UEFA DIDN’T APPROVE my application for Scotland/Switzerland in Cologne, and so Wednesday was my first day without a game since arriving in Germany.
For the benefit of this diary, I figured I should do something more interesting than watch the day’s action alone in my AirBnB in the Dusseldorf suburbs, so I decided to hop on a Deutsche Bahn train to take me into the city centre to soak in Germany/Hungary at the city’s fan zone.
Germany’s mercurial train service had other ideas. Ninety minutes on the platform yielded the sum total of zero trains, which were allegedly running at 20 minute intervals.
In Germany, you don’t plan a journey: you aspire to one.
Routed once again by the Deutsche Bahnjaxed, I took a wander to find something to write about, still worrying that I’d have to spin 800 words out of watching three games alone in an unfamiliar language while eating late-afternoon breakfast cereal and tweeting half-formed takes.
I end up watching Croatia/Albania at home, which is another snorting, breakfast-cereal-milk-spluttering classic. I take a walk afterwards to the tiny pub on the corner of what I guess is the central square of the remote district in which I’ve found myself. It’s opposite the local school and shadowed by a whopper, 30-story apartment block painted a jaunty pink and baby blue. Kids kicked a football outside in the sunshine as their parents and grandparents sat inside, arranging themselves beneath the big screen in the small, single-room pub.
I walk in, order a beer and then make the idiotic mistake of pulling out cash to pay straight away. That’s not how it works here. Instead you’re given a beer mat, on which the barman marks each of your orders with a pencil before settling up at the end. (The weird Irish quirk of frittering at the beer mat in front of you wouldn’t be tolerated here. Also – a tough receipt to get through on expenses.)
The game is a 6pm kick-off but the level of drinking was truly impressive, as grey-haired locals drink Frankenheim beer and chase it with shots of Sambuca and Jaegermeister.
The shots are recorded with a squiggle in the centre of the beer mat, with beers marked with an ‘X’ around the edge and in such proximity that I feel the expectation levels are high.
Looking for someone to talk to, I pick out a man at the end of the bar drinking Guinness, believing for no real logical reason that he would speak English. It works. The man introduces himself as Georg and is quickly showing me pictures from his recent trip to the Guinness Storehouse. I sit back with the smugness of a journalist convinced they have a unique insight into the affairs of men, accepting his praise of Dublin’s Guinness on behalf of our nation.
Georg tells me the owner of the pub – whom he calls “our chief” – is a big Fortuna Dusseldorf fan, the local underachieving giant still stogged in the German second division. I sympathise with the recent play-off heartbreak, to which Georg replies, “Yes, but we will try again next year”, with the kind of beaten-down serenity of a man who has to use the German train system on a daily basis.
Everyone’s primary loyalties around here are to their clubs, with the national team inspiring a warmth rather than devotion; a happy diversion instead of the be-all and end-all.
The results of the past 10 years have seen the team’s support wane, says Georg, but believes this team is now clawing back some of that dormant support.
Everything here is refracted through the local. The owner’s daughter also works behind the bar, but she is a Borussia Dortmund fan, whose stadium is about an hour’s drive away. (Fortuna are ranked second in her affections in concession to her dad and the locals. Georg adds with a hand on his heart that “we are all Liverpudlians too”, because of Jurgen Klopp.)
There are no former Fortuna players in the German squad, but the Dortmund players get the greatest recognition. Germany’s technical duo of Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala are becoming a national phenomenon – given the title Wirtziala - but here it’s the rugged, gap-toothed striker Niclas Fullkrug who is by far the most popular player in the squad. He plays the game in accordance with how Georg says the region likes its football: physical and fast, like the English and Irish style.
(I think about explaining how in many ways Ireland are changing and despite the fact that Stephen Kenny did not work out, the FAI are still focused on a modern, progressive style but stop myself because, honestly, who cares.)
Musiala scores the first goal to cheers, but the reception to Ilkay Gundogan’s second-half goal is much louder. Ex-Dortmund, Ex-Dortmund! explains the barman’s daughter.
Between the goals and during the halftime break, my attention is drawn to a series of small lock boxes on the wall, beside which is a laminated list of names. This, Georg explains, is the Sparclub. The list is of the pub’s 80 “members”, who deposit a few coins in their own individual lockbox every time they come here. The bar owner, under the supervision of two appointed “witnesses”, then takes this money to the bank, and the annual accruing interest is used to throw a party for the members.
Georg explains that this is a tradition dating back to after the war, when the region’s economy boomed by exploiting the areas’s coal and mineral reserves to become the engine of the nation’s miracle recovery. Everyone had so much money, he says, they had to save it, and so decided to do it while going for a drink after work. The Sparclub tradition endures despite the utterly changed post-industrial economy. But it also seems to persist as a handy excuse to go to the pub. As Georg explains, “I tell my wife I have to go to the pub as we have to save money.” I had finally found an expression of ingenious German innovation.
The price of this information for you, reader, is the local’s outstanding hospitality. Several pub members insist on buying me shots of some gloopy, stomach-spinning liquorice rocket fuel with every German goal.
Gundogan’s goal, coming with a yawning half an hour left, is a private disaster. I knock back three of these shots under the twin influences of peer pressure and politeness.
Mercifully, Germany quickly lose interest in scoring a third, and I spend the end-game narrowing my eyes at the television, my face flushed and brain swooning, all the while yammering out banal observations about football with what felt like a swollen tongue.
“Emre Can! Dortmund!” I yell like a proud father as he trots onto the field. I don’t do the same for the two other German substitutes to come on after him because, well, I’ve only today discovered they came on.
The bar is emptying at this stage, as locals drift off to smoke outside in the sunshine, secure in the fact that Germany would win.
As soon as the game ends, I tally up the notches on my beermat and consider them sufficient sacrifice for my art. I pay up, hiccup an Uh, Danke Schhoo-un and bolt for the door before anyone has any ideas about watching Scotland/Switzerland.
Georg tells me he hopes to see me back for Germany’s final group game on Sunday.
That, Georg, will be a decision for Deutsche Bahn.
Not all is happy in paradise
Of course the train chaos is worth it when you end up at life-affirming events like Turkiye against Georgia. It was an utterly deranged occasion, really, the sheer energy in the stands transmuting the game into 90 minutes of see-sawing madness. Georgia probably deserved a draw; they definitely didn’t deserve a 3-1 defeat.
At the post-game press conference, the international media lined up to throw flowers at the feet of Willy Sagnol, with one journalist literally thanking him for the role his side played in the occasion. Sagnol smiled and indulged these questions, but had a decidedly different tone with the Georgian press.
One Georgian journalist insisted on asking his question in Georgian as “this is Georgia’s day”, saying they should not be happy with moral victories and actual defeat. Another asked Sagnol about an omitted player, to which the manager snapped back that he wasn’t surprised at this question “coming from you”.
So if you are clinging to reasons as to why Sagnol might want to swap Georgia for Ireland – and he naturally dismissed speculation ahead of the game – then perhaps this is one.
Political football
Georgian fans, meanwhile, protested their government’s turn toward Moscow by chanting “Putin is a dickhead” during the Turkiye game, which was apparently carried live on Russian television.
Elsewhere, the Serbian FA are calling on Uefa to punish Croatia and Albania, whose fans both chanted anti-Serbian songs during their Group B clash in Hamburg on Wednesday. “It’s a scandal”, said the secretary-general of the Serbian FA, saying they are considering withdrawing from the tournament in protest.
The Serbian FA have also made a complaint against a journalist from Kosovo, whose credentials have now been withdrawn after he made a pro-Kosovan gesture towards the Serbian supporters during the game with England.
Serbia have themselves been fined by Uefa for a flag that was displayed among fans during the England game – believed to be a map claiming Kosovo as part of Serbia.
Serbia does not recognise the independence of Kosovo, which was declared in 2008.
It’s all smoke and mirrors lads. With that particular skin tone I’m surprised he lasted ten days out in Oz.
Jayz some fierce bitter comments. As a Dub & GAA man I’m delighted to see him stay. Our game needs it’s best players and if he gets a job out of it good for him. Well done Keystone
@John Mc Grane: well said
@John Mc Grane: Well said and I hope the young man does well for Tyrone and in his new job.
Great news that he is staying. I am a gaelic football fan, I have no interest in seeing him in the AFL. I want to see talented players like McShane here but I don’t want that to happen out of some form of miss guided loyalty.
Fair play to Tyrone GAA they saw they were going to lose one of their main men, their hands were tied as they couldn’t pay him but the they were pro-active in using their influence to create a great opportunity for him at home. Win win for McShane, 2 fantastic opportunities on front of him. I am glad he chose the local one.
@Kevin McMahon:
That’s everything that’s wrong with the GAA if you ask me.
@Nollaig Elliot: what are you on about you muppet
He made a decision and that’s it
I heard anyway there was a clause in the offer he got that said if he didn’t make the cut after the first year good luck
He looks like a thick bullix anyway
It’s funny how a job opportunity come up when he gets back did Mickey Heart organise that so he wouldn’t go could the company not held the job open until he came back I wonder how the rest of the team especially whichever player would have been playing in his position and now is back on bench .I think Mickey heart has a lot to answer making Mcshane so guilty that gave up a chance of a life time a number of lads and lassie would give their right arm for that chance and Mcshane turns it down because of hearts rant last week. It’s sad to see a manager can have that much influence on a player in stay of encouraging him to spread his wings and wish him all the best. If Tyrone don’t do well in the all Ireland championship he’s going to regret that decision not have gone to Australia
@Moya Power-kelly: There’s a helluva lot of speculation there. You can’t know his thoughts or his relationship with MH. Ridiculous
@Gary Donlan: if you go on Twitter you will see a comment from a Aussie rule player about it
@Moya Power-kelly: moya give it a rest will you. You have been on every article slating Mickey HARTE for his involvement in mcshane staying. What do you want him to do drive him to the airport and pack his bags for him? The lad got offered a good job alongside the opportunity to stay at home and play for Tyrone. He could have went over there and never made it for all you know. Any excuse for the likes of clueless people like you who haven’t a notion what they are talking about to have a go at Mickey harte
@Moya Power-kelly:
Not necessarily. I know of a lad through my step sisters husband, who turned down numerous clubs in Melbourne cause he only played footy to play with his mates and his aul lad owned an electrical contracting business that he wanted to eventually carry on in the family. Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
@Moya Power-kelly: by the way if your gonna slag Mickey harte at least get the man’s name right
@Moya Power-kelly: Oh get over yourself.
Tyrone the Saracens of GAA
@Thomas Bohan: ah jeez wept what an absurd comparison
I’m glad to see him back but that’s a photo that could have been done without.a bit like a transfer deadline day shot minus the countys colours.
You state that he’s in the running to face Kerry when in the next sentence he’s just said he’s not too sure. Christ almighty like
@Mel Roberts: He doesn’t pick the team
@Mel Roberts: there’s also conversations about over the odds payment for a job, a car and a site for a house thrown into the mixer too. “Amateur organisation” though…….
@Mel Roberts: must be hard being so angry all the time.
@Michael Oats:
I don’t think there’s any problem with anyone using their profile to get a better job. Who instigated it is irrelevant. Good luck to both him and Tyrone. I hate to see any player leaving for Aussie rules.
@Michael Oats: Nothing new there. Amateur sports stars have been taking advantage of their “stardom” to get better jobs for as long as I can remember. Good luck to them. I say they deserve it for the entertainment they give us.
@John O’Farrell: Kevin must do does he as cathal effectively ruled himself out
@Michael Oats: suppose now that cathal got himself a job outta this that’s a conversation we need to bring up. We can just sweep the 18 million hand out Dublin got under the carpet though
@Mel Roberts: you’re an almighty narrow minded little man
@my name: and very angry…. he should really get that looked about.
@Chubby Cox: nothing angry about me pal. Tyrones best player committed to staying. Off work for the weekend. Out for feed of pints with the boys tomorrow and watch the rugby, life is good my friend
@Mel Roberts: you could fool alot of people then….. Just like Tyrone football and Mickey Harte. Pal.
@Chubby Cox: and how exactly are Mickey harte and Tyrone football fooling people? The real issue you have with Tyrone stems from an imaginary line that we are in the other side of just like every other salty Mexican from South of it
@Mel Roberts: and this is yu not angry???
@Mel Roberts: also how do you know which side of your “Imaginary Line” I am on?
@Chubby Cox: That’s just me pointing out a fact pal. Nothing angry about it. Can tell it’s exactly what side your on from your salty comment on mh and Tyrone
@Henry Toye: you are correct there. In rugby it was always the case for the best players in the amature days. These guys put in huge time and effort so we can enjoy watching their skills.
@Mel Roberts: saying he isn’t too sure hardly counts as ruling himself out.
Sicken your backside. He was never going to Oz. Hell of a player. Glad to see him stay, our game needs an old-school full forward and he is that. Win his own ball and kick his own score. No need to have Micky Harte in the pic. Can the lad not accept a job without Harte floating around looking his cut. Man does nothing for free.
They make great lintels though.