2006

Time to get up

So then, on with our imaginary chronology of The Ball. You may remember that it checked in to a hostel in Erfurt and fell asleep. Well, eventually, it awoke from its slumber and bounced on to check out the fervour of our German hosts as their team played Poland in the group stages.

The Ball bounces on

As with the England game in Nürnberg, I found my loyalties divided. As I said in that post, my mother’s from Germany, while my father was born in Poland. So which side should I support? Perhaps it was my English upbringing that made me inclined to support the underdog — in this case the Poles — but my desire to party with the crowd after the game strongly favoured the Germans. I decided to remain as neutral as I could.

My support was as finely balanced as The Ball

I was also nervous about being in the midst of such a large and emotionally charged crowd — especially since it seemed that a few neo-nazis had slipped in past security and were chanting slogans at the back of the hall. It’s impossible to blame the Stadtgarten for this: the security folks could only check the contents of people’s pockets or bags — not the prejudices in their heads.

It was a very important game for the Germans (for the Poles too of course), and the temperature in Erfurt’s Stadtgarten rose as the game progressed without a goal from either side. Thankfully, the event passed without incident, and the delight of the crowd as Germany found the net in the very last minute was a joy to behold.

Uproar at the Stadtgarten

With the Poles now out of the competition and the Germans now certain to progress, the crowd began to sing their hearts out, brimming with confidence that their team would go on to reach the final.

Wir fahren nach Berlin…

For the sake of the atmosphere in the host nation, I sincerely hope they do make it to the final. Who knows, perhaps they might even meet an invigorated England in that game at the Olympic Stadium? It would be the stuff of legends — and it’s almost too much to contemplate and too much to hope for.

 

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Phil’s still cracking on at dawn

While The Ball sleeps on in Erfurt, there’s just time for a short interlude while Phil explains the secrets of German curtains… at the crack of dawn, just when he needs them most.

 

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The Opera Hostel in Erfurt

Okay, time for another “behind-the-scenes” look at the life of The Ball in Germany. Phil and I arrived in Erfurt from the Opening Ceremony in München to find that Andrew’s Spirit-of-Football project had run into horrendous sponsor problems and that most of what they had been planning had of necessity been cancelled. So, no beach football for them or us. Schade.

But all was not lost — Andrew recommended that we stay in the Opera Hostel, which, like the World Cup itself, had just opened. What a top recommendation that proved to be.

The Opera Crew

We were made to feel welcome beyond anything that we expected, and this little video is our homage to the wonderfully friendly Dixi, Sany and Jens. We wish you all the very best for the future. May the Opera thrive.

For those of you wondering why the video is in German — there are a couple of reasons. One is that The Ball necessarily speaks the local language (if not perfectly, then at least fluently) and the second is that we wanted to produce something for our hosts — not just you English-speaking lot. You want a translation? Then go and learn German!

 

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Germany’s other pundit — other than Rudi Völler, that is

I’ve been reading on various blogs, most humorously in this post on twohundredpercent’s blog which I came across because he commented on our post on the Guardian blog (was that the equivalent of a blogging love-in?) that the commentary on the games has been infuriating. In twohundredpercent’s words, “I think that we’ve all, at some point, found ourselves in a state of apopleptic rage at the coverage of the BBC and ITV at this World Cup.”

You have no idea what I’d give to be infuriated by the likes of Ian Wright or Jonathan Pearce. You should try listening to the bloke in the picture above. Oh my. To say that he’s a charisma-free zone would be an injustice to, say, Steve Davis… he makes Alan Hansen sound as entertaining as Bill Hicks.

Hey ho, the national anthems are playing — signing off for now.

Bring it on!

Flags hanging in the Hauptmarkt in Nürnberg

Andrew, Phil and I headed to Nürnberg for the England v Trinidad and Tobago game to see what kind of atmosphere these two sets of fans brought to the city. Actually, that’s not quite true — Andrew had a ticket for the game — it was Phil and me who were the tourists at the football zoo. I’ve already written about the “Trinnies”, so I’m going to leave my observations about them to stand as they are.

This was going to be my first experience of England fans abroad, apart from the Quarter Final in Shizuoka, where it seemed the Japanese had wisely put the stadium as far from any inhabited area as possible. When I started writing this, I had no intention of adding to the literature detailing how xenophobic and insensitive England fans are. Nonetheless, it has still not been easy for me to write down my observations. This is why.

I’ve always had ambivalent feelings about supporting England despite it being my country of birth. At school I was bullied for having a German name. My mother was born in Hamburg, but as she’ll confirm, even her “German-ness” is questionable. Moreover, my father was Polish with American and Slovakian parents. The fact that my surname actually means something in German is accidental, but this didn’t prevent the bullies from calling an eight-year-old a “Nazi”. Why would it?

In the past, I used to fear any football match between England and Germany. I watched the Euro 96 encounter in a pub in Bristol, and, when Germany won, a few drunken lads piled outside and smashed the windows of a VW because it was a German car. They then went on to hospitalise a Russian guy who happened to be walking past because, well, you tell me why. Anyway, despite this dark history, I was prepared to give it another go and see if anything had changed — both in the England fans and in myself.

 

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Andrew, Phil and I went to Nürnberg to check out the city during the England v Trinidad and Tobago game and found a city of two halves

Trinibagan drummers strut their stuff

On the one hand the Trinibagans dancing, laughing, playing and inviting everyone else around them to do so too. Check out the video to see what I mean about the beauty of their music and the warmth of the crowd towards them, if not for Phil eating his sweetcorn! I could be wrong, but the drummers look curiously Indian — I wonder if the Brits moved populations of Indians to T’n'T the same way they did to Fiji.

You’ve got to hand it to them

Anyway, on the other hand we have the England fans… Ah yes, England fans. I was going to write about them here, but I’ll spare the wonderful Trinbagan fans and musicians that fate.

 

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Andrew kisses the badge

And then shows Phil that he prepares for the England v Trinidad and Tobago game in other more unusual ways.

 

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The Phantom Fouler reports from England that, according to an article in The Sun, the ball which was used in the 1966 World Cup final is travelling to Germany for a few days. Apparently, its presence will “inspire England to victory over Sweden”.

Hmm, I thought that was Sven’s job, but we’ll see.

UPDATE: it’s true — the 1966 ball is here.

I spotted it on the preview of the England v Sweden game on German TV. The host (whose name I’ve forgotten) was wearing gloves just to be near it. As you can see from the picture, the monstrously dull Günter Netzer could hardly bear to even look at it.

An English talisman in Germany

Phil just can’t tear himself away from the beautiful game…

UPDATE: thanks to the Phantom Fouler for pointing out that it’s almost impossible to make out the title of the book that Phil fell asleep reading. So here the spoiler — it’s Hunter Davies’ I Love Football…

 

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Oh pilsen Korea!

How do they do it?
Where does it come from?
Can England borrow some?

All Germans we have come across have been very welcoming and friendly if a little disinterested in the spectacle of the World Cup. We left England with a blaze of flags lighting our trail and are surprised to find little of that fervour over here. While the people beam with good cheer, football comes a gentle second.

At the World Cup 2002 in S. Korea, although they are predominantly a baseball-loving crew, an enormous effort was made to inform folk there of what to expect and as a nation they created a great stage for this diamond of a competition. Of course their team performed beautifully, albeit with a twist of refereeing fortune. The ensuing celebrations were extraordinary. It was youthful, beatles-style euphoria.

Korean exuberance

The importing of Hiddink as the national coach was a stroke of genius, so much so that they took his management style and used it over a business framework. Jürgen Klinsmann has the same opportunity for this Weltmeisterschaft 2006 but he lacks the national fervour to support the team with such natural exuberance.

We find ourselves now in Erfurt, a former East German town in central Germany, meeting folk who have never met English and also the well travelled hostel owners. A particular couple, one of whose grandparents was a member of the SS, we meet at a 5-a-side football competition, their reticence to talk to us was palpable. However we stayed with them late into the evening exchanging stories, playing more football, learning a new goalmouth training game, and parted company after they had signed our ball — and for the first time since The Ball has existed, we were asked to sign theirs. To hear one of the younger lads saying “thanks for the wonderful day” on leaving, is a heart-stopping moment for me. It’s a small world and a big cup.

All together now!

I am sitting writing this with the Spain Ukraine game on the telly, a Mexican, two Australians, one Japanese and myself are watching, communicating in three languages… that’s English, Spanish and Football.

I love you.

Warning: this post is not intended for the technically-challenged!

Okay, I just can’t resist posting this — even though I haven’t been able to see the stream itself — but it really does promise to be what it says on the tin homepage: “The best, most ridiculous, most redundant graphical implementation of ASCII!”:

A screenshot of World Cup action in ASCII (from mir.aculo.us)

Yes, now even the hardened of geeks can follow the action direct in their terminal application. One small problem, however, is that it seems to have been rather too popular:

As you may have noticed, we are completely overloaded at the moment… we already served more than a million telnet-connections and more than a terabyte of data. This is a free, non-profit for-the-fun-of-it project. However server upgrade and mirroring solution are in preparation. so stay tuned and thanks for the fish and the patience (you could play some football yourself while waiting

I’m going to follow that wise advice — shut down the computer, get myself outside and play some football!

Actually, that’s not entirely true — Phil’s on his way back home in a couple of days and whilst I’d love to carry on posting videos, it’s not going to be easy filming with a crew of, er, one. In fact, filming with just the two of us on the case was tricky enough. In essence, we’ve needed three days for every day of the trip — one to actually do stuff (the bit that both of us enjoy the most), another day to edit and upload the video of what we’ve done, and yet another to deal with the press so others might find out about (and hopefully see) what we’ve done.

Of course, I’ll do what I can (given the constraints), and I hope Phil will do the same from England — as it happens, I’m quite looking forward to seeing the contrast between what we post. The view from home and abroad so to speak.

The Ball comes to rest

What’s least likely to happen is that there will be any more of those “ball-bouncing-along” videos… partly because the journey of The Ball to the World Cup is over (it did, after all, reach Munich a while ago) and partly because I’d be passing it to myself… Still, it’s not impossible — we’ve met some lovely folks here in Erfurt and perhaps I’ll try and persuade them to help me sort something out.

I will be moving about a bit from now on, but I’m also quite keen for The Ball to stay here in Erfurt for some of the events which will be taking place round these parts during the competition. More on that when it’s a bit closer to the time.

It’s been good to recuperate after the trials of our intense video-blogging experiment — we got so run down from the constant effort and late nights that we both caught colds — and I now certainly feel up for a bit more host city action. Erfurt is great, as are the people in it, but it doesn’t quite compare to the mayhem of being in a host city, as we discovered when we went to Nürnberg yesterday for the England v. Trinidad & Tobago game. Once again, all I can say is “more of that later”…

Some people seem to be referring to the following as “the Hand of God, Part 2″

Well, cheating or not, surely Peter Crouch has to be pleased with the association to the legendary pint-sized one.

Okay, that’s enough Crouch-related stories for now.

Izzy plays the flute for England

It’s not so easy being on the road sometimes. I miss my partner Anna and her daughter Izzy — I can’t wait to see them again. In the meantime, this little video keeps me smiling. I haven’t forgotten about your flag either, Iz…

The shrub at the bottom of the garden

Before I left for Germany, I’d been thinking the shrub in the picture above might be better somewhere else in the garden. Anna sent me this picture of it flowering with bright blue flowers — as she had promised it would — so I’d look kindly on it when I return. Judging by the picture, I guess it’s fine where it is — for now!

 

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Andrew Aris

We’ve settled in Erfurt in Thüringia to recover from the stresses of travel and video-blogging, and to meet up with Andrew, whom I met when I came over to Germany just before Christmas. He’s been organising a project here that’s also called Spirit of Football and contacted us when he found that we had the domain name. We immediately recognised our common attitude to the beautiful game — and so here we are to hang out and enjoy the football.

Stefan Beutel, Rot-Weiss Erfurt manager

Andrew invited Phil and me to his club, Rot-Weiss Erfurt, to have a kickabout, to meet the manager and have a chat about all things football. What we didn’t expect was that Stefan would also be a sharpshooter from the penalty spot.

I stand no chance

And, of course, if you kick The Ball, you have to sign it…

Stefan signs The Ball

 

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St Pauli — not PLC

In which we encounter the friendliest supporters we’ve met — as Trinidad and Tobago play a warm-up match against the unique St Pauli. Watch the video to find out why.

St Pauli’s in Hamburg, by the way

Some pictures for those of you who might be having trouble seeing the videos — perhaps your connection isn’t fast enough or perhaps you haven’t installed Quicktime yet. Either way, here you go:

One of our tickets to the game

We are warriors! The St Pauli crowd gets into the music

The St Pauli Sound supporters’ turntable mat

Radical through and through

But there’s a common cause — having fun

Courtesy of the St Pauli Sound Supporters

Find out more about the St Pauli Sound Supporters at their website…

 

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Blinded by the light

 

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Beto keeps it up

Outside the Opening Ceremony is the usual media circus — more camera crews and presenters than you can shake a football at. In the midst of this electronic feeding frenzy was one Adalberto Sanchez, world record holder for bouncing a football on his head. His record is two hours, if you’re thinking of emulating his feat.

One of the features of South and Central American supporters is that they often buy the shirt of the host country as a show of goodwill. Watch Beto as he puts his Deutschland shirt on whilst bouncing The Ball on his head!

 

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We arrive at the Opening Ceremony

The gathering has started.

The end of The Ball’s journey

For us, the journey has finished — at a particularly attractive wasteland outside the stadium in Munich — but for all the teams that take part, the journey has only just begun.

Let’s play football!

UPDATE: We’ve got promises to keep, so I’m adding to this post — sorry that it took so long for us to get this picture of you up on the site, Philipp. Here it is now:

Philipp — a little star

 

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