My Night as a Football Hooligan

(Just so there’s no confusion, The Netherlands is also called Holland, and the people are Dutch. This has confused some people in the past, so I thought I'd clear that up in the beginning.)

All the other travelers I talk to about this project think I just travel around watching football games on somebody else's dime. That's really not the case at all. I spend most of my time interviewing fans and conducting other interviews outside of football. Earlier in the trip I even spent time in libraries. I've missed key goals because I was taking notes on something else, so this trip isn't all fun and games. I mean, there's a lot of fun and a lot of games, but it's not solely that.

Following football objectively for months has been an interesting experience, but it leaves a lot to the imagination. Nobody here is objective in their watching of a football game. An interesting thing I’ve learned about European football reporters is that a lot of them are fans first and foremost, which is very different from the American “no-emotion” kind of sports reporting. But wading through the fan zones with a gray or brown shirt has tended to make me stand out more than wearing some team’s color, and when I say I’m not really supporting anybody I tend to catch flak.

It’s not possible to be unaffiliated in Europe when it comes to football. It’s not possible to be disinterested, either. A German man I talked to the other day probably put it best when he said, “When a major tournament happens like this or the World Cup, the world just stops. Football is on, and everything else can wait. Stores won’t be open, people won’t go to work. Sometimes they won’t even be in their own country like the Dutch, who have all gone to Bern for three weeks. They just pick up and leave. No, football is everything here, and everything else can wait until it is over.”

I thought to get the full picture I needed to be a fan, if only for a night. I needed to get into the mix and get beer spilled on me when goals were scored. I needed to learn fan songs and chants and sing them when my country scored goals. I needed a jersey and to throw things and cheer and boo.

To do that, I needed to pick a team. I’ve always been a USA fan when it comes to football, and I’m not going to shed the red, white and, blue, despite how fun it is to watch the Europeans. But seeing as how this is a European contest, I needed to pick a European team. I’ve never been a fan of the big teams like France and Italy, but I wanted to cheer for a team that would be fun to cheer for and one that I already felt some emotion for. Seeing as I watched the first few games in Bern, which had been completely invaded by the Dutch, I already felt some pull toward them. They are looking like one of the strongest teams in the tournament, which doesn’t hurt either.

So last night I donned a bright orange Netherlands jersey and a free orange wig I came across in Bern and made my way to the Fan Zone that was already bustling at 4:00.

In all fairness, I picked the easiest night to be Dutch. They’re not a very hated team to start with, as they have a reputation for being an entertaining team that’s always good, but rarely threatens when it comes to the knock-out stages. On top of that France and Italy, who were playing in Zurich at the same time as the Netherlands-Romania game both needed the Netherlands to beat Romania in order to advance. So wading through the fan zone I caught numerous people coming up to me and in broken English telling me that I need to win tonight. I told them, not sounding Dutch at all, that I would do my best. A lot of people told me not to throw the game, because Netherlands, who were already assured of a spot in the next round, would probably benefit from seeing both Italy and France out of the tournament (though I had to keep reminding people that we’ve already thrashed both, and wouldn’t be afraid to meet them again.) So while France and Italy were cheering against each other, they were both cheering for the Netherlands, and Romania seemed completely absent.

People love the Dutch. Unlike the English and German fans, which disaster, violence and arrests seem to follow wherever they travel, the Dutch are celebrated with open arms. The headline on Bern’s paper today reads “Dank u wel, Oranje!” and there were no arrests in Bern despite an estimated 80,000 Dutch pilgrimaging to the city for their three games. Contrast that with the almost 200 that were arrested in Klagenfurt for Germany’s first game against Poland for making Nazi salutes.

The Zurich crowd was mostly composed of Italians and French (and other nationalities that are already eliminated like the Swiss, pretending to be one of the others). I even came across a group of English 20-somethings who were cheering for Italy. One of the highlights of the night was coming across two groups of Glaswegians, one of Celtic fans and one of Rangers fans, who were cheering together for Italy and making snide comments at each other. It’s nice to see different parts of this project overlapping in the weirdest ways.

Discarding both journalistic and research ethics, I fabricated a back story to melt into the Dutch crowd, seeing as I speak no more Dutch than “Ik ben een Amerikaanse journalist. Spreek u Engels?” (I am an American journalist. Do you speak English), and that clearly wasn’t going to earn me respect with the Dutch crowd. The easiest was I conspired to do this was to say that I had Dutch family (which isn’t true at all, I’m Irish and Italian, but Ireland isn’t playing and I can’t pass for Italian to save my life, nor did I really want to cheer for them). Ultimately the Dutch didn’t mind having an American in their midst, which was nice for me, and they occasionally broke into English to talk to me, which was nice. A few of the “Dutch” were actually Finnish and English who had gone to school in Holland, so I spent most of the game with them.

Since the games were on at the same time, they had to cut back and forth between them when something interesting was happening. Since we were in Zurich, the giant fan zone screen showed predominantly the Italy-France game, which was probably the more important game anyway. I didn’t miss either of the Netherlands goals, which the screen cut to in time. When the Dutch scored, everybody, Italians, Dutch, Swiss, and French, cheered, and the small little Dutch contingent got to lead the crowd in a rousing chorus of “Holland! Holland!”

By the end of the Italy-France game, which saw a French player get sent off early and two Italy goals, most of the French fans had melted out of the fan zone, and the Italians began to celebrate. They quickly accepted us Dutch into their celebratory singing and partying, with rousing choruses of “Holland! Holland!” mixed into their Italian chants of “Campioni del Mundo” and others. People sang and danced in the fan zone or headed into town to celebrate. Wandering through the Zürich streets during the night I saw both beer and fans spilling out of bars, and the air was filled with the sweet sound of drunken Italian (and a little Dutch) singing. The Dutch enclave headed for a few town bars that were more than happy to be overwhelmed by Orange-clad Hollanders. In the euphoria of the night I even managed to snag a few free drinks, which makes everything better, and also makes Kevin more apt to sing and dance when songs start up.

There is one more night to the group stages, where Russia will play Sweden and Greece will play Spain. Then the tournament moves on to the quarter final stages and I move on to Vienna, where four of the next seven games will be played. The Netherlands will play their quarter final match on Saturday in Basel, and while I won’t be there, I’ll probably be wearing orange and pretending that my family is from Rotterdam while I watch it on the giant screen in Vienna.