I personally don’t remember a more ugly and brutal national football tournament than the current running „EURO 2020“.

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It already starts with the name: they just stick with the naming convention from last year, as if the world wouldn’t have an ongoing pandemic emergency state, as if not millions of people are already dead because of it and still dying because of stupid superspreader events like EUROs, and as if time and mankind wouldn’t have progressed one year. Time doesn’t stand still. For no human, never, and certainly not for corrupted institutions like UEFA.

I remember the World Cup 2010 in South Africa to be a brutal football tournament. But it won’t compete for what I saw, live(!), on TV already during EURO 2020/2021, and we’re not yet even in the ongoing quarter finals.

The tournament started in the group phase with a heart dead Denmark player and live resuscitation on the football field. What’s more, UEFA as well as both participating football federations decide not to postpone the game, they just delay it. What the hell was going through their heads here? I couldn’t wonder more about this day (I play football since 3rd grade), in the end I was just happy that Christian Eriksen survived. I couldn’t care anymore about football for the coming week.

Then there are head injuries all the time, almost in any game played; players who hardly remember their names because of those. Bleeding noses; but those players still do penalties. Others running into enemy players with clinched fists towards their faces. Cramps all the time, even of the best; too high the burden for them even before this tournament. And yesterday I watched possibly the most fucked up intentional knee injury live on TV too. I don’t know what to make of it but it looks like football players are hating each other nowadays and try to hurt themselves more than ever; not by skill but by army-like bad behaviour. What kind of fucked up times are we living through here? This is not football, this is MMA. And I hate MMA.

Then there was also the most stupid discussion ever: about showing, or not showing, stadiums participating in „Pride Month“ with rainbow illuminated arenas. Serious? These buildings belong to cities. It’s up to the cities how to illuminate a stadium. If the cities don’t provide stadiums, where does UEFA want to show off the games!? They can’t, and shouldn’t, decide that. Football doesn’t care about your skin colour or which sexual preference you have. If you play bad, you are a bad player. And because it’s a team sport, in 99% of cases you loose your game. It’s just so simple, your looks and sexual orientation has nothing to do with the game. If you don’t like this, just never start playing football. Or doing any other kind of sports.

That it will be a very strange and eerie EURO came into my mind very very early, via a very subtle and very catchy kind of way: the merchandise. The jingles and music just don’t fit into the year 2021, like German TVs „Die guten Zeiten die sind jetzt…“ which means something like „The good times are now“ in English. O,RLY? Hell, yes: I couldn’t imagine a better time for me and myself than this year; not to mention the year before this one! My bad. Seriously, what the… Then there is „this band“ again, which, you know, created „the song“ for this EURO which certainly noone would find attractive under the age of 55. Hey, UEFA, there are people existing on this planet below 55 too who love football, you know!? But this you could have told Steve Jobs too and he wouldn’t listen, as he was also the biggest fan of this very „Irish rock band“. I also can’t read the adverts: I assume these are Chinese brands/products. How probable will it be that I or any other European football fan will buy something which she/he even can’t read? Then what is „Hisense“ exactly, the time keeper sponsor? You mean TikTok, a Chinese clone of a shut down US American bullshit app, Vine, represents football? UEFA, where do you get your information from nowadays? Chinese junk yards? I don’t get this anymore.

To understand something of the above, it’s necessary to dig deeper. As oftentimes is the case, it’s a good hint to throw in the question Cui bono? If the ordinary football fan won’t ever use TikTok, ever fly with Qatar Airways, and won’t be able to read Chinese advertising, who profits from this? Of course: somehow UEFA. And here it gets interesting, as this institution is rotten to the core. Let me now introduce some of the most important and most shady persons here. The research I didn’t do myself, it’s available in German via a photo journey here.

Michel Platini: the French Maradona, basically he’s a legend as a football player. He’s also the architect of a EURO with 24 teams. As this couldn’t be done by a single country alone, it is what is now: a European continent tournament, played from Portugal to Russia. Which couldn’t have been a more stupid idea during a virus pandemic. Unfortunately his player skills couldn’t help him as UEFA president: he’s no president anymore because, you know, corruption. Karma is a riot.

Gianni Infantino: FIFA president. To be fair, FIFA is even more corrupt, rotten and commercial than UEFA. Nothing can get better from here, so let’s just leave it. It’s basically „his banner“ which is shown in the stadiums besides UEFA’s. Remember the name, could be interesting with the next World Cup.

Rainer Koch: German bratwurst fan. He’s one of the responsibles for the fragmentation of UEFA (keyword „divide and conquer“). You know what he got for this? A brand new job in the executive committee…

Ilhan Aliyev: president of Azerbaijan. Please name one football player of Azerbaijan! Or a team from there! Yes. Now you know the problem. Baku is one of the stations during this EURO. Only Allah knows why. Oh, and he’s a wannabe dictator too! Kind man, isn’t he?

Nasser Al-Khelaifi: football fans may know this name, not only because he is the owner of Paris Saint-Germain. But also because he’s important for UEFA as well as FIFA. It’s possible Qatar Airways is one of the main sponsors of this EURO by pure coincidence. A better idea would be a FIFA World Cup in Qatar, don’t you think? Playing football on green grass is overrated, let’s try desert instead.

Zbigniew Boniek: he was a very good footballer, now he’s also an UEFA executive. He tolerates Nazi banners by Polish fans; yes, you read that right. Men like him had so much power, they could forbid whole cities during EURO 2020/2021 to light their stadiums in alternative colours.

Davor Suker: a Croatian football legend. He’s, like so many others from the above list, a perfect symbol of the proverb „power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely“. He dislikes critical journalists, was condemed for fraud, prays for Ustaša leaders (kind of Nazis in Croatia, get that) in his free time – perfect fit for the UEFA executive committee!

What easily can be seen in the end: brutality. Ignorance. Fraud. Corruption. Decisions no one, and especially no real football fan, understands, are not only visible during each game, they also don’t come out of nowhere. There are reasons for this, and these are no abstract ones or unknown to the public, these are always connected to people, to simple human beings. As long as football fans don’t care, these won’t change. Not in UEFA, not FIFA, not in your local football league or your ordinary town football club. Be aware if you tolerate this any longer, you risk an entire and very valuable (at least IMHO) kind of sport. Forever. The next big tournament will be more corrupted, more brutal, more stupid. And we don’t even know about the consequences of so much people in one place during a hazardous virus pandemic.

2020/2021 made me thinking. In so many kinds of ways. If I will ever stop playing or watching football in my life, I will remember the years for sure.

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