The casual observer might presume that soccer has experienced some kind of paradigm shift akin to baseball's transition from the dead-ball era or the NFL's recent transformation into a pass-happy league.
Apart from praise for the dead leader in the Arabic and Iranian press, concern is expressed over the transition of power and the role of more radical organisations like Hamas in the process.
And while most others in his party, notably Mr Kohl, played down the task of integrating 17m people, who had lived for four decades under the dead hand of communism, into a modern entrepreneurial society, Mr Biedenkopf strode the state, declaring bluntly that the transition would be at least a decade long, very costly, and very painful indeed.