– Philipp Lahm (@philipplahm) June 13, 2024
The 40-year-old laughs so hard that he can joke with X about his exercise in Düsseldorf, Slovakia-Ukraine, which arrived so late that he missed an interview on German television. However, everything went well when the director intervened the president of the German Football Association (DFB), Celia Sasic, and they even took a selfie with Ukrainian legend Andriy Shevchenko after the match.
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“P. S. Dear Deutsche Bahn (German rail operator), we want to get to Frankfurt in time for Germany on Sunday; We are sure that we can do it together,” he added with a wink emoji.
And to show that everyone is involved, Deutsche Bahn press responded: “We will do everything possible to make everything go well. . . Let’s hope this tweet doesn’t get too old. “
It is an exchange that sums up Euro 2024. Yes, there was disorder in the transport, but despite everything everyone gave themselves where they should be, football was fun and the fans seemed to laugh.
In other words, it confirms the promise made through Lahm six years ago, when the retired defender was the leader of Germany’s Euro 2024 bid.
It was a two-way race with Turkey, however, given Germany’s track record as an event host, strong economy and catalogue of finished stadiums, it wasn’t a festival before Lahm even played his country’s trump card: fan culture.
“We look forward to welcoming enthusiasts from all over Europe and the world to celebrate a wonderful football birthday party together,” said Lahm, now DFB Euro 2024 tournament director.
And each and every one knew what he meant. After all, in 2006 Germany hosted a “Sommermarchen”, a summer fairy tale on the occasion of the World Cup, and the thousands of foreign fans who attend Bundesliga matches every weekend can attest to the joy. cheap tickets, authentic hobby and beer on the terrace.
Let’s start with first impressions. Stuttgart’s main station is a place of structure. The photographs of the final result are magnificent, but now?Not so good.
Second impressions? Yes, Stuttgart is what I expected. Birthplace of Bosch, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, it is a position that obtains very intelligent effects on all habitability parameters.
Like most big stadiums in Germany, the Stuttgart Arena (no non-UEFA sponsor names are allowed in this tournament) is about an hour’s walk from the city centre and yet the sun is shining, so I’ll give it a try.
Unlike most cities in Germany, Stuttgart is spread over a few towering hills. When I got to the box a little sweaty, I took the U-Bahn subway after the game.
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Again, like most host stadiums, this one has been around for about a century, but has undergone several renovations, including those in preparation for the 2006 World Cup. Athletics enthusiasts will recognize the white fabric roof of the site that hosted the 1993 World Athletics Championships. Now it is a football field.
GOING FURTHER
“If we see this flag again, we will shoot you”: German football and the right
As Michael Groemling of the German Economic Institute pointed out before the tournament, “big sporting occasions are not economic fireworks. “Yes, Germans can buy a new TV or have a beer, but they will spend a little less on anything else. more spending, but with a delay in the planned spending.
What might help, however, is for Germany to live up to “Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin,” as everyone in the subway chanted. And Julian Nagelsmann and his colleagues made them see that a position in the final on July 14 is possible. .
Without undermining this: all the English enthusiasts I spoke to who had travelled to Gelsenkirchen for the opening match against Serbia said they would not rush.
Chosen between Bremen and Hannover as one of the German hosts of Euro 10 2024, there’s obviously a little effort to bring some love for big occasions to a city that has been suffering since the decline of the local coal industry.
But what Gelsenkirchen does have is a giant stadium, the Schalke Ground, a 62,000-capacity stadium that hosted matches in 2006 and is a normal hurdle on the Champions League circuit.
The city is one of four cities that organizers hoped would form a “cluster” in central West Germany, the others being Cologne, Dortmund and Düsseldorf. The idea is that enthusiasts can stay in any of those cities, or somewhere like Bochum. or Essen, and move smoothly between them.
Nice theory, he fell in the first closing.
When Schalke play at home, everyone knows where they are going and many drive. By contrast, many English fans who were outside didn’t know where they were going, got here via public transport and tried to faint after the match, which ended around 11pm. local time.
The clash began as if the two groups were playing another game, much more important, than the one played in Frankfurt 24 hours earlier. But it was short-lived and ended in a goalless draw, the first 0-0 of the tournament. However, they have had a controversy over the production of VAR in the Premier League.
That last point came to me in the last stretch of my four-game tour.
This is probably the first tournament in which all 51 matches will gather at least 10,000 followers of the participants.
That’s not to say that many have traveled here, but with 84 million people, Germany is home to giant populations of immigrants from all over Europe and beyond. In recent years, it has become the second most important host country for immigrants: the United States.
For this reason, Euro 2024 has seen and heard such a remarkable number of enthusiasts supporting Albania, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Serbia, Slovakia and, of course, Turkey, Germany’s “second team”.
And that’s why I was able to arrive in Cologne and follow, half asleep, an army of Romanian fans dressed in yellow to the stadium.