Soccer! (How have I not written about this yet?)

On Sunday, I watched Germany’s final group stage game in the Euro Cup.

The Euro Cup is basically the other big soccer tournament that happens once every four years, except it’s a little narrower in scope. Germany (ranked #2 in Europe) got placed in the ‘group of death’ (which every soccer tournament seems to have) this year, alongside the Netherlands (#3), Denmark (#6) and Portugal (#7). Germany had knocked off the Dutch and Portuguese in their first two matches, and they only needed to beat or tie Denmark to move on to the next round.

Now, watching soccer in Germany is about much more than the game itself. Starting in 2006, when Germany hosted the World Cup, the country started getting some serious spirit (unexpectedly from a country that very rarely shows any strong hint of public nationalism), so during soccer games Germany looks kind of like downtown LA when the Lakers are in the playoffs –those fucking car flags – but with a distinctly weird European flavor (every cute girl painting black, red and yellow stripes on their cheeks, and way too many people wearing oversized German flags as capes). Every city is filled with public viewings (that is the term – in German – for watching a game in public. Apparently someone never told them that, in America, the object being viewed in those cases tends to be a dead body), and everyone goes to them. This is not negotiable.

So I had watched some games in different bars in Mannheim, but on Sunday we pulled out all the stops and went to the alte feuerwache (literally: old fire station), which has been converted into a concert venue that seats about 500 and has standing room as well as a beer and wurst dispensary. I went with my roommate and some of his friends from business school. We sat in the front row, although the guy sitting next to me (Toni – he’s half-Cuban) complained that sitting during the game made people too lethargic.

Germans know their team well, and Toni was quick to explain that a) Mario Gomez is the German equivalent of Manny Ramirez – a horrible athlete who constantly dogs it but still manages to score an uncanny number of goals, leading fans to an exhausting love/hate relationship, b) Lukas Podolski is terrible and should not be starting, c) Joachim Löw is way too conservative of a coach, even though he’s pretty good, and d) the Germans suck at corner kicks and free kicks, which he is worried could doom them against teams like Spain and Italy (this is also on Löw – apparently they don’t practice set pieces because he only believes in scoring during the regular course of play). He also complained about the fact that Podolski, Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira don’t sing the German National Anthem because their parents were born in other countries (they’re all native Germans) and pointed to the fact that the Serbian national team kicked one of their players off because he refused to sing their National Anthem. But oddly, when not everyone in the room stood up for the anthem (which threw me off way more than the idea of a player not singing), he kind of shrugged it off and said it was because they weren’t drunk yet. Go figure.

In any case, the game started at 8:45, and Lukas Podolski scored a quick goal in the 19^th minute. He made up for this small lapse by sucking (to a point where even I could see he was sucking) for the next 45 minutes, until he was pulled to massive applause within the firehouse. Denmark scored a goal in the 25^th minute off a corner kick, and then Germany controlled possession for a while but didn’t seem to be making a serious effort to score a goal (I’m telling you, these guys know their team).

Things got very tense for a few minutes in the second half when Portugal took the lead against the Netherlands (the two games were going on simultaneously). A Portugal win combined with a German loss would have put Germany out of the tournament, and I could actually feel the stress pheromones filling the room when Denmark put a ball of the post in the second half. When Lars Bender (a backup midfielder playing out of position at defense for the game) put away an errant pass on a German breakaway, the excitement in the room was beyond description. There was deep-seated relief combined with overwhelming ecstasy – everyone jumped up, hugged, screamed, pumped their fists and looked goofy for a solid minute. It was very clear that a) Lars Bender would have been able to drink for free at any bar in Germany for the next two weeks if he wasn’t stuck in the Ukraine, and b) there was more on the line that a piece of hardware – this game was a matter of national pride.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. Germany won, everyone cheered, the fans who were driving honked their horns and leaned out of their car windows, the fans on the street chatted, smiled and hugged some more. We ended up in a bar in Mannheim discussing the game and the fact that Greece (Germany’s next opponent) plays ‘anti-fußball’ but will still be a tough match because Germany never plays well against bad teams. I’ll be in Berlin for that game, and hopefully I’ll be able to watch it on the main strip, which will cap its public viewing attendance at 450,000 (and it does get filled up). Should be a fun one.