Oh, how beautiful!
Ten days of the European Championship. It feels like the third week of summer vacation: In week one, you arrive, check your work emails now and again, and soon you’re fast asleep in an unfamiliar bed. In week two, at least three shirt buttons are undone, going to your trusted ice cream man is part of your evening routine, and Germany feels very far away.
In the third week, you have found inner peace. You have discarded the ambitious plans from three different travel guides. Without any bad conscience. You no longer have the energy for excitement and you resign yourself to your fate. Like old Italian men who sit in the same café on the piazza every day and still find something to talk about every day.
This is how the European Championships at home feel at the moment. The day is determined by the schedule. At first there were three games a day, now there are two, soon only one. A lot is happening around it, but somehow everything that isn’t football is a bit irrelevant. Nobody wants to hear the summer din of discussions about outdoor pool fights, deaths from heat and train strikes.
Even the descriptions in the foreign press about the “zombie land” of Frankfurt (“The Sun”), the dysfunctional Deutsche Bahn (the Austrian media outlet oe24), the “shithole” of Gelsenkirchen (according to the British blogger Paul Brown) or the myth of German efficiency (“New York Times”) may be true in some way. In non-European Championship terms, they would perhaps be good material for blaming the traffic light coalition. But the inner Italian grandpa waves them off. Tutto passa. Everything passes. This government too.
Football can finally be football again, that’s the best thing. Nobody keeps a tally of who sings the national anthem and how loudly. No sensible spectator expects political statements from Toni Kroos, Jamal Musiala or Florian Wirtz about the multitude of Chinese sponsors. It’s just about playing football. The desire to win the group is palpable, as is Füllkrug’s hunger for goals. The emotions are so real, the celebration scene over an incredible save by Manuel Neuer is epically brutal.
There is no longer any need for embarrassing DFB actions. The pink jersey is sold out everywhere, the market has settled. Football is the focus – and the ARD summer fairytale between Esther Sedlaczek and Bastian Schweinsteiger.
No politics, no fuss. Oh, how lovely, we haven’t seen anything like this for a long time. So lovely.
