There are two ways of confronting the tensions that have seized hold of Europe in recent days and weeks. Two ways, that is, of trying to understand the fears (genuine or misplaced), and the promises (vacant or smilingly hopeful), that fill the air. Method A is adopted by well-informed and gravely troubled citizens who read the Times and recall, with a pang, that lovely little place near the Pantheon where they first ate carciofi alla romana. These days, they fret about the rightward lurch that was evident in the elections to the European Parliament in early June; about the armfuls of votes that were gathered in by the National Rally, in France, and that have spooked Emmanuel Macron into calling a snap election; about Fidesz, in Hungary; the Brothers of Italy; and the question of whether there is an alternative, in Germany, to the Alternative for Germany; about mass immigration, climate change, farmers’ protests, and what it all means for the carciofi harvest. Was ever a landmass so plagued, and what on earth is to be done?
Method B is to get some friends round, stack the fridge with Hofbräu, and psych yourselves up for Turkey v. Austria by rewatching, for the fifteenth time, that absolute bastard of a volley that Mert Müldür put past Giorgi Mamardashvili from the edge of the penalty area, in Dortmund.
If those names leave you blank, then you haven’t been tuned into the UEFA European Football Championships—in common parlance, the Euros—which are currently taking place in Germany. And you therefore didn’t catch Turkey v. Georgia on June 18th. Poor you. It was hell for leather, and heaven for the nonpartisan observer: a two-way rampage, untarnished by caution, much of it contested in lashing rain, and capped by a curling, long-range strike from Arda Güler. To soccer junkies, he is a known quantity, already employed in the ranks of Real Madrid, but not until now had his skills flourished, with quite such a blast, on the international stage. Give the kid a break. He’s only nineteen. As he stood there in the downpour, a slender figure, drinking in the waves of adulation, his expression was hard to read: pure delight at his own prowess, or the thrill of being allowed to stay up past his bedtime?
Youth is having its fling at the Euros, and the flinging is part of the fun. Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz, comrades-in-arms for the German team, are both twenty-one, as is Nico Williams, who reigns on the left wing for Spain. On June 20th, against Italy, he stupefied everyone with his wizardry, not least the defenders tasked with marking him. By the final whistle, they looked ready to ditch the whole idea of soccer and retire to a less taxing profession, like bomb disposal or chess. And Williams is a hoary veteran next to his squad-mate Lamine Yamal, who has yet to turn seventeen. According to Spain’s coach, Luis de la Fuente, Yamal has been “touched by God’s wand.” Rumor has it de la Fuente was toying with the notion of playing God as a central sweeper, feeding the ball through to Yamal, but apparently He couldn’t take the pace. Not as young as He was.
To be honest, this juvephilia comes as a blessed relief. Of late, it is the changing loyalties of youth, above all, that have sounded the most shrill of alarms. “How Europe’s Far-Right Parties Are Winning Over Young Voters,” ran a headline in Time, on June 18th. Among those under thirty-four, the biggest slice of the French vote in the European elections went to the National Rally, which took thirty-two per cent of the pie. (The Party’s president, the smoothly-machined Jordan Bardella, who may well become the next Prime Minister of France, is twenty-eight.) Comparable tilts could be seen elsewhere, and great was the lamentation: What happened to progressivism? Since when have the stony-hearted supplanted the starry-eyed?
It would be foolish to suggest that such uneasy stirrings will be cancelled out, or assuaged, by a few tyros kicking a ball about. It’s hard enough finding space in the penalty area during a corner, or keeping your hamstrings from being snapped by the toe of the enemy’s boot, without having to bear the weight of geopolitical restitution, too. Yet there is something afoot in the spectacle of these Euros. By and large, the tournament has been headlong, peppered with surprises, and sometimes explosively enjoyable. The point of detonation occurred, I would say, not with Germany’s forthright flattening of Scotland, 5–1, in the opening match, but the following day, twenty-three seconds into Albania’s match against Italy, when Nedim Bajrami took advantage of a comically inept Italian throw-in and put Albania ahead. No one has ever scored so swiftly in a Euros game, and Bajrami, sprinting toward the vast bank of supporters, all but disappeared into a scarlet morass. For anyone who gulps at the Albanian national flag, with its black two-headed eagle on a backdrop of blood red, there was much to relish in this rage of exultation—not exactly innocent, but shorn of threat.
We heard that roar again on June 17th, when Romania beat Ukraine, and when Slovakia, delighting every connoisseur of Schadenfreude, won 1–0 against Belgium. As far as the Euros (and World Cups) are concerned, Belgium, festooned with talents, has been always the bridesmaid, never the bride. You can imagine some Belgian fans, when the next competition looms in 2028, choosing not to be invited to the wedding at all.
Notice the winners of those two encounters. From the moment the Romanian captain, Nicolae Stanciu, let fly from twenty yards, into the upper-west side of the Ukrainian net, the soccer at these Euros has been at its most unabashed—most fired up, as it were, by a sense of release—in the dramatis personae from central and eastern Europe. The group stages (six batches of four teams, with each of the four playing one another once) are now concluded; henceforth, it’s a knockout, with sixteen contenders, and both Romania and Slovakia are still involved. As are Slovenia, Turkey, and, yes, Georgia. In 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld, then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, cast mild aspersions on what he called “old Europe,” and stated that “the center of gravity is shifting to the East,” there were murmurs of disquiet. If Rumsfeld were alive today, however, he could show you the footage of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia sweetly drilling the ball past the Portuguese goalkeeper on June 26th, thus setting in motion a transcendent Georgian victory, and declare, with a thin grin of satisfaction, “Told you so.”
More solemn souls, once more, will argue that this revelry may be all very well, but that Georgia, where the ruling party bears the unlikely name of Georgian Dream, has more significant things on its mind. Over the past year in Tbilisi, there have been mass demonstrations against the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence; the influence in question is that of N.G.O.s, which under the new law would be required to register as foreign agents. The wording may be bland, but the implications for the democratic process, and for freedom of the press, are sufficiently murky to have provoked censure from the NATO secretary-general and the U.S State Department. Somewhere, squatting in the wings, Russia is rubbing its hands—all the more greedily because, after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian soccer team has been locked out of the Euros.
How, then, should we react to the fresh demonstrations that unfolded in Tbilisi on the night of June 26th, when people swarmed the streets in jubilation rather than complaint, hymning the achievement of their soccer players for reaching the second stage of the Euros? As a temporary cessation of hostilities? Had the celebrators earned the right to a break from their crisis, for the sake of a Georgian dream on which they could all agree? And what of the tens of thousands who have travelled to Germany as a backing group for the team, filling not only the stadiums but also the fan zones, set up in every host city, where the ticketless can gather to watch the games for free? I wouldn’t want to stand there and tell them that they’re sticking their heads in the sand. Sport, at its most consuming, feels more real—certainly more alive, and louder on the ears—than the ordinary grind of life that sport is designed to interrupt. Now and then, the sandpit is the very best place to be.
Unless, of course, you’re English. In which case, the entire enterprise is a torture chamber, whether you’re playing at the Euros, sitting glumly on the substitutes’ bench, watching on TV at home, or plodding from one German Bierkeller to the next, heavy with sorrows that no foaming stein can drown. In line with a venerable English routine—part of the national circadian rhythm, one might say—the delirium of anticipation has been succeeded by the thud of disappointment, as the team has meandered through a trio of games with no visible sign of direction. Even the in-house talisman, Jude Bellingham, has been dulled in action. (Needless to say, if, by some freak of fate, England end up being crowned champions, this early inertia will immediately be recast as a mustering of secret strength and a brilliant act of deception.) Nonetheless, Lord knows how, the English have bored their way through to the last sixteen, and there has been excitably condescending talk of their now having the easier route to the final, avoiding “big hitters” such as France and Germany and facing, instead, supposedly lesser mortals such as Slovakia, Romania, Turkey, Italy, Austria, or Switzerland along the way.
Easier, my foot. One lesson of the Euros, in 2024, has been that the hits are just as big wherever you look. In the first dozen matches, eleven goals were struck from outside the box: in other words, from a risky distance that made you yelp with childish glee. Timidity be damned. The other lesson, which may baffle or inspire American fans, is that even the most perplexed of continents can put its calamities on hold, briefly avert its gaze from dark political futures, and have itself a ball. ♦
