Under 21 Fun

Part One - The Cross

European Championships in football are surely European Championships... or maybe not. What about the Women's one, or perhaps the U21 edition? I am waiting to fly to Gothenburg to witness the calibre, prestige, and tension that one would expect in the EC that we know and love. What is worrying is that no one that was told where I was going knew that this competition existed, or worse still if England were even in it. So will I find a mass of empty stadia, some old men and kids at the matches, and no chanting? Or will there be a fair contingent of travelling fans with the passion and rowdiness that one would expect. I wonder, because like most people I know very little about it.

Kaj, the footballing oracle, tells me that it should be good, but he goes to Azerbaijan to watch Finland play out a nil nil draw. The mystery is still there. I thought that I would write this now to show that my expectations are unclear, and then on my way home I will write the conclusion and hopefully solve the mystery.

Sometimes the anticipation is better than the event, but sometimes like this, when you don't know what to expect, the result can be brilliant. Let's hope it's the latter.

Part Two - The Finish

Well, to start with the weather has been amazing, and this fits with the memeories that one has with major tournaments in the summer. As I was sat in a café sipping on a foreign lager, I had visions of the pitched street battles that you see covered in news articles following Englands recent exit from the last competition. The difference was that there was absolutely no sign of any football linked obstacles on the horizon.

We had of course seen a few Finnish fans drinking in small groups and wearing the team shirts, but it was all very quiet and civilised. I thought that because we were in Gothenburg and the game was in Halmstad that there would be much more support in that town, which was an hour outside Gothenburg.

However, when we arrived in Halmstad after an hours train ride, the same quietness greeted us. We found our way to the Fanzone, which obviously had a congregation gathering, but still no atmosphere. No singing. It turned out that Finland had brought 5,000 fans and England, probably 200, to a 7,500 capacity stadium.

The atmosphere inside was building nicely, albeit Finnish biased, there was not one English song for the entire game. A record of some note I would imagine. This was the first tournament that Finland had ever qualified for in any shape of the game, and this explained the huge attendance.

The game was pretty drab with England coming out 2-1 winners, but there was something extremely liberating about standing up on my own and cheering an England goal amongst a stand of Finnish supporters. Of course because the competition doesn't really mean enough to anybody to fight about it, I felt pretty safe for doing this. I wouldn't have done it if there had been any note of malice in the air.

I walked away with a strange feeling of winning but not being able to enjoy the moment because of a lack of anyone to enjoy it with. This must be what it feels like to be a Blackburn away fan.

When we arrived back in Gothenburg there was ten minutes left of the Spain vs Germany game. So we sat in a bar, watched the end of it, and waited the fans to come by as the game was only ten minutes away. Did they come ... No. Either they knew a party somewhere else in town, or they weren't there.

So, is the U21's a major tournament? No. FIFA are trying to make it one with the corporate branding everywhere you go, but unfortunately it's people that make great tournaments. Characters that through their passion do stupid things that make it memorable. There were no people at this, apart from middle aged men who were looking for an excuse to go on a jolly.

I've just remembered though, there were two streakers that ran on in the England game from Finland. All though they were not athletic looking they both managed to get from one end to another talking to players on the way. Stuart Pearce was ready to grab them and that could have been worth writing about, but instead the summary is an anti-climax for the football but thumbs up for the trip and the beautiful city of Gothenburg.