pride - self-confidence - satisfaction

pride - self-confidence - satisfaction

When the idea for "A day on fotocommunity" was born and the date fixed to July, 9th, I could have told at once what I would do on this day.

After playing soccer myself for more than 20 years in the lowest regions of hobby kicking, I still find myself moving the head for an fictive header and I still can feel the pain of fouls or loosing a game in last second.

This made me watch the championship as much as possible and I probably watched more than 50 of the 64 games.

But the last month was more than soccer for Germany - there were a lot of things which came up and amazed not only me, but probaly half the world ...

There were lots of discussions about the new "national pride" in Germany, when the first flags appeared on cars, houses and in the faces of fans ... From my time in the US I was used to it, but I can imagine the shock for some pessimists who connected this kind of patriotism to the beginning of dark times in Germany in the last century. These people are wrong in their asumptions, as the ongoing championship has told!

It started with some exitement, when i saw the opening ceremony. Please, dear foreign reader, don't you think that all Germans walk around in that leather trouses!!! No, we usually look quite normal, wear t-shirts and jeans ... ;-))

Germany's first game was the start we all wanted to have, but also we all saw how simple it was to walk through that German defense and we all had the biggest concerns that this championship would soon be over ...

While the first round continued, we learned about some new kind of thing:" Public viewing" and so called "Fan miles". Of course we have seen this on former championships, we saw how beautiful crazy soccer-fans can be with their costumes, but we seldom saw Germans moving through towns in this numbers, waving flags and wearing colors. There were millions of people over all who watched the games together, no matter from what country they came ...

"A time to make friends" was the official slogan of this championship and that was what happened all around ... people enjoying the games, the come together and a whole month of pure party!!!

Some high classified teams had to go home sooner than expected and even if there were long lasting rivalries form former (soccer-) times: after losing some tears the fans congratulated each other and decided to celebrate together instead of starting to rampage.
Germany had a huge amount of police and military personnel standing by, because they prepared for every eventuality, but I'm sure you didn't hear that police or military was needed ... and that's because of the fans were what they were supposed to be: Fans!

The German team played better and better, grew together and all over the country people were convinced that there was more possible than "surviving the first rounds" ... Pretty soon everybody believed that Germany had a real chance to enter the final.

We all know that there was that (from a German point of view) unhappy 119th minute when we played Italy and I have to admit: I was interupted in assembling our penalty kickers, when the ball went in ... and I fell into some kind of depression, because this team and it's way to play their games had totally won my heart during the tournament ...

Well, and the next thing that not only happened to me was, that after a good night's sleep i could allow myself to be proud even after the loss. And with me most of the German fans were proud on the team, which i don't remember being so for a long time. There was passion as long as German teams won, but this passion switched into resentment after losses ... Not this time ... Everybody apreciated the German efforts - even if it wasn't enough to enter the final. And everybody payed respect to Italy which was better or luckier for that tiny moment ...

We lost a game, but we won so much ...

So my "event of the day" on that "Day on fotocommunity" was not the final, but much more the arrival of the German team in Berlin, where more than 500.000 people said "Thank you" for a beautiful experience and the team said "Thank you" for that great support they received during the games.

Therefore i choosed this photo to upload it into that section: Pride about the Germany, self-confidence about the 3rd place and most of all satisfaction about seeing many, many people making the slogan come true:

"A time to make friends!"