Dear Rita,

When Michelangelo was asked how he would sculpt an elephant, he said, “I would start with a block of stone and take away all that is not the elephant.”

I kept this concept in my head when I rode the World Cup Final at Leipzig last Saturday night. In the end, all that really matters is the masterpiece that emerges. The pieces that you chip away are just Schrott (“scraps, bits to be thrown away” in English).