts, so we got handed a white shirt and a number of thick pens. I thought for a bit, then decided to make a football-themed short because why not? So I asked my father who was currently topping the league, and then wrote the name of the club in big letters on the shirt, along with a foot kicking a ball. I also wrote down "really cool", but I didn't know how to spell "cool" and wrote "coll" instead. I wore that shirt for years and became a supporter of this club that day. I still am, funny how that works sometimes.

The year was 1996, and the club Borussia Dortmund.

The first match I definitively remember is the 0-3 defeat of Germany at the hands of Croatia in the 1998 WC. I watched the game at another aunt of mine in Frankfurt and had played a little backyard match against two Croatian boys from the neighbourhood a couple of hours before along with my cousin. We got thrashed 0-13, and when we told this at home, another cousin of mine said that this was "a bad omen". She was right about that one, I guess