I've seen a lot of soccer here in Europe, including four matches in four different cities in five nights early in the trip, which was a blast and as idiotic in practice as it was in theory. I inherited my devotion to soccer from my Italian mother. My earliest soccer memory is watching the 1970 World Cup final between Italy and Brazil when I was 10, on ABC's Wide World of Sports, wondering what Mom could be getting so upset about, though when Italy scored she was the happiest I'd ever seen her, dancing around the kitchen, so I figured it had to be worth some attention.
Aside from my love of watching the games, sports became a belonging mechanism for a boy who didn't belong too well. By knowing more about it than the straight kids, I could fit in. Soccer became doubly important in my mother's family's small Italian hill town as a topic shield against having to make idle talk in the nightly passegiata about who I was dating, and when I would get married, and why I wasn't married, and my poor mother waiting for her grandchildren, why was I not thinking about her?
All the soccer matches on this trip are about more than soccer. Yes, retirement allows me to live this sort of fan's fantasy. But as a sudden citizen of a previously foreign country, I'm once again thrown into unfamiliar territory as an outsider, and looking for a way to fit in. When you enter a European pub on a weekend and soccer is on TV, all you need is for the badge of your favorite club to be visible, and interaction will occur, across any barrier of language, race, gender, sexuality or culture. You will find your place.
What I need is that favorite club, in or near my new country. And I need it extra badly at this moment, because my former favorite European soccer club has been transformed from a bunch of underdog street toughs into the richest and most detestable soccer club on earth. I tried to stick with Newcastle United, to rationalize away the source of their new success, but my heart just fell out of love. As a non-native of the city and country I wasn't bound to it. The wins were more numerous but less satisfying. And Brexit had taken me out of citizenship there to boot.
So I started researching Luxembourgish soccer and following the German Bundesliga, and I mean, hard. I've watched so much German soccer this year I'm dreaming in German and I don't even understand the words. When the passport trip to Luxembourg began to loom, I punched up a map and began plotting a way to get to the closest clubs by train in the week while my passport would be processing, and while my only somewhat sports-loving husband was left home waiting for a US green card and unable to travel internationally. It would be soccer speed-dating. I intended to wed one of those clubs as my Luxembourgish-European own.
I started with four candidates, all playing at home across five nights as games stack up ahead of the World Cup break. The five-night tour worked to eliminate two of the four clubs from consideration.
Racing-Union, the Luxembourg league club in central Luxembourg City, are fun to watch and deliver amazing hand-grilled mettwurst and Thüringer, but draw barely enough fans to fill a pub, much less serve as a social mechanism within one. I'll keep going back but as a casual fan.
VfB Stuttgart provided a large, welcoming crowd and a suitably stirring atmosphere in a surprisingly pretty city for an auto industry capital. But the stadium and organization are a visible mess, befitting the club's league standing near relegation down to the second division. A large portion of the stadium was under reconstruction, so I figured I was in the spare, depressing part next to come, but no, I was told I was in one of the parts already done. Women were placed in separate lines to get in, which I understand has been standard practice at some German stadiums - why, I have no idea, but the elder German couple in front of me was NOT HAPPY to be pulled apart. Lines for concessions were unsegregated but hair-raisingly slow; a beer server complained in front of me that the taps weren't pouring fast enough, which a Milwaukeean simply cannot abide. Through an accident of circumstance I held both home and guest tickets and sat one half in each place. At Stuttgart as is standard in Europe, visiting fans in recognizable gear are held in a fenced, protected area of the seats and concourse, because European soccer fans can get a little, shall we say, testy. The away section felt like a prison camp and I wish that were hyperbole. Successive hordes of away fans had trashed the place with stickers and graffiti and scuffs and scratches and there seemed to be no will to fix any of it. The restrooms were straight out of a post-apocalyptic novel. Thanks, but no.
That left the two German Bundesliga clubs within easiest reach of Luxembourg, Mainz 05 and Eintracht Frankfurt, 30 minutes from each other on a shared transit system, and each less than 20 minutes on the Deutsche Bahn from Frankfurt Airport, an 8-hour non-stop flight from Chicago and a short plane hop or beautiful train ride from there to Luxembourg.
I visited Mainz first and was so taken by the city and the stadium and the fans I nearly cancelled the rest of the soccer and went back to Luxembourg to relax, which my beaten body is still angry I didn't do. Being a town of only about 200,000, Mainz is a small city for a soccer club in a league as massive as the Bundesliga, much less a club that stood in the top half of the standings as I arrived. The club has risen to that level by shrewd management recognized throughout Germany. Eleven years ago Mainz 05 opened a sweet new stadium at the edge of town, without a lot of frills - German stadiums are more utilitarian than their US cousins - but comfortable, easily reachable by the typically excellent German transit, a breeze to navigate with roomy stands and concourses, and the best sight lines I've seen in any arena for any sport, period, with a single large deck on all sides tight to the pitch and a rake so steep I think it would violate US building codes. "Not a bad seat in the house" is a cliché but it applies at MEWA Arena. My seat was about three-fourths of the way to the top and it was as good a view as TV. The snappy, aggressively spicy feuerwurst I consumed in a concourse pub area with large-screen TV before the match would make Milwaukee restauranteurs weep with inadequacy, and with a half-liter of beer it cost less than $9 US. The fans were friendly, happy and loud - the chanting ultra fans filled one entire stand behind one goal and made a wall of sound and spectacle I imagine would be the most impressive in Germany if their club was as big as the traditional German powers.
Mainz, the city, is quaint and historic and compact, easily seen by foot or public tram, but also buzzy, a party town, a national capital of the annual carnival season - think Madison with Tudor architecture and schnitzel. For a Wisconsin kid, a Packer fan, this felt like an absolute natural, even though the club would be an obscure choice for an American. Mainz dominated play in the match but gave up goals on nearly all of the few chances they allowed, losing 3-0. Nonetheless I left MEWA Arena dripping with the club's Badger-red gear.
Then came Eintracht Frankfurt, on the last of the five nights. I had good fortune when a local urged me to take the S-Bahn, the superb subway/rail system, to the stadium rather than taxi or other forms of transit, because it would provide the best game experience. The S-Bahn was packed with Eintracht fans clad in black and white (like Newcastle), a contented and outwardly affluent bunch in this world center of finance, noticeable numbers of them gay in all senses of the word. The Stadium stop was in a wooded area with no stadium in sight. Fortunately I had a crowd to follow. They led me down a thickly forested path interrupted at intervals by food trucks and sausage stands and miniature pubs and sitting areas in clearings for leisurely and charming food and drink. We marched a fair distance down the path with no sign of a stadium or match even as the crowd became excited and began to chant and sing. Suddenly behind the trees the stadium loomed, lit in the accent red of Eintracht's colors, as if a vast spaceship had landed in this otherwise remote, unpopulated area. No wonder the stadium, sponsored as Deutsche Bank Park, was still known among fans by its historic name, the Waldstadion, the Forest Stadium. I would learn after the match that the stadium was located in the Stadtwald, the City Forest, a nature preserve and one of the world's most spectacular urban parks. It was as thrilling an entry to a sports event as I'd ever experienced.
Unfortunately there was only one gate from path to stadium and it was understandably mobbed. Immediately I knew I hadn't arrived early enough to take this route into the stadium, and other inexperienced fans were exclaiming the same in various languages. I cleared security and ran for a souvenir stand to purchase a black-and-white scarf and hat; the seller, noting my American accent and apparent unfamiliarity with the place, inquired if I was new. I answered "ja" and she handed over the goods saying, in English, "Now you are one of us."
I reached my section just in time for the opening spectacle of fans singing the Eintracht anthem and roaring the arrival of their team. The game had long been sold out but I'd scored a single ticket at not too far over face value from an online broker. It was available for a reason. The section had apparently been converted from standing to sitting without expansion of the ledges, leaving almost no room to walk in front of the seats into my spot at the center of a long row. I nearly tumbled over into the forward row several times, with fans in the section catching me and pulling me back with hardly a break in their conversation or beer sipping - it seemed to be standard procedure in this area. I collapsed into my seat with a measure of exhaustion, next to a group of enthusiastic young fans several of whom had more than fan-ship in common with me, if you know what I mean.
Eintracht scored twice in the opening minutes and the fans in our cramped section were literally falling over each other in euphoria. It was amazing but also daunting for this old claustrophobe. At halftime with Eintracht in control of the match I retreated to the concourse, grabbed a beer and pretzel, and alighted at a standing counter with a view down the tunnel at the goal where Eintracht would be shooting in the second half, intending to wait out the rest of the match there and try a different area of the stadium next time. A couple of minutes into the second half a steward noticed and graciously beckoned me to a standing ledge inside the section entrance where I could view the entire pitch along with various other claustrophobes with whom I became friendly. It turned out to be a great vantage point with the bonus of immediate concession and restroom access - if I return alone I may buy another cheap single and stand there again.
Celebrating the victory on the S-Bahn out of the woods and back to the city I knew I'd toured myself into a quandary. I was in love with two teams: the sweet, fun small-town maiden, and the beautiful, glamorous doyenne with a mansion in the woods. What's more, they live close to one another, and don't like each other, at all. There would be no way for me to sneak around on one without the other finding out.
Now the soccer tour was over and I was headed back to Luxembourg to pick up my new passport and become a European for real, more confused about choosing a team than when I started. I awoke the next morning in my Frankfurt hotel without more clarity. In the recap of the match online, though, there was a revelation: Eintracht's next match was Sunday at Mainz. The two were about to have it out for my affections on the pitch. With 10,000 Eintracht fans rumored to be headed to Mainz's new and optimistically oversized stadium. I would still be in Europe.
I'm headed to Mainz right now on the train, ticket in pocket, clad in a neutral Luxembourg national team shirt, hoping one more match will make the decision. More to come.
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