From European to European Championships: this is how football breaks down the “invisible wall” of nationalisms

The never united Germany, Le Pen's France: the analyzes of the foreign press on the political message of the tournament which begins tonight

ROME – The European Championships after the European Championships. A kick to politics: never like this time has the ball rolled over the edges, the borders, and bounced off a structural crisis of the continent. Football, the most popular sport, with its unitary message, in clear contrast to the contraction of nationalism, expressed a few days in the elections for the formation of the European Parliament. It is a transversal reading, which goes deeper than simple competitive competition, to which some of the main European newspapers have dedicated themselves. Only today, for example, does the Guardian write about it, but also the Spanish El Mundo and El Paìs, with two pieces written by Abraham P. Romero and Fernando Aramburu (the writer of “Patria”).

Football has its standards, not always pointed in the right direction, but with EuropeansGermans desperately represents the threatened European dream. It is a very long journey, anticipated by football starting from the Bosman ruling almost 30 years ago. And in its ethnic geography it has in fact shown that borders, homelands, are a very fragile concept.

Germany had organized the 2006 World Cup (the ones that crowned Italy and “the blue sky of Berlin”). and “the ball in the meantime served to explain the division and union of the German people“, writes El Mundo. “His Germany squad summarizes the national problem: only 3 of the 26 players were born in the east: Kroos (Greifswald), Beier (Brandenburg) and Andrich (Postdam). A study reported by Reuters states that 57% of Germans living in the East feel like second-class citizens and only 38% believe that the reunification has been a success. Ten cities host the tournament and only one, Leipzig, is in the east. Berlin hosts the final, but the Olympic Stadium It’s located in the old West Side.”

This feeling of internal abandonment is one of the reasons, analysts say, for the triumph of the far right in East Germany: AfD obtained 28% of the votes in the most important regions of the East, while in the entire country it remained at 15%.

Football is a thermometer of society. The 2006 World Cup, as in 1974 and 1988 or the 1972 Munich Games were a great diplomatic success. They united the people, but in only one direction, towards the West. El Mundo calls it “the Invisible Wall”.

Another example: France. When they won the World Cup in 1998, Jean Marie le Pen, the founder of the National Front, was ashamed of the team led by Zinedine Zidane due to the majority presence of players of North African and sub-Saharan origin. The multiracial profile of the French national team has not changed, the leader is Mbappé, a Cameroonian father and Algerian mother. In the meantime, however, his daughter Marine Le Pen brought home a historic victory in the European elections. But Marine, unlike his father, understood that “it is better to be on the side of football”.

Aramburu, who lives in Germany, notes that “the contrast is remarkable. In 2006 Germany organized the football World Cup in an atmosphere of collective joy, in times of economic prosperity and high national self-esteem.” The international financial crisis of 2008 was far away. “The panorama has changed in a negative sense. In Germany never before had I perceived so clearly a sort of generalized melancholy, from which not even the European Championship which begins today in Munich is immune. The tournament is indeed in the sports pages and in news, but not in the streets as in that colorful summer of 2006. The reasons for this disaffection are multiple and date back to a few years ago, aggravated by the economic situation and the national and European sociopolitical situation”.

Aramburu writes that “the German myth of the country of poets and philosophers (Dichter und Denker), of the disciplined nation that works like clockwork, industrious, innovative, reliable, known and admired for its organizational spirit, methodical work and Punctuality today finds its place above all in the judgment of those who do not know their current state”. But “Germany’s problem is Europe’s problem and can be called by different names. For example, decay”.