Saaga

We had the Australia game in Stuttgart last Thursday and then the Germany Sweden game on Saturday. It seemed foolish to go all the way back home, when Stuttgart is most of the way to Munich. However, Stuttgart is kind of dull so we needed to stay somewhere else and luckily we stumbled upon Augsburg.

I can’t really talk about Augsburg without sounding like an advertisement for the city, so instead I will draw your attention to the photos I have posted on Flickr. There are also photos of various world cup games.

I am not going to run with the line that most of the Australian media is probably going to run with; well if it took Italy 95 minutes to win 1-0 against Australia and considering it is their national sport and it is our fifth most heavily financed sport and they have triple our population, well we did pretty well. Screw that.

Italy knocked us out of the world cup yes, but they had to cheat to do it. I know this sounds like sour grapes, but I’m sorry. How the hell does Fabio Grosso walk down the street? Every time he has to step up onto the curb he would fall over. Every time a dog gets in his way, he trips over it. He would need a team of road levellers walking in front of him to make sure there was no ants or stray particles of dust in his way, otherwise, down he goes.

So Italy advance to the quarter finals, but they are carrying three extra yellows and can’t play Materazzi because he is also a cynical cheat and was sent off. I would like to say they are finished, but I won’t, because when they cheat against the next team I might look like I was counting my soldiers before they surrendered*.

For the rest of the world cup I am going for Germany and whomever is against Italy. I also vow that at anytime I am talking football with an Italian I will (after extracting my fist from their dishonest mouth) mention the fact that they are a team of divers that would make Jacques Cousteau proud.

*I am embracing the fact that I am slowly turning into my father.

The chant we used was most was prophetic in the end.
It was fantstic being in the green and gold section as we surged from despair to hope to glory, but however great is was though, I don’t think I could handle the stress again, so it is unlikely that we will be in Haiserslautern for the Italy match. Getting hold of a ticket will be tough as well, so that may be the actual deciding factor. I mentioned the stress and while I have felt football stress before, it has never been that intense before. Not even when the mighty Greystanes div 10s held the Dundas (the until then undefeated minor premiers) United team out for 90 minutes and took the win 1-0.
Our next game is tomorrow in Munich for Germany against Sweden. I don’t have as much emotion invested in this match. Phew.

Mostly just nerves I suppose. We are about to leave for the train station and from there to Stuttgart. We managed to get tickets for the Australia Croatia game, but I don’t know if I can cope with this tension for much longer. I am prepared even to sing the dreaded ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie!’ if it will in anyway get us into the second round.
Must go for now. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.

The Germany Poland match was great. So great was the build up in fact that when Germany finally scored, one of the fans with us fainted. The fainter was one of the guys we sat next to in the first game and he was very surprised to see us again. He talked about the coincidence of sitting next to the same person two games in a row, for about 5 minutes. He was truly amazed and needed to alert all the Germans around him to the sheer size of this coincidence. I wanted to point out to him that we have the same ticket package as him and that we would be sitting next to him in Berlin on Tuesday, but instead I just asked him what the chances of it happening again were. I look forward to making him faint next week.

The pre game high light for me was seeing the German shirt I have heard so much about;

On the front it says “Deutschland”
One the back it is set out like this;

Do you remember
1954,
1974,
1990…?
You better should.

Denglish is a beautiful language.

I am going to try to get a photo of this shirt next time I see it. We also should have some photos from the Poland game up soon, including one with the fainting guy sans shirt.

For those in the know, the title of this post is sung to ‘Stand up if you hate Man U.’ For everyone else, I think it is ‘Go west’ by the Village people or Pet shop boys…you choose.
The game was great. Unfortunately, ‘German efficiency’ didn’t translate to the public transport, that promptly fell in a heap as soon as the fans started using it. The upshot of all this is that we missed the first 11 or so minutes of the game and arrived when the score was 1-1. We did however get to see the other 4 goals, two of which were right in front of us. We were sitting behind and to the right of the goals in row 8. Fantastic spot.
It was also great to see that the average German fan is much like the average Australian fan…an evolutionary dead end. I enjoyed my time shouting, singing and jumping up and down with them, but only a scant few are ever going to know the touch of a woman.

We are buggering off to go watch the opening game of the world cup. The train ride takes five hours and we will get into Munich around half an hour before kick off. Apparently it takes about half an hour to get to the stadion from the Munich main station, so we will be cutting it very close and will definitely miss the opening ceremony.

If you walked the streets of Düsseldorf you might be able to fool yourself into thinking there is no world cup at all. The occasional shop has flags and bunting up, but for the most part it is business as usual, unlike most other cities that are literally dripping with colour. I think this is because Düsseldorf considers itself to stylish(being the German fashion capital) to get caught up in all the nonsense, but I think that’s true, only at the surface level, because every conversation I have been in (or overheard) the last few days has been about the World Cup.

We travelled up to Rotterdam to De Kuip stadium to watch Australia take on Holland in a pre world cup test. 35000 fans were there. 34ooo of them singing along to a weird cross between folk and marching music. 1000 singing the occasional song about a sheep rustler who commits suicide. 34000 fans wearing orange. 1000 wearing gold. 34000 fans speaking a language that makes me smirk. 1000 fans speaking a harsh, nasally version of English. I was one of the nasally, gold clad sheep smugglers.
It really sucks when you are surrounded by the other team’s fans and the other team scores. It is intimidating when your own team levels and you jump around like a Conservative presented with the idea of gay marriage. It is interesting when you realise that all the Dutch fans around you are surprised that their team couldn’t beat a team from a country that they didn’t realise played football. It is heartening when many of their fans only want to congratulate you on a good result.
However I will draw attention to ‘good result’, because all the Dutch fans I spoke to immediately after the game were concerned with how rough the Australians were. I was very concerned however with how ‘Divey’ the Dutch players were. As a Chelsea fan it was embarrassing to watch Arjen Robben falling over like it was his first night in heels.
This morning however I had a great chat with the desk clerk at our hotel in Rotterdam. He was surprised that we did so well and thought we might be good enough to pull a similar show against the ultimate football bad guys. We wished each other well and Alex and I continued on our way.
Anyway, the game was great and we were completely surrounded by the Dutch fans…

I suppose the side note is that Rotterdam is fantastic and we enjoyed the bits we explored, especially Café Weimar where I sampled a few of the beers and had Alex talk me into sharing a cheese fondue.

People go on and on about things, especially on Fridays at work at quitting time. If there is a meeting around this time, it is guaranteed to be made longer than needed by someone that doesn’t have a life outside of school.

I have not mentioned Chelsea at all on this blog because I know I will get shouted down, but in relation to the bit above about people going on about things… people go on and on about Chelsea.
Chelsea are ruining the league because they have to much money, Chelsea have proven you can buy the league title, Chelsea have no Scruples because they feel they can buy their way out of any trouble…I have heard it all ad nauseum.
But now Chelsea have bought Andriy Schevchenko from Inter Milan, for a record sum in English football. In a positive way I will get to hear some different whinging, but it will still just be more whinging to add to the rather large whinging pile I have collected over the last couple of years.
It’s probably pretty lucky that I have relatively little contact with the guy who used to go on about it the most. Anway, to all the people who have a lot to say about Chelsea buying the Premiership, I say this; Until the acquisition of Schevchenko the top three most expensive players in England were Rio Ferdinand, Ruud van Nistelroy and Wayne Rooney, all of whom (then and now) play for Manchester United…it’s convenient to rant about Chelsea, who spend the big bucks and win, when Manchester united has spent big bucks as well and come third.
It’s interesting that the guy who used to go on at me the most was also a Manchester United fan.
/rant