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England v Germany?
June 15th, 2006
While watching the Spain-Ukraine match yesterday, I found a café full of visitors from different countries that had one thing in common – they were all Spanish speakers.
It seemed to be accident, not design, that brought them all together. The sight of me in a gold shirt, bearing an unmistakable emblem with a kangaroo and an emu on it, was not met with any glares that suggested that I was in the wrong place.
I’m not exactly sure why, but I had this sudden urge to raise my hands in the air and yell “Deportivo de La Coruña”. Now don’t panic – I restrained myself. (Though later this evening, I did yell something in Spanish in a public place. But I’ll come back to that.)
If you want to find a union of English speakers in a non-English speaking country, there is one failsafe way of doing so: go to an Irish pub.
Apparently there is something special about Irish beer. I’ve seen tears of joy rolling down the cheeks of the most unemotional men when they’ve been told that the pub their mate suggested sells Kilkenny or that it has Guiness on tap.
And so today I found an Irish pub to watch Ecuador v Costa Rica in and nearly everyone there was British, Irish, American or Australian. There was even a young lady wearing a shirt bearing the memorable words, “Canadian girls kick ass”.
I had planned to watch both Ecuador v Costa Rica and England v Trinidad & Tobago in this pub but after seeing Ecuador produce another excellent performance and take top spot in Group A, I decided that I would do the most boring thing imaginable and return to my hotel room for the next match.
After my long day yesterday and next to no sleep overnight, I was feeling quite tired. Plus it’s quite cool in my room – it’s been really humid in Germany.
England v Trinidad & Tobago is the only group match featuring the Caribbean team that I didn’t get a ticket for. I also don’t have a ticket for any game between now and Brazil v Australia on Sunday (18 June).
I have, however, been quite fortunate with tickets despite missing out the only time I tried to buy one from a tout (scalper). Between the first match I attended (Poland v Ecuador on 9 June) and the last match I will definitely see (Croatia v Australia on 22 June), there is only one three-day period in which I do not have tickets – today, tomorrow and Saturday.
On Saturday, Portugal and Iran play here in Frankfurt so I might again try my luck outside the stadium.
In the meantime, feel free to email me if you’d like to sell me tickets. I’ll happily purchase any ticket for tomorrow (16 June), 17 June, 19 June or 21 June (except Côte d’Ivoire v Serbia & Montenegro because there’s no way I’m doing the Frankfurt-Munich-Frankfurt thing three times).
By the time the Sweden-Paraguay match kicked off this evening, I was feeling much better and I returned to one of my favourite spots for watching World Cup matches – a particular café in Frankfurt’s main train station.
[Now, a few words of warning: if you’re from Paraguay, I suggest you stop reading right now and that you forget all about my On The Spot diary until tomorrow.]
I spent most of the day’s last match cursing the Paraguayans’ amazing ability to make the greatest sport on earth less interesting than waiting in a dress shop while your wife/girlfriend is trying something on inside a change room. How do they do it?
While Ecuador, the other second tier South American team, has been a delight to watch, the Paraguayans are so infuriating that, when it seemed that they might be rewarded with a point, I couldn’t help becoming more vocal in my support for Sweden. When Freddie Ljungberg finally scored a late winning goal, I unleashed a roar that could probably be heard in Cologne.
I mentioned that I yelled something in Spanish in a public place today. It was “Adios!” and I blurted it out when the final whistle confirmed that Paraguay would make a first round exit.
Now come on Uruguay/Chile/Colombia/Peru. It’s up to you to make sure that this team doesn’t come back in 2010.
As soon as the final whistle was blown in Berlin, people around me (and, no doubt, all over the rest of the world) were excitedly speculating about an England-Germany meeting in the rounds of 16. It’s quite possible that one of those two teams could win its group and the other could finish second, and that would give us a titanic match early in the knockout phase.
As I type, I am watching what appears to be a World Cup comedy show on German television. One of the guests is … wait for it … Harald Schumacher, villain of 1982. It’s quite amusing seeing him laughing and joking with the show’s host. I don’t know if he’s a regular on this program or not but fortunately he wasn’t asked to recreate his famous unpunished foul on Patrick Battiston.
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