The following article appeared in the programme for Racing Club Warwick v Studley on 5th September 2006.
So what did you get up to during those long summer months since Racing Club last kicked a ball in anger? Here’s the final instalment of my football travels during the Summer:
Wednesday 21st June – World Cup, Allianz Arena, Munich
Munchen. No, not the noise you make as you tackle one of Simon’s cheeseburgers but the home of the Bavarian bier keller. The world famous Hofbrauhaus, a cavernous old bier keller replete with stone flooring, bare wooden benches and, most importantly, huge litre mugs of foaming locally brewed beer and an accompanying bratwurst with sauerkraut. Superb and made all the more so by being packed out with Serbian and German football fans all anxious to sample the local brew before winding their very merry way out to the new stadium. But we had another destination to visit before the match. How could we miss a quick look at the Olympic Stadium, the former home of Bayern Munich and scene of the 1972 Olympic Games and 1974 World Cup Final? This summer the Olympic Park surrounding the old stadium was also the location for Munich’s World Cup Fan’s Park. For a paltry 2 euros we gained access and strolled around the stadium that witnessed England’s iconic 1-5 victory on the way to qualifying for the 2002 World Cup. It still looks fabulous with that landmark roof that looks a little like a series of spiders webs covering perhaps a third of the seats before snaking off across the nearby Olympic Park. I think it’s a shame that the old stadium is unlikely to be used for major football matches any longer but I’m sure that it must be a listed structure of some sort and so is unlikely to disappear from the Munich skyline. See it and reminisce if you get the chance.
Munich’s new stadium? Well it’s nothing like its older brother but is equally iconic in its own way. Why? Well for starters it looks like a giant inflatable and at night it glows red, white or blue or in combinations thereof. This particular evening the stadium looks extra dramatic in that the game takes place against the backdrop of forked lightning and a torrential downpour. Memories of that 1974 World Cup match where they used giant squeegees to get the game on came flooding (pardon the pun) back as the players got soaked to the skin in seconds. Tonight’s match featured Ivory Coast (or Cote d’Ivoire if Thierry Batomen is reading this) up against the last ever appearance of Serbia & Montenegro (they will compete separately after this World Cup). The game was also what is known in the trade as a “dead rubber” i.e. both sides already knew that they could not progress having been beaten twice by Argentina and Holland in the Group of Death. Worse still for me was the news that Ivory Coast’s star Didier Drogba was banned following two yellow cards and that Arsenal’s Kolo Taure was being rested for this match. Despite this, the players proceeded to produce a real cracker. Pick of the crop was Ivory Coast’s Dindane and Kolo’s brother Yaya (yes yes!) Taure. Ivory Coast played like Brazil, or rather, how you would imagine that Brazil should play and yet found themselves two down early on as Serbia proved themselves to be ruthless on the break. This sheer injustice had the majority of the crowd rooting for the Africans and they proceeded to blow the Serbs away with a superb attacking display. It finished 3-2 to the Ivorians and it was past midnight by the time we got back to the car. We were on the road to the Westfalenstadion at last!
Thursday 22nd June – World Cup, Westfalenstadion, Dortmund
We made good time up the autobahn. The ability to cruise quite legally at 95 mph means that distances fly by. Whilst driving at these kind of speeds sounds quite hairy, if you actually try to drive at, say, 70 mph it feels much more dangerous as it becomes really hazardous to pull out into the fast lane. We got to our hotel in Gummersbach just after midday and chilled for a couple of hours over a beer and a meal in the hotel’s posh-but-dirt-cheap restaurant. If you ever have reason to go to Germany I would heartily recommend bypassing the travel agent and booking your accommodation via the internet. For the princely sum of 58 euros (about 40 quid) we found ourselves in rooms each equipped with two double beds and a veranda, breakfast included of course! Bargain!
After finally dragging ourselves away from the delights of our princely hotel we made our way to Dortmund, savouring the prospect of seeing Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos et al taking on the Japanese. The whole event was full of surprises. Firstly, I have never ever seen so many women at a football match. I reckon that perhaps a third of the crowd that night were ladies. In addition to the much-vaunted Brazilian beauties, suitably preened and ready for the roving eyes of the world’s randy cameramen, perhaps half of the Japanese fans were women and that’s not including one or two game fellas who came dressed as geisha girls! The facilities never stood a chance and I saw several people taking pictures of the 50 yard long queue of Japanese women lining up for a visit to the ladies. It resembled one of those endurance game shows that the Japanese seem to love watching. The closer to the front of the queue they got, the more their faces expressed the discomfort of their situation! American or European women would surely have stormed into the empty cubicles in the Gents but these were polite Japanese women.
The second surprise of the evening was that the Japanese, needing an unlikely two goal win against Brazil to even stand a chance of progressing, took the lead. I was, of course, in the Japanese end in my Racing Club Warwick shirt. We went berserk. The Japanese fans refer to their country as “Nippon” and chanted the word “Nippon” pretty well non-stop for the rest of the match. But the Japanese lead was short-lived as Ronaldo equalised immediately before half time which, as everyone surely must know, is a “good time” to score a goal (unlike at other times when apparently it’s not so good!). Having recovered their composure the Brazilians proceeded to impose themselves with Ronaldo scoring a second, on his way to overtaking Gerd Muller’s all-time World Cup finals scoring record as Brazil ran out 4-1 winners. Much was made in the media over here of Ronaldo’s weight problems. For sure he’s considerably less mobile than he was when he made his World Cup debut in France in 1998 but I must say that I admired his economy of effort when combined with deadly finishing.
Friday 23rd June – World Cup, Fritz-Walter-Stadion, Kaiserslautern
Our final journey in Germany was also the shortest one. Kaiserslautern was less than 150 miles from Dortmund and we had the miles polished off relatively early in the day. Looking at my European atlas beforehand I was interested to note that Kaiserslautern is a much smaller town than the other World Cup locations. I think that it’s closest relation in English terms is probably somewhere like Ipswich in the early 1980’s – a relatively small town but with a top class football team. The Fritz-Walter-Stadion held 46,000 and was perched at one end of the town at the top of a steep hill and right next to a wood. Kaiserslautern FC had its own megastore and I couldn’t resist purchasing a couple of bottles of their finest Kaiserslautern FC white wine for the missus – who said that romance is dead eh fellas?
The match itself was something of a disappointment when compared to the delights of the previous three. Spain, impressive conquerors of Ukraine in their first match, were all but through before kick off and, in the high temperatures of the four o’clock kick off, were less than impressive in this match against the hapless Saudi Arabians. After taking the lead in the first half through Juanito they didn’t create many more chances and almost conceded near the end. What was impressive was the size and passion of the Spanish support. Don’t let the English media fool you into thinking that England are the only national side with voluminous support overseas. I would guess that 30,000 of the 46,000 crowd were Spanish and one end of the stadium was a complete sea of red and yellow. More impressive still were the rousing choruses of “Y Viva Espana” – and there was me thinking that that particular ditty was only popular amongst British package holidaymakers.
So that completed season 2005/2006 for yours truly. Only 6 weeks to the new season. I can hardly wait!
Keep the faith!
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