ONE of the great treats of covering a tournament like this is getting to be at matches you wouldn’t normally attend, and being able to immerse yourself in teams and nations you might otherwise ignore.
On Tuesday afternoon, I was in Dortmund covering Turkey’s opening game of Euro 2024 against Georgia. It was absolutely brilliant. Yes, it poured down and I got soaked to the skin walking to and from Signal Iduna Park – more of that later. But the game was sensational – easily the best of the opening round of group matches – and the atmosphere had to be seen and heard to be believed.
It's easy to get caught up in an England bubble when you’re at a tournament. If all you do is follow your own national side around, then it’s easy to assume they’re the only team that matters and that English supporters are unique in the way they’ve flocked to Germany to support their nation.
Actually, there are 24 groups of supporters out here, all with their own stories and reasons for travelling. Take the sizeable Georgian contingent that were present in Dortmund, for example. This is a huge tournament for them, for so many reasons.
Not only does Euro 2024 mark Georgia’s first-ever appearance at a major tournament, it also affords a rare opportunity to reinforce Georgian nationhood on an international stage. That matters, at a time when Georgia is being ripped apart by street protests against rigged elections and what is perceived to be a government tilt towards Russia and away from NATO and the European Union.
By waving their Georgian flags – which are strikingly similar to the St George’s Cross from a distance – and singing their patriotic songs, the Georgian supporters in Dortmund were sending out a powerful message. This was Georgia, a proud, independent state, standing tall.
Then, there was Turkey. Germany is estimated to be home to around seven million Turks, with around five per cent of the German population believed to have Turkish roots. That’s quite some home support, and a good four-fifths of the crowd at Dortmund’s world-famous stadium on Tuesday were decked out in red, fervently backing Turkey.
They made quite some racket, cheering raucously whenever the Turkish players took to the field for their warm-up, screeching and whistling whenever a Georgian player touched the ball, and celebrating wildly when Mert Mulder opened the scoring with a superb volley. When Turkey’s wonder-kid, Arda Guler, fired home an even better goal in the second half, it was absolute bedlam.
The chaos continued after the game, with Turkish supporters taking to their cars to turn the streets of Dortmund into total gridlock, beeping horns, waving flags from their car windows and letting off flares. The party continued long into the night, as just like the Georgians, the Turkish diaspora sought to reinforce their sense of nationhood through football.
If you’re watching from home, then what matters at Euro 2024 is what happens on the pitch. Thankfully, so far, the tournament has not let any of us down on that score.
If you’re out here in Germany though, it’s the colour of a matchday that really stands out, the waves of fans travelling from city to city, the songs in a strange foreign language that suddenly take over a train station, the late-night chats in bars with supporters from a different country, united by the common language of football. England are a big part of all that, but they’re only a part.
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RIGHT, let’s touch on the weather. I gather it’s not been great back at home either, and let’s be honest, summer has been a complete washout so far in England.
But my goodness, it’s been every bit as bad here in Germany. I’ve rarely known rain like the torrent that fell from the sky in Dortmund on Tuesday, with Signal Iduna Park just about managing to cope with the deluge. An hour or so before kick-off, water was cascading down from the roofs of one of the stands in a similar manner to the pictures of Old Trafford that were all over social media towards the end of last season.
Thankfully, the rain eased off to enable the game to be played, with the groundstaff doing an excellent job with the pitch in the final few minutes before kick-off, but the roads leading up to the ground were completely flooded and heading back into the city after the final whistle involved negotiating what had effectively become an adventure course.
When Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, the tournament was staged amid wall-to-wall sunshine. That’s definitely not been the case this time around, so any supporter who packed out their suitcase with T-shirts and shorts has my sympathy.
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IF we’re talking about tournament successes, then the use of VAR so far has to go onto that list. Yes, there’s been the odd contentious call, most notably when a Romelu Lukaku effort for Belgium was disallowed because of the slightest of handball touches during the build-up.
But the speed in which VAR decisions have been made, especially when it comes to offside calls, has been impressive, and certainly much quicker than was the case in the Premier League last season.
The use of semi-automated technology for offside has clearly helped, and the Premier League is set to benefit from that too next term. Having watched the way in which VAR is being used out here in Germany, though, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it’s maybe not the technology that’s the problem in England, it’s the standard of the officials that are using it.
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