So that’s it then for another four years. A final game and a final post. This is Battersea Park to Munich spliced together for you all. It still rather roughly edited and still needs voiceover — we’re working on it…

South Africa next time… Watch out!

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.

If there’s anything more important than football — it’s this. We do nothing but shoot ourselves in the foot every time we foul the earth. So let’s play fair with it. Sign it somewhere by all means, but pass it on as clean as you found it. The game must go on — some players age and retire, but others will come on as subs in their place. Take a moment to consider those who’ve yet to play and don’t hog the ball!

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.

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!

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!

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.

The St George flag is as English as it gets

Arriving at the Hauptbahnhof in Nürnberg, we immediately and predictably ran into a bunch of lads standing in a circle facing one another singing “My grandad flew a Spitfire in the War” over and over again. This was, to me, one of the most deeply depressing sights I have ever seen anywhere near a football game and I’ve decided not to dignify their behaviour with a photograph or a clip in the video that accompanies this post. To their credit, they weren’t violent, aggressive or frightening, but still, not a good start.

At first it made me want to turn around and get on the first train out of town again. Later, I began to realise how much like scared little children these “tough” lads seemed. Not only were their grandfathers certainly not fighter pilots, but their cameraderie seemed defensive and their bravado a coping mechanism. Perhaps they sensed that they were basically out of their depth in another culture. Perhaps they weren’t even that aware. I don’t know, and in the end I’m not sure I care. I’m guessing it’s stating the obvious, but it seems to me that this kind of England fan is interested in:

(a) themselves,
(b) the England team,
(c) beer, and,
(d) um, that’s it.

Right then, that’s the negative out of the way — the further through town we walked, the higher up towards the picture-perfect castle we climbed, the fewer became the chants of Ing-er-land, the more my depression lifted. I’d set my heart on watching the game in a square just below the castle that I remembered from my busking days. On the way up the hill, I became a little disorientated — it had been 15 years since I’d last been in Nürnberg — and couldn’t remember exactly where the square was. A skeptical Phil questioned whether it existed and joked about it to a lad in an England shirt who was walking up the hill nearby. Ah, serendipity — our guiding light…

Matt (who hails from Sheffield) was, like us, looking for a place to watch the game — by “watch” we both meant a view unobscured by the masses of fans that had gathered wherever there was the slightest possibility of seeing the public viewing screens. Both Phil and I immediately warmed to his gentle demeanour, and together we went in search of my ill-remembered square.

A short walk later, we descended some steps to find — to my relief — the square I’d been certain existed; the Albrecht Dürer Platz. As we arrived and looked around, some Germans vacated a table at one of the cafés that encircle the square and we plonked ourselves down, grateful that we’d now be able to do as we wished: there was a TV set up in one of the windows of the café which we could see without obstruction. A friendly bunch of Germans at one of the neighbouring tables quizzed us on why we weren’t down amongst the mass of English fans in the Hauptmarkt below. What could we say without giving the game away? Were we indeed deliberately making ourselves outsiders?

It was Matt, sat with his back to the square, who noticed the statue set high on one of the adjoining buildings that forms the centre-piece of the video episode that accompanies this post. He recognised the figure of St George with a slain dragon at his feet, and thought it highly appropriate to our situation. All the more so, since, as he pointed out, this potent icon of Englishness had, in fact, been born in Anatolia — now modern day Turkey.

St George looks down on the scene

What then constitutes Englishness in the light of this? My experience of England has invariably been that it is the very lack of the usual trappings of nationality (no English national anthem, no national costume, no national dish or even national passport) have led to it being the most accommodating place on earth to live. Englishness is an attitude — not a birthright, and in Matt’s quiet confidence I thought I saw the very best of what it means to be English. Together, we cheered the England team on, and, knowing that, like St George, being an outsider is central to the experience of being English, I shouted my support as loudly as I’ve ever done before.

Here be dragons (no more)

As I post this, England are about to play Sweden to determine who play who in the next round. It’s a huge game.

Come on England!

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.

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

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

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…

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

Yet another interview (photo: Dixi at Opera Hostel, Erfurt)

Phil calls us “media puppets” as we seek publicity for The Ball. I know what he means. We both find dealing with the press — whether tv, radio or written — difficult to say the least. But we both want to see this project (and specifically the idea of The Ball) propagate beyond our own circle of friends and beyond our ability to do it ourselves because:

(a) we’re not getting any younger,
(b) we may have too many other pressing commitments,
(c) whatever else may crop up in the unpredictable future.

Whether it does depends on the support we get from other people — and that requires us to make the best of whatever channels become open to us. So then, many thanks to Sheila at the Guardian’s World Cup blog for taking a gamble on us writing something coherent.

Read our post on the Guardian’s site here.

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.

Strange goings on in the fridge

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!

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”…

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.

And the burning question in my head is: why didn’t he do his robotic dance yesterday when he scored? What was he thinking? Next time, eh, Peter? There will be a next time, won’t there?

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!