“We will be united in the heart of Europe. More than four weeks.” Looking back, it was probably wise of UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin to add that neat little disclaimer while announcing the official slogan of Euro 2024, to reinforce the tournament’s contractual obligations of peace, love and unity with turn back a little.
Three years after the big unveiling in Munich, UEFA is still busy shunning (some) despots, rooting out intolerance everywhere (except in the major European football leagues) and reaching out with a single shaking hand, Michael style Jackson, to take the pressure off. gun barrel of the nearest infantryman. But let’s be clear about this, for the next four weeks. And we will have to insist that everyone promise to keep their eyes on the screen and their ears closed to the sounds through the wall.
Six years and 239 qualifiers in the making, carbon-light but still undeniably massive, Euro 2024 is finally upon us. And it’s hard not to drool a little at the prospect of 51 games in 31 days, a podium for eight of the ten best teams in the world, to lose yourself in the sound and light of a real, not-for-it first since France 2016 a plague-ridden European championship.
Related: Euro 2024: Guardian writers’ predictions for the tournament
The draw appears open, with at least five plausible winners in France, Portugal, Spain, England and the host countries. Germany remains a classic host country in the rock ‘n’ roll years. A visibly delighted John McGinn is pictured dancing to oompah music alongside smiling people in traditional Bavarian costume, described by assistant manager John Carver as ‘joining in with the culture’, with a sense of nostalgic longing for the whole scene, as an article in Shoot magazine from 1982. After the ersatz exercise that was the Euros of Everywhere, this all feels quite real.
For now anyway. As with any global sports beano, there is also the sense of ghosts at the edge of the frame, of the world moving uneasily around this thing. We may, as Ceferin notes, be in the heart of Europe. But those tectonic plates keep grinding.
It is worth remembering that political developments are part of the legacy of the European Championship. This is a tournament forged around the wider drive for post-war European stability, and the idea of football as an arm of international relations. The first edition in 1960 was won by the USSR, helped by a walkover after fascist Spain refused to travel to a communist country. Euro 88, the last in West Germany, still feels inextricably linked to perestroika, the fall of the wall, Gorbachev and Reagan, the expression ‘that was a different time’.
Now we have something different: a European Championship in the shadow of a European land war, taking place 400 miles from the German border, the equivalent of a race day drive from Carlisle to Plymouth. The Prime Minister of Slovakia has been shot. Germany’s Defense Minister said this week that the country must be “ready for war” by 2029. Europe is surrounded by tension, toxic allies and the fear of moving lines on the map. The 2006 World Cup had the slogan ‘A Place to Make Friends’. How about this time for A Place to Stop Threatening Each Other for a While.
It is one of the misconceptions of these major football events that they can somehow bring about peace, unity and a reformulated “national consciousness”. This is a confusion of optics and reality. Sports tournaments are just theater, and heavily choreographed theater at that. People will jump up and down when you play music. People will hug if you build a hug stage. But it is a fundamental mistake to confuse this with actual social progress, an act of liberal self-sport to see in the chemistry of athletes and a cheering crowd the catalyst for a brave new, broader dawn.
The 1998 French “Rainbow Team” is often described as a visible triumph for tolerance, sport as a force for lasting good. No doubt this felt true in the glow of victory. But a quarter of a century later, France has just called early elections, which could give the country a far-right anti-immigration prime minister. Le Pen-ism was a fringe activity in 1998. It’s not that anymore. Did England feel like a more or less racist place on the morning of July 12, 2021, after the diverse, representative and likeable team missed a few penalties at Wembley?
A similar process is part of the mythology of Germany 2006, which has been referred to so often in recent weeks as a hopeful return, an example of football technique, a form of real world peace, hope, unity or whatever. This is also a case of parallax error. We remember the spectacle and associate it with a feeling.
But it’s worth noting that two other important things happened after the 2006 World Cup. Germany experienced a continued economic boom, which certainly contributes to the good feeling. And Europe experienced a financial crash plus mass migration, sowing the seeds for the Alternative for Germany movement, born out of dissatisfaction with the obligation to support other European economies, and a political party whose recent statements include a desire to to give the Nazi SS a second chance, because they were not all bad.
In 2006, the call of David Odonkor, a German of Ghanaian descent, was hailed as genuine evidence of the emergence of a new kind of Germany. Looking now, a recent poll showed that 21% of Germans would like this Nationalmanschaft to be (how do you say this?) more white. Meanwhile, the AfD (date of birth: seven years after the World Cup of German liberal contentment) is one of the largest single democratic representations in Germany.
It even seems bizarre to say it, but sports won’t solve real problems in the real world. Only politics, resources and real determination can do that. The spectacle is fun, but the spectacle is also a chimera.
So much for that side of things. Geopolitics aside, the spectacle has its own value. UEFA will be very grateful for a good, functioning and problem-free tournament. Sponsorship revenues are said to have already increased by 25% from the previous Covid-shadowed affair. A TV audience of five billion is predicted.
Beyond all the noise, there is the simple principle of pleasure, the undeniable beauty of this summer show. It is a testament to the good health of European football that these euros seem so fascinating. There may not yet be a generational team, no Holland 88, no Xavi-Iniesta Spain, but those teams didn’t really exist until they came together in the tournament phase.
Germany is better than they’ve ever seen. Portugal is strong and still has the starlight of the world’s most Instagrammed man. France has reached three of the past four tournament finals. Kylian Mbappé plays centre-forward. This could be his stage.
As for England, who knows. Perhaps the last Euros will prove to be the biggest opportunities of the Southgate era. This team is fresh, young and purposefully disrupted by the manager to generate some energy. So much will depend on the tactical fit of the first two games.
Elsewhere, Albania, Austria and Serbia look like convincing dark horses, with the disclaimer that any dark horse predictions must be hilariously off the mark. Scotland, who have nothing to lose and are a great manager, might surprise a few people.
With any luck, these Euros can end up feeling like a pleasant vacation away from the grind and toxicity of the club game. It has become common to dismiss international football as old-fashioned and mannered, not helped by the shocking mid-season jump to an arthritic Nations League draw to Syldavia.
But in moments like these, the intensity of the format provides so much clarity about the goal. Nothing can really get in. Nobody buys anyone. No one will be fired or charged here. The only questions are chemistry, systems, the interplay of moments and variables, and above all the pursuit of glory, out there in the hairy and hardened heart of Europe, united for four short weeks.