Munich

My friend Joel had an extra ticket for the Saudi Arabia – Tunisia game in Munich so I decided to make it down there for the game. I arrived in the early afternoon and I was to meet them at the stadium. I dropped off my bag at the Munich train station and then from there made it to the stadium.

The ride was crazy. When I got to the platform for the subway to the game, a couple of hundred Tunisian fans were cheering and yelling like crazy. It was wild. Many of the fans were swigging half-liter bottles of beer and it seemed like they were in an alcohol-induced frenzy.

The craziness continued as the fans pushed, literally, their way onto the train. One German guy didn’t much like the pushing and pushed back but was eventually pulled off the train by all the other fans wanting to enter. I ended up squished into one corned against one of the doors. One guy got on the chair where an asian lady was sitting almost standing on her, to help lead cheers for the fans on the train. A German guy next to her got upset about it but she was able to swith with a lady who stood up the rest of the way.

The fans continued to chant as the train got even more crowded until about twenty-five minutes later we finally arrived at the stadium stop and fresh air.

When I got off there was older American guy who I asked what he thought. His reaction: “Those guys are lucky they athe Germans are patient. In Philadelphia (where he was from) those guys would have been messed up.”

So at the stadium I met up with Joel and Shelly once again. We had great seats, in American football terms about the 50-yard line, ten rows up. On my ticket I was Ray Hudson, the former coach of the Miami Fusion and DC United. So that was a lot of fun.

The game was actually a lot of fun. Tunisia scored a goal in the first half and the fans went crazy. One guy actually lit a flare, which I have no idea how he got into the stadium. After that the police actually ended up surrounding the Tunisian fans in case something else happened.

At the beginning of the second half a Tunisian fan ran out on the field and was eventually tackled by police. After that the fans who were wild and crazy in the first half actually quieted down a lot in the second.

In the second Saudi Arabia scored two surprise goals. They were supposed to be one of the worst teams in the tournament, but they had a chance to win before Tunisia pulled a late equalizer to give both teams a chance to advance.

After the game I was surprised how muted the reaction of the Tunisian fans was when Joel pointed out that they were probably were hung over from all the drinking they had done earlier in the day. It actually made a lot of sense.

Instead of squeezing onto a train, we took a taxi back to Cologne, and checked into a hotel there and then went to find a place to watch the Germany-Poland game.

There was a beer garden about ten minutes from the hotel so we walked over there and it was great. There had to be four-five thousand Germans watching the game, hanging on every moment.

Finally with time about to expire the Germans put a goal past Poland assuring them a place in the second round. The fans went wild and crazy singing up a storm for a half hour afterwards.

We partied for a while there but eventually made our way back to the hotel and met up with Ray Hudson who is working for Gol Television out of Munich. We grabbed dinner at 1 am in the morning and commiserated about the USA-Czech game. Ray kept talking about how good Gahna was as a team even though they lost 2-0 to Italy. Little did I know at the time how prophetic he was.

After that it was time to crash.