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Cautiously enthusiastic: German fans in the last test match before the European Championship
Photo: Pool / Getty Images
When I drive along the Volkspark Friedrichshain in Berlin, I come across a car that is regularly parked on the side of the road.
Two small German flags have been mounted on this car since yesterday.
When I saw this, I found myself amazed.
Amazed that it still exists.
In the past, before major soccer tournaments, Germany reliably transformed itself into a country with black, red and gold overcoats over the exterior mirrors, a shimmering tension has been felt for days, adults become children and swap panini pictures, the city is covered in soccer advertisements.
Before this European Championship, which opens with Turkey against Italy in Rome that evening, things are very different.
An EM mood is hardly tangible, if euphoria, then it is more North German, culminating in the quote from a colleague this week: "I'm getting in the mood for the EM." I mean, he would have an "even" braided.
As if it was something to be a little ashamed of.
Climate protection?
Human rights?
Pffff
This EM 2021, which officially still bears the date 2020 in its name, doesn't make it easy either: The charm of the pan-European event was already rather discreet, the prospect of fans and teams flying all over the continent from Glasgow to Bucharest, from Copenhagen to Rome cannot really be reconciled with the goals of sustainability and climate protection. The venue of Baku in Azerbaijan makes it clear how little those responsible care about the issue of human rights.
The pandemic has taken the rest of all appeal from the idea of holding an EM in twelve countries in twelve cities. The pressure that Uefa boss Alexander Ceferin exerted on the venues to let spectators into the stadium despite Corona had something very unpleasant. In Bilbao, the city leaders did not want to surrender to the Uefa ultimatum because the health of the people was more important to them. Then they just got the games allotted to them taken away. That's how it works at Uefa. The corona cases in the run-up to the teams in Spain and Sweden also announce badly how the pandemic can catch up with this tournament.
There is also a German national team, which has largely lost the enthusiasm and support of the fans.
This is least of all due to the players.
The DFB is traveling to the European Championship with a friendly team with different biographies, from model footballers like Kai Havertz to players with winding paths like that of Robin Gosens, to players who think outside the box like Leon Goretzka.
It's actually a team that makes it hard not to like them.
PR campaigns wherever you look
But she groans under the ballast that the PR strategists, the image designers, the sponsors have put on her in recent years. The Oliver Bierhoff speech from the stakeholders, the wooden choreographies of the National Team Fan Club, all of this leads to the unhappiness that even the commitment to human rights, as in March before the international match against Iceland, is turned into a PR campaign. Because the national team can't help but think in such categories. She is like the scorpion that has to sting, even if he may not want to. In the past, those who avoided the euphoria of the football tournament were in need of explanation, today you almost have to justify yourself if you wish the national team well.
As if that weren't enough, this team currently represents an association that stumbles from one embarrassment, from one indiscretion to the next, that has promoted itself to the state of ungovernability, which has to form a European Championship delegation from the remainder that has the have survived the great power massacres of the past few months.
An association that is only good for farce.
All of that is a huge burden that this European Championship carries around with it.
Nevertheless, despite everything, she still has the strength to free herself from it. Every tournament is also a great opportunity to rediscover the fascination of this global sport and to look for new favorites on the pitch. Every tournament has its stories that will be remembered for a long time. It will not be any different in 2021, pardon 2020. The pull of a football tournament may be weaker than in other years, but it still exists. You will feel it.
This European Championship has so many exciting things to offer in terms of sport: the young Englishmen, the self-confident Italians, the glorious French, the Belgians, eternal secret favorites, the Turks who have big plans, the ultra-outsiders from Finland, who inevitably come back as like the Icelanders recently. For the first time in many years there is a duel between England and Scotland at a tournament, and with Germany against France, the two past world champions will meet at the start of the tournament. They are games that you can enjoy. And maybe even can't help but enjoy it.
From now on, the weeks begin when you want to forget what is going wrong in football. It's a huge trick on the verge of self-deception, everyone knows it, but it still works.
