National coach Jogi Löw in the training camp of the German national team in Seefeld in Tyrol.Image: Getty Images Europe / Andreas Schaad opinion
No love for this European Championship: For the first time in my life, I don't care about a big football tournament
11.06.2021, 10:0611.06.2021, 16:15Sebastian HeinrichFolgenMehr «Sport»AnalyseTrotz Viertelfinal-Aus – Lob von Weltmeisterin Selina Jörg: Ramona Hofmeister kann "beim Snowboarden noch einiges erreichen" "Ich schließe keine Türen": Leipzig-Star spricht über möglichen Abschied – trotz Dementi vom RB-ChefNiklas Süle wechselt zu Borussia Dortmund "Wichtigste Trophäe meines Lebens": Senegal-Held Sadio Mané nimmt den Afrika-Cup-Pokal mit ins Bett Olympia: DSV-Mixed-Team disqualifiziert – Chefcoach kritisiert "Kasperletheater""Do you still know where you were when...? "
This is how the questions that people use to initiate discussions about big events.
And I, I still know where I was when the German national soccer team played at the European Championship.And at the World Cup.I really know about every single game in Germany, at every World Cup and EM since 1994.You could make an editorial game of it: my colleagues tell me any game, I describe the place where I have experienced it.
I was seven and sat on the carpet of our living room in the Upper Palatinate, in the warm afternoon sun when the Bulgarian Yordan Letchkov headed the team around Rudi Völler and Jürgen Klinsmann from the tournament in 1994.I was nine and hit my fist on the same carpet when Oliver Bierhoff in 1996 poked the Golden Goal against the Czech Republic in the EM final in the European Championship final.
I was 19 at the 2006 World Cup and I cried. And today there is nothing.
I was 19 and yes, I cried in our small kitchen in our home in southern Italy when Alessandro Del Piero ended the dream of winning the World Cup at home with a cruel Schlenzer in July 2006.And what did I roar in 2014, in this great pub in Regensburg when Götze made him and we were world champions.A little later, on the cathedral square, I screamed strangers in the face.
And today there is nothing.
A few hours before it starts with the 2021 European Championship, which is actually called European Championship 2020: no anticipation, no tingling, not even the urge to study the game plan.
Before the tournaments from 1994 to 2018, I bought special books, sometimes sticker collection albums.I always ate newspaper articles before the tournament, about the players on the field, the tactical subtleties of the coaches, about the peculiarities of the host countries.
And it was never just the German national team with me.To date, I can remember Nigeria's 3-2 victory against Spain in the preliminary round of the 1998 World Cup in France.To the Golden Goal, which the Frenchman David Trézeguet hammered into the net in the summer of 2000 against Italy in the final of the EM 2000.On the incredible triumph of the Greeks, which won the European title with banal-genial header in 2004 after corners and free kicks.
"I had, it must have been in 2010, once a nightmare that went like this: the World Cup had started and I had missed it.And now?Now I really don't care about this European Championship."I had, it must have been in 2010, once a nightmare that went like this: the World Cup had started and I had missed it.And now?Now I really don't care about this European Championship.
Football has been a life companion for me in the past two and a half decades.I have certainly spent several years of life to watch football games, to drive in football stadiums, to discuss football.Most of the time it always went for my heart's club: 1860 Munich, the small club from Munich, which has had little money for almost 20 years and still still tens of thousands of fans.
But my heart always hung on the national team.Probably because I lived in Italy for the eight years of my teenage period - and Miroslav Klose, Basti Schweinsteiger and Michael Ballack meant a piece of home, especially when the homes.
The big tournaments, the European and World Championships, these were always the weeks in which I gave all my free time in the games.2018, for the final, my wife and I drove to Strasbourg to look at the game between France and Croatia directly from one of the two finalists, in an old town pub.
Today, before this first tournament since the beginning of Corona pandemic, I don't even know when and where the final takes place at all.
What has happened there?
My problem with football begins on the top floor
I kept my love for football, I know that.Last season I persecuted my Sixzger with as much palpitations as ever, despite the empty stadiums - and they also enjoyed it, almost it would have worked with the climbing into the 2.Bundesliga. DieBundesliga habe ich mitgemacht, habe ernstes Mitleid verspürt mit den Fans der Schalker, mich gefreut über die nächste tolle Saison der Frankfurter, schadenfroh gegrinst über das Pokal-Aus der Bayern.
The problem between me and football begins one floor above: it is breathtaking, it doesn't matter, with how many points Bavaria Munich has become German champion for the ninth time in a row in a row.For the first time since I can think of football, I haven't followed a champions League game this season, not a single second.
This strange club World Cup in Qatar, who won it again?This non-world luxury tournament, to which Bayern Munich players flew in the middle of the second Pandemie wave-and have listed like political prisoners when they didn't get a special permit in Berlin in the middle of the night?
When that became public with the Super League, I didn't really get really excited anymore.Plans for a sealed off elite league without ascending and relegation opportunities in which the richest teams in Europe should be even more richer than the others: Why should this symbolic punch in the face of the football world still be surprised- after one year in whichPandemy had taken a large part of the joy of life for a large part of the world and had further passed professional footballers in rows?
That this European Championship means nothing to me anymore, it feels like cooled love: the questions about the position of the national team, the schedule, the prospects for exciting football evenings: I know that all of this still meant a lot until three years ago -But nothing more feel when thinking about the coming weeks.The twitching of the shoulder, the total indifference to those at the top of world football, it seems to have now reached the national teams for me.
I hope that this will change until Tuesday evening until Germany plays against France.That it tingles again like in 2016, before the last EM semi-final, when I was sitting on the body in this Regensburg cinema with fidgeting feet and Germany jersey and could hardly wait for it to start.
But I'm afraid that it can no longer be that way.
