Tuesday, June 15, 2021
No euphoria in Germany
The big chance for a massive restart
By Stephan Uersfeld
The European football championship has not yet arrived in the German hinterland. The summer and the light-heartedness after the leaden lockdown months are of interest. This is an opportunity for the team around national coach Joachim Löw.
It is summer in the northern German hinterland. The young people sit at a bathing lake. They talk, laugh and flirt. A group races down the hill on their bikes. You brake and jump off. “When Mbappé scores against Germany, I’ll scream blatantly!” Shouted someone in a Hannover 96 shirt. His voice is swallowed up by the loud conversations of the others.
In any case, all attention belongs to the swan family, who paraded their pupils across the meadow and then hissed their way into the water. On the other side, a few daredevils throw themselves from the trees along the banks of the river. In the nearby city, not even the euro shops offer their usual junk at tournaments. On some windows there are flags – Spanish, Polish, Turkish and, very rarely, a German one. The EM will be registered, but the country is not “blurred” as it was so often before. The tournament can develop in peace.
A contemporary European championship
Far down in the south, in Munich, a few scattered people are waiting in front of the team hotel of the German national team. There are only a few hours left to the opening game against France. The day before, nobody stood there to greet the arriving elf. The policemen stood on their legs. The interest in the European Championship could hardly be less, and neither could the expectations of the team. This is a great opportunity for the team around the outgoing national coach Joachim Löw, which has been on a long downward slide since the great success of Rio seven years ago.
Lack of sporting success, the sloganization of the environment, the rising ticket prices and the inaccessibility of the team. The DFB, shattered by years of power struggles, counteracted all of this in a mostly clumsy way. The measures to increase the popularity came to nothing. The national team has long ceased to be the Germans’ favorite child, it is little appreciated and is controversial.
The first pan-European football championship, a megalomaniac project with thousands of kilometers between the individual venues, was also controversial. Decided long before the current climate crisis debates, this EM now looks out of date. It was against the concentration on one place, one country and the big fan festivals where the audience from the participating countries met.
Football had decoupled from one of its most important players: the fans, who bring a cultural and social level to the sport of football. When Corona came, the spectators disappeared from the stadiums, that changed. The football was now in, the game unfolded exclusively on the grass and, at least in the Bundesliga, many TV viewers dimmed away. The years of Bayern dominance have made them weary anyway. No competition, no spectators. Failure – at Schalke, in Hamburg, where the promotion was missed again – was in the foreground. But a sport that is only defined by the failure of the protagonists is, in the end, doomed to failure itself.
An opportunity for the continent
But these European championships have the potential to take people back with them, to bring them closer to football, which has never been gone but has been so far away. After the corona break in European society, after the now 15-month lockdown measures of various types, we are experiencing a return to normality. Not only on the bathing lakes in the German hinterland, but also on the receiving devices that play back the images of the Scots singing fervently, the shocked and then encouraging reactions of the audience in Copenhagen, the atmosphere in Amsterdam and Seville. A continent is dragging itself out of the corona crisis, timid and full of fear of a reversal, of a relapse. Every opening step, no matter how small, is viewed with suspicion for good reason, including the now somewhat filled stages with the simultaneous spread of the delta variant.
The big and small international crises and debates also radiate deeply into the tournament: The Ukraine conflict, the eternal turmoil in the Balkans (using the example of Arnautovic), the division of the continent between autocrats and democrats, which also results in the “Take A Knee “Shows solidarity from some nations and the whistles of others. During this time, new role models are born, such as the Belgian Romelu Lukaku, who answered the whistles of the Russian crowd with goals and thought of his Inter teammate, the Dane Christian Eriksen.
No euphoria
Nobody in Germany is now expecting Timo Werner to become Lukaku, but the national team is also one that could play its part in their hearts. Antonio Rüdiger’s fight against racism; Robin Gosen’s amazing rise from amateur to national player, Leon Goretzka, who shows that footballers don’t just have to be footballers or Kai Havertz, who was able to prevail in London against a lot of resistance and who shot Chelsea to the Champions League success. The return of the beloved Thomas Müller, the waiting for İlkay Gündoğan’s big moment at a tournament: the German national team can tell many stories. Nobody expects anything from this team. There is no euphoria, there is not even a fake euphoria. The overall failure of the idea of the men’s German national football team was too clear for that.
The summer in the northern German hinterland can also be spent at the bathing lake. The group has now settled on a towel. The swans have retreated to the back of the lake. The one in the Hannover 96 shirt says: “And when Germany wins against France, I’ll scream even more blatantly. It’s a good team.” He is hardly noticed. But his cry for a win against France would be heard. His silence wouldn’t matter. Everything is ready for a big tournament. This summer, when a continent is pushing the start again. Maybe the national team will succeed too. That would be tremendous.
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