Oh The Madness Of It All!! Euros 2024

 There has been some football on.  Scotland made it through to the finals of the Euros in Germany. Their first game was against Germany. The pilot of the plane who  flew the team to Hamburg was told to keep the engine of the plane ticking over as the team would be flying home very soon.

                                                 

We were in Gran Canaria. On the Friday of that opening game, we were sitting at dinner and I asked the waiter for two white wines. The waiter rolled the words white wine around for a while and asked 'Scottish?' We said yes.  'You play Germany tonight?'  We said yes, and he shook his head, patted Alan on the back, wished us luck and left us the bottle.

(2) Facebook

If you can follow this link, you can see what the good people of Germany woke up to as The Tartan Army arrived. Rumours are over 150 000 travelled. We seemed to be in Glasgow airport with about 50 000 of them on the Thursday - security were having a great time battling sporrans through the scanning machines. The link is 30 seconds, put the sound up!

Meanwhile.... there was a competition between the Tartan Army and the Dutch fans as to who could sing the best. This is the Dutch effort. It'll give you an earworm all day. Watch the bottom right of the screen when the view changes from the 'front' to the 'back'.... what's happening with that huge gonk?? It'll make you smile!

Netherlands fans dance in the streets of Hamburg ahead of first Euro 2024 match (youtube.com)

 

Then this wee clip.... not that we take the game seriously or anything....  

SPINE TINGLING National Anthems - Germany vs Scotland - UEFA Euro 2024 Opening Match - YouTube

Anyway, as usual Scotland were useless.  They were disallowed a penalty playing against Switzerland, then the Swiss scored in the 100th minute and we were on our way home but with the moral victory, seemingly.

England scraped through, playing very defensively and having this effects on their fans.

 And  there was the usual facebook banter.

This was our threat to the Swiss.

The Swiss response was this...

Somebody thought we might need this to  know where the ball was supposed to go.

And the England fans....

Oh yes indeedy, the Germans put 5 past us.

And it could have been more...

 Two interesting things to note - the spine tingling song is not our national anthem. It's the fan favourite. The favourite  for the anthem is Scotland The Brave which is what pipers are playing in the first clip.   And Flower Of Scotland, which the fans are singing here is very anti English, so is in effect hate speech, and therefore we expect all 150 000 to be arrested on their return.  Smiley face.

Anyway , I knew about 15 people who went. 12 of them came back testing positive for Covid.

Sorry for the wee adverts, but I'm not good at this tech stuff!

Caro