Fury grows over football crowds as parents miss out on sports day
English hearts sank when it transpired Germany were to be their footie foes once more. But, says this German writer, it’s a sporting rivalry to savour. Just...
a ToRy backlash is growing against the plans to spare quarantine for thousands of football bigwigs so they can attend euro 2020 games at Wembley.
Conservative MPs said it was ‘ridiculous’ that VIPs would be allowed to fly to the uK without isolating at the same time as parents are banned from watching school sports days.
as anger grew over the special treatment being arranged for up to 2,500 chiefs from uefa and Fifa as well as big business sponsors, even a minister admitted some Covid rules looked inconsistent.
and another row was brewing after it was announced that, in addition to 60,000 spectators at Wembley for the euro semis and final next month, a capacity 140,000 crowd will see the British Grand Prix at silverstone, with even world champion driver Lewis Hamilton warning it looked ‘ premature’.
anti-lockdown Tory backbencher William Wragg wrote online yesterday: ‘ a ridiculous situation where parents can’t watch their children’s school sports days, but 2,000 VIPs can fly over to watch the football with special legal exemptions. Prolonged Covid restrictions are now proving arbitrary and divisive.’
ex-minister steve Baker added: ‘one rule for the elite. another for the rest of us.’ discussions are still taking place over how many visiting dignitaries will be allowed to avoid the 10- day quarantine rule next month. But changes to Covid regulations have already been quietly made to allow the controversial move.
yesterday downing street did not rule out that even executives from ‘red list’ countries such as Turkey could be waved through. It said details would be announced ‘in due course’. It is unclear if ordinary football fans from the continent will be allowed to attend the Wembley final – or next week’s clash between Germany and england – under the exemption. environment secretary George eustice admitted the rules could look unfair, but he told ITV’: ‘There is a difference in magnitude between finding a way to facilitate a single event, and making a change that affects the whole population and would affect things in thousands of schools.’
The department for education insisted school sports days can go ahead, with parents watching, as long as they are risk-assessed and have Covid safety measures.
Meanwhile, singer and football fanatic ed sheeran put an impromptu accoustic concert for the england team at their training camp in Burton, staffordshire on Wednesday. The players were said to be ‘thrilled’.
ON Tuesday, england take on Germany in the first knock- out round of the european football championships. you might think that I, as a German, would already be booking my ticket for the quarter-final.
After all, even your very own striker-turned commentator Gary Lineker once said: ‘Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball around for 90 minutes, and then the Germans always win.’
But, as every German knows, our current team are a mere shadow of the great champions of the past. In fact, t, the one aspect of the upcoming contest that gives me hope is that it is a clash that hat carries more baggage than a Hollywood celebrity at La airport.
And I am sure that england’s supporters will make us sausage- eaters only too aware of it, with their customary renditions of ‘Two world wars and one world cup, england, england.’ don’t mention the war? Fat chance! nce! as a student in england, I vividly idly recall watching that episode of Fawlty Towers in which Basil, after warning his spanish nish waiter Manuel on no account to mention n the war in the hearing of a group of German an guests, ends up goose- stepping around the hotel l dining-room.
As this is an age in which everyone one seems seem ms to enjoy getting offended all the e time, I should point out that I never understood derstood d this episode to be an attack on Germans, ermans s, but a brilliant satire on the British obses obsession st with its twin victories in the e first half of the 20th century. you Brits just can’t put it out ut of f your minds.
Take euro 96. Two days before re us s krauts were due to take on england nd in the semi-finals a British tabloid newspaper ewseadran a front page with the headline, ‘achtung! Surrender! For you Fritz, ze euro 96 Championship ship Unfortunately is over’.
For you guys, we reversed the e 1945 result by winning ng on penalties, thus implanting nting in every england player a deep-seated ted psychosis psyn about taking spot kicks in internarsists international competitions that persists to this day.
And nowhere is this more present ent than in the noggin of your manager r Gareth southgate. yes, the very man who missed his penalty, gifting us the match and allowing us to march on to victory in the final.
Many Britons like to think that the e passion aroused by every footballing confrontation nfrontation highlights not only historic strife fe but also vast differences between the two nations.
Britain is supposed to love e freedom, Germany discipline. . ‘Where would we be if we had too o many rules?’ asks the comic Pub Landlord played by al Murray. ‘Germany,’ he answers.
Germans apparently value e diligence more than Britons, which is why we are first to the sun loungers at holiday resorts.
In Britain a sense of humour is a prime virtue, unlike — allegedly — in Germany.
As the old joke goes, ‘ In Heaven the englishman is responsible for the jokes, the Italian for food and the German for order. In Hell, the englishman is in charge of the food, the Italian order and the German the jokes.’
That national trait of my homeland could be said to be embodied in our long- serving, outgoing Chancellor angela Merkel, who has elevated dullness into a principle of governance.
Yesterday, she gave her farewell speech to the Bundestag and it was a monochrome performance of wilful, almost spectacular tedium. The contrast with your Prime Minister Boris Johnson could hardly be greater. It is all but impossible to imagine a figure like Boris ever rising to the top in German politics.
Yet when we Germans, with our enthusiasm for cool technocrats, mock him as a bumbling clown, we are secretly envious of his technicolour theatricality.
For the truth is that, despite our differences, our two nations actually have in a great deal in common. I have observed this having spent a great deal of time in both england and Germany, and believe it may be the real explanation for the fervour of our clashes.
Precisely because we are so close, we simultaneously hold feelings of love and hate for each other, like siblings who share genes.
After all, many British and German citizens originally hailed from the same stock. Today, those affinities can be found in features as various as a fondness for beer — beer halls in Bavaria are remarkably similar to British pubs — parallels in our two languages, and even links in architectural styles. on visits to dorset, I was always struck at how the local rural cottages there were very like those in north-west Germany.
And nobody needs reminding of how close your Royal Family’s connections to Germany are. George I hailed from the city of Brunswick in Lower saxony, arrived in england with his own Hanoverian beer because he did not like your lager, and hardly spoke english.
Indeed, the creation of the position of Prime Minister owes much to the fact that he needed someone to deal with all his ministers, as he struggled to converse with them.
Our own much derided Kaiser Wilhelm — who took us into World War I — was a grandchild of Queen Victoria, whose husband, albert saxe-Coburg, again, was a German Prince. and while you may consider us boring, you Brits quietly admire much about us. you have always had great faith in Germany’s hightech
tech mastery, as exhibited by the way the phrase ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ — the audi advertising slogan ‘Progress ‘ Progress through technology’ — has become part of the British lexicon.
EQUALLY, the BBC series about German history by the distinguished academic and museum curator neil McGregor, called Memories of nation, was enormously popular.
In fact, British academics such as Mr McGregor are far more reverential about the noble aspects of Prussian culture than most Germans writers are, partly because our academics tend to focus on the militaristic side of ‘Prussianism’.
Talk of hostility is overdone, too. For centuries, Germans have happily made their homes in Britain, from the composer Joseph Haydn to the political philosopher Karl Marx. Tennis legend Boris Becker Beck is treated with far more respect in London than in i Germany, where his erratic errati personal life and financial financ troubles are the subject of derision.
But my favourite icon of this special b bond between england and Germany Germ is Bert Trautmann, mann, the German paratrooper who fought for the Reich in WorldWar II, before becoming an english footballing hero through his brilliant exploits exp for Manchester City — especially espe in his majestic display of courage co in the 1956 Fa Cup Final, when w he played on with a broken neck. nec
The horror horro of Hitler’s tyranny means we see s nationalism as a danger and a source of shame. That helps to explain why attitudes towards the european union are so different.
In Britain, Britain as shown by the majority vote vot for Brexit, the eu is seen as a threat thr to national rights, liberty and sovereignty.
But in Germany, constraints on nationhood are welcomed as a means of preserving peace and boosting prosperity.
The fact that the eu promotes international co-operation above domestic freedom is viewed as an asset rather than a flaw.
This idea of melting into one happy supranational, european family, where it no longer matters whether you are German or French or whatever, lies at the core of the european project.
one of the few occasions we Germans allow ourselves a moment of patriotic enthusiasm is in the football stadium.
so england supporters should not be led to think that, on the pitch, national pride has been diluted to any extent.
My country’s side will be fighting all the way. Gareth southgate may have more misery in store.