Who played? Who won? Who cares…

Avoiding EURO 2016: A self-experiment — Day Two

I heard no honking yesterday, no cheering whatsoever. I live in a multinational city where all nationalities of the European Championships are covered, so there is usually some celebration noise after a match finishes. But there was nothing.

This did not occur to me until I saw half of a newspaper heading, which I think said that the host nation had a lot of trouble beating Romania in the opening match. As 6% of the population here where I live are French citizens, one would have thought that some celebration took place in the city after this opening victory for what are supposed to be the favourites in this tournament.

In a weak moment some days ago, when I was reminded that the tournament would start, and that the hosts would play the opening match, I considered putting perhaps 10 € on them winning the whole thing. Not that I in any way hope they will (if I did care) — but when France hosts a big tournament, they tend to win it. Except for the 1938 World Cup, which no-one remembers, and the 1960 Nations Cup, more of a forerunner to the European Championship, which was too small a tournament for one to really speak of a host nation.

But maybe les bleus did not win yesterday after all. I could have misread the newspaper heading, as I only half-read it anyway. In reality I do not know — so far, so good.

What I do know though is that Switzerland (had completely forgotten that they had qualified; I am still not used to that) was leading 1:0 against Albania. I saw that by accident as I went to the German football magazine kicker’s website to check something far more important: When the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal (= German Cup) will start again, so that I can maybe go watch 1. FC Köln on my way up North when I might go to Denmark for an extended weekend.

Whether the Swiss won, I do not know. I made sure not to check. Although I secretly hope they did not, as I — had I chosen to follow EURO 2016 — would support Iceland and Albania. The latter with mixed feelings… but more about that later.