Human beings love to look for signs that prove divine grace or damnation — such as the handwriting on the wall that presaged the demise of Babylon’s king Belshazzar 2,500 years ago, as recounted in the Book of Daniel. Closer to home, we have the Curse of the Billy Goat foretelling in 1945: “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” They didn’t triumph in the World Series for 71 long years after that.

Fast forward to the World Cup, where four-time winner Germany got wiped out by South Korea in the biggest upset in the tournament’s 88-year history. Not by giants such as Brazil or Italy, teams that have won the Cup multiple times. The team’s downfall was the South Koreans, who ejected the Germans in the first round.

When the mighty falter, there must be a message — like divine intrusion, secular decline or pride that cometh before the fall, just as in the case of the Belshazzar when he was punished for his sins. Listen to the German team’s coach, Joachim Löw: “There was perhaps a certain arrogance before the Mexico game” — the first German encounter in the Russia tourney, which the team lost.

Now, the cocky German Mannschaft has slunk back home, the butt of condescension and contempt.

Naturally, pop philosophers are hawking grandiose theories. Look at the big picture, they pontificate. Here are yesterday’s goliaths led by Löw with his Beatles-like haircut. Over there is Chancellor Angela Merkel, once the uncrowned “queen” of Europe. Haggard and drawn, she may not make it through her fourth term.

Beset by her hostile coalition partners, she is a monarch without subjects. Desperate to harness the European Union to a common refugee policy, which would lighten the load on Germany, she has been begging France, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Poland for help: Let’s distribute the refugees fair and square. They have proven as charitable as the South Koreans who sent the German team packing. The so-so deal eked out at the E.U. summit this week is entirely voluntary.

Old-timers remember the quip by England’s former star player Gary Lineker: “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end, the Germans always win.” That was 28 years ago, and the Germans win no more. Has a curse traveled to the Fatherland, in soccer as well as in high politics?

Of course not. Is the United States, President Trump and all, on the way down because it did not make it to the World Cup this year? What about Israel? It has qualified only once, in 1970. But it is a regional superpower, with a per-capita income that dwarfs all its Arab neighbors. How about Uruguay? A two-time winner, the country is not exactly a superpower.

A nation’s might is not measured by the number of goals it scores in the FIFA competition.

If you insist on culling meaning from the World Cup, don’t look for heavenly signs. If there is an evil spell, noted Christopher Clarey in the New York Times, it is an equal-opportunity curse. In the last five tournaments, “the defending champion has been eliminated in the group phase on four occasions: France in 2002, Italy in 2010, Spain in 2014 and now Germany” — all soccer heavies.

Let’s look at the countries that have made it to the Russia games of 2018: Egypt, Iceland, Panama, Nigeria, Morocco, South Korea… These nations have not exactly excelled as great soccer powers. If there is a curse, it is globalization.

Seven Egyptian team members play in British clubs. One South Korean plays in the English Premier League, another in the German Bundesliga. Great talents are now being scouted around the world. Rising to fame abroad, they come home for the World Cup, turning yesterday’s nobodies into world-class competitors.

This is good for these countries and even better for the three billion or so who watch on TV. Thanks to globalization, the World Cup has evolved into a contest where the last shall be first, and the first last. The Gospel has it right. Just remember Brazil, the five-time champion, which got trounced by Germany 7-1 in 2014. This year, the German squad was felled not by behemoths, but by South Korea.

• Josef Joffe is a member of the editorial council for the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

Washington Post