World Cup Update - France Advances to Finals, Germany Left Broken-Hearted
At the beginning of the week, the World Cup was down to four teams in the semi-final round. Germany and Italy squared off on Tuesday. France and Portugal on Wednesday. These two games determine the contenders for the final match on Sunday, July 9.
On Tuesday, we went to Offenburg in Germany to watch the German match. Offenburg has set up a giant screen TV in the town square and local folks turned out in droves to support the German team. I don't know how many people were in the square but it was a lot. The air was thick with German Flags waving and bellowed songs (fueled of course by the beer that was being sold in huge quantities.)
The German team played Italy to a tie through the 90 minutes of regular time and then through 28 of the 30 minutes of overtime. Just when everyone was getting prepared for a sudden death shoot out, the Italians scored 2 goals in the last 2 minutes to win. You have never seen so many people go so quiet so quickly. The entire nation was crushed. Italy advanced and Germany was left to dream of 2010.
On Wednesday, the French had better luck. We watched the game again from Murphy's Irish Pub because they tune in the BBC broadcast of the game with English commentary. France scored at the 30 minute mark and basically hung on for 60 more minutes to win the game. Once again, Strasbourg errupted. Place Kleber again had thousands of people out with flags, railroad flares, climbing the statues, and tearing down flagpoles. This time, however, the city was a bit better prepared. They stopped all traffic into the city when the game started and had the riot squads pre-positioned.
All in all, Strasbourg was well-behaved. Better than in Paris where one person was killed and many injured in the celebration overnight. Most of the injuries seem to come when people fall off of statues.
The cars were driving by the apartment honking until probably 2 am in the morning. Today I am dying from lack of sleep. Also, the legs are really sore as a result of standing for 3 hours for 2 nights in a row watching games.
Sorry, no pictures. Here is a link to Le Monde's photo coverage of the celebrations. Text is in French and pictures are from Paris. But it doesn't matter....was pretty much the same in Strasbourg and every other city in France after last night's victory.
Again, the final match is on Sunday. By midnight, all of France will either be celebrating or mourning. We shall see how it turns out. But it will be very interesting either way.
On Tuesday, we went to Offenburg in Germany to watch the German match. Offenburg has set up a giant screen TV in the town square and local folks turned out in droves to support the German team. I don't know how many people were in the square but it was a lot. The air was thick with German Flags waving and bellowed songs (fueled of course by the beer that was being sold in huge quantities.)
The German team played Italy to a tie through the 90 minutes of regular time and then through 28 of the 30 minutes of overtime. Just when everyone was getting prepared for a sudden death shoot out, the Italians scored 2 goals in the last 2 minutes to win. You have never seen so many people go so quiet so quickly. The entire nation was crushed. Italy advanced and Germany was left to dream of 2010.
On Wednesday, the French had better luck. We watched the game again from Murphy's Irish Pub because they tune in the BBC broadcast of the game with English commentary. France scored at the 30 minute mark and basically hung on for 60 more minutes to win the game. Once again, Strasbourg errupted. Place Kleber again had thousands of people out with flags, railroad flares, climbing the statues, and tearing down flagpoles. This time, however, the city was a bit better prepared. They stopped all traffic into the city when the game started and had the riot squads pre-positioned.
All in all, Strasbourg was well-behaved. Better than in Paris where one person was killed and many injured in the celebration overnight. Most of the injuries seem to come when people fall off of statues.
The cars were driving by the apartment honking until probably 2 am in the morning. Today I am dying from lack of sleep. Also, the legs are really sore as a result of standing for 3 hours for 2 nights in a row watching games.
Sorry, no pictures. Here is a link to Le Monde's photo coverage of the celebrations. Text is in French and pictures are from Paris. But it doesn't matter....was pretty much the same in Strasbourg and every other city in France after last night's victory.
Again, the final match is on Sunday. By midnight, all of France will either be celebrating or mourning. We shall see how it turns out. But it will be very interesting either way.
posted by jcweber at 2:40 PM
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