New top story from Time: England vs Germany Offers End to 25 Years of Hurt for One Man, and a Nation

https://ift.tt/3dnsCjr

Most English people of a certain age and disposition can remember where they were on the evening of June 26, 1996: perched on the edge of their seat in front of a television set, watching England play Germany in the semi-finals of the UEFA European Soccer Championship.

It was the height of the Britpop era. Later that summer, Oasis would play a pair of concerts to 250,000 people in Knebworth House, Hertfordshire (I was one of them, aged 16). That July, the Spice Girls released their single ‘Wannabe’ in the UK and unleashed Girl Power on the world. The musty Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher was in decline, to be replaced the following year by the sterile charm of Tony Blair and his New Labour project.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But on this day football was coming home. England, hosting the tournament and playing on its home turf of Wembley Stadium, had been given the chance to break a thirty-year streak without an international trophy against its fiercest rival: Germany. Since beating West Germany in the World Cup final in 1966, England had been knocked out of the tournament by its rival twice — once in 1970, and again in 1990. Here was a chance for revenge.

The tabloids swelled with jingoistic fervor straying into xenophobia — one, The Daily Mirror, mocked up members of the England team as WW2 soldiers under the headline “ACHTUNG! SURRENDER! For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over.” The editor, a 31-year-old Piers Morgan, apologized to anyone the paper had offended, and humbly canceled plans to drive a tank to the Germany Embassy.

The game ended in a tie, and went to a penalty shootout. The five named penalty takers on each team found the back of the net. Then up stepped a young defender, Gareth Southgate, to take the sixth penalty. He shot, yet he did not score, and for a brief instant became the most hated man in England. Images of his horrorstruck face remain the iconic image of the night. Germany went on to win the shootout, the game and the tournament.

For some of us, the pain of Euro 96 has not gone away. To this day, English fans sing the tournament anthem “Three Lions on a Shirt (Football’s Coming Home)” on the terraces and in the pubs. The sporting rivalry with Germany also lingers, after the Germans knocked England out of the World Cup once again in 2010. Southgate, at least, managed to recover. He appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial later that year poking fun at his infamy, and after retiring as a player went on to become a successful manager.

Now Southgate has a chance at redemption, as the team he manages today — England — on Tuesday faces its old rivals in the round of 16, a quarter century and three days after his penalty miss.

On paper, the matchup looks to favor England. Germany is a team in transition, and scraped through the tournament’s group stage after losing to France and cobbling together a tie with Hungary. England’s young team reached the World Cup semifinal under Southgate in 2018, and while The Three Lions have not dazzled so far in this tournament, they have also not yet conceded a goal. As Nick Ames observed in The Guardian, the traditional qualities of each team are reversed; this year, it’s an unflashy yet stable England vs a disordered, mercurial Germany.

But crunch matches frequently defy statistics, as the ability to cope under the weight of expectation becomes just as important as skill and experience. The stakes of historic rivalries like this one can do funny things to a player’s brain. They can also meddle with a nation’s psyche.

As the tabloid headlines of 1996 illustrated, this specific bilateral relationship taps into the dominant nationalistic impulse of a certain kind of English person — the famed “Dunkirk spirit” of World War II, where our grandparents and great-grandparents kept fighting against improbable odds, and came out on top. Listen to the chants on Tuesday night, and you might yet hear “Two world wars and one world cup, doo-dah doo-dah” (to the tune of Camptown Races).

But on this island, Germany these days is the avatar not of fascism run amok but the stifling bureaucracy of the European project the U.K. voted to leave in 2016, almost exactly five years ago. As the European Union’s foremost champion, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a particular target of the pro-Brexit press, and its readers.

Just ahead of the match, Merkel’s recommendation that Brits not be allowed to travel to the E.U. this summer amid rising cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant received plenty of furious denunciation by the media. (HERR WE GO AGAIN, fumed The Sun). One joke doing the rounds suggests that if football really is coming home, it will need to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival.

Defeat for Germany, then, would come with a side order of schadenfreude from Brexit-loving middle Englanders. But it’s worth considering what has changed since 1996, especially the more vibrant, less homogenous home football might be returning to. Today, about 14% of the U.K. population are immigrants, up from just under 8% twenty-five years ago. The England squad of 22 in 1996 had three people of color; in 2020, the squad of 30 had 11 members from the BAME community.

Racism is still a problem in the game, as it is in the country — but now, the team is committed to raising awareness of it, by taking the knee before kickoff (to the horror of the core Brexit-voting demographic). For these young players, and for many of their supporters of the same age, the political dimension of the contest between England vs Germany is far less important than the political dimension of competing, full stop.

The personal stakes may also be less high. When Gareth Southgate missed his penalty, England striker Marcus Rashford was still 18 months away from being born. Having a young squad unaware of the burden of history “can be a positive thing,” vice-captain Jordan Henderson told the media last week. “A lot of these lads just go out and play, enjoy the game, play with no fear. That’s what they need to do again.”

It will be left to those of us of a certain age, who remember the frenzy of that summer a generation ago, to wait for redemption — and watch for the look that passes over Gareth Southgate’s face when the final whistle blows.

Comments

New top story from Time: The ‘Badass Chief of Staff’ of Turkey’s Opposition Faces Years in Jail After Challenging Erdogan’s Power. She’s Not Backing Down

https://ift.tt/2ZKUTZP Snow brings back memories for Dr. Canan Kaftancioglu. Of recess snowball fights in the Black Sea village where she grew up, of warming her hands at her elementary school’s stove before class — and of discovering a poem by Turkish writer Ataol Behramoglu, a favorite of a beloved uncle who would bring left-wing newspapers to her childhood home and discuss the articles inside. “It is about how the snow brings equality between people,” Kaftancioglu says of the poem. “In the snow, we build a new, more equal world.” The Turkish politician is speaking through an interpreter at her friends’ apartment in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, seated in an armchair with a beige and brown-spotted dog curled up beside her. In a matter of days or weeks but likely not months, Kaftancioglu expects she will be taken to jail. For now, she’d rather focus on her work: the poverty rate is increasing, and people in her city are suffering. Kaftancioglu represents something unfamil...

FOX NEWS: Father who was given months to live speaks out on thyroid cancer misconceptions A father who was told he had six months to a year to live when he got gravely ill from medullary thyroid cancer in 2019 has surpassed his doctor’s prediction, and he hopes others become “purveyors of positivity” after hearing his story.

Father who was given months to live speaks out on thyroid cancer misconceptions A father who was told he had six months to a year to live when he got gravely ill from medullary thyroid cancer in 2019 has surpassed his doctor’s prediction, and he hopes others become “purveyors of positivity” after hearing his story. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2XlinXm

New top story from Time: How Spirited Away Changed Animation Forever

https://ift.tt/3xVoGP5 Twenty years ago, on July 20, 2001, a film that would become one of the most celebrated animated movies of all time hit theaters in Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, titled Spirited Away in English, would leave an indelible mark on animation in the 21st century. The movie arrived at a time when animation was widely perceived as a genre solely for children, and when cultural differences often became barriers to the global distribution of animated works. Spirited Away shattered preconceived notions about the art form and also proved that, as a film created in Japanese with elements of Japanese folklore central to its core, it could resonate deeply with audiences around the world. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The story follows an ordinary 10-year-old girl, Chihiro, as she arrives at a deserted theme park that turns out to be a realm of gods and spirits. After an overeating incident ...

UK returnee tests positive for COVID-19 in Tripura https://ift.tt/3rsk8Nf

A man who has recently returned from the United Kingdom has tested positive for COVID-19 in Tripura, but it is yet to be ascertained whether he has been infected by the mutant coronavirus strain, a senior official said on Saturday.

New top story from Time: Deaths and Blackouts Have Hit the U.S. Northwest Due to the Unprecedented Heat Wave

https://ift.tt/2UgzckI SPOKANE, Wash. — The unprecedented Northwest U.S. heat wave that slammed Seattle and Portland, Oregon, moved inland Tuesday — prompting a electrical utility in Spokane, Washington, to resume rolling blackouts amid heavy power demand. Officials said a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to the intense heat that began late last week. The dangerous weather that gave Seattle and Portland consecutive days of record high temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celcius) was expected to ease in those cities. But inland Spokane saw temperatures spike. The National Weather Service said the mercury reached 109 F (42.2 C) in Spokane— the highest temperature ever recorded there. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] About 9,300 Avista Utilities customers in Spokane lost power on Monday and the company said more planned blackouts began on Tuesday afternoon in the city of about 220,000 people. “We try to limit outages to one hour per...

New top story from Time: A Conversation with Filmmaker Adam Curtis on Power, Technology and How Ideas Get Into People’s Heads

https://ift.tt/2NQRzcY The British filmmaker Adam Curtis may work for the BBC, a bastion of the British elite, but over a decades-long career, he has cemented himself as a cult favorite. He is best known as the pioneer of a radical and unique style of filmmaking, combining reels of unseen archive footage, evocative music, and winding narratives to tell sweeping stories of 20th and 21st century history that challenge the conventional wisdom. “I’ve never thought of myself as a documentary maker,” he says. “I’m a journalist.” On Feb. 11, Curtis dropped his latest epic: Can’t Get You Out of My Head , an eight hour history of individualism, split up over six episodes. Subtitled “An emotional history of the modern world,” the goal of the series, Curtis says, was to unpack how we came to live in a society designed around the individual, but where people increasingly feel anxious and uncertain. It’s a big question, and Curtis attempts to answer it by taking us on a winding journ...

New top story from Time: How Are Activists Managing Dissension Within the ‘Defund the Police’ Movement?

https://ift.tt/3qRRGDU In June 2020, the Minneapolis city council announced plans to disband its police department following the killing of George Floyd . The council’s decision came after days of protesting and unrest in the city—and across the country —related to Floyd’s death and calls for larger-scale accountability from law enforcement. Central in many of these calls-for-action was a phrase soon to go global: “defund the police.” Eight months later, however, and the city’s police department has not been dissolved, though a lot has happened in the interim; Minneapolis’ struggle to implement meaningful reforms serves as a microcosm of how the “defund the police” movement has impacted the country. Council members who initially supported the idea have walked back their positions. In August the city charter delayed the council’s proposal to disband the police pending further review, only to reject the proposal entirely in November. ( Instead, there have been some rollback...

US NSA Jake Sullivan dials Indian counterpart Ajit Doval, reaffirms commitment for strong, enduring relations https://ift.tt/3agErFM

America’s new National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in his first call with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval on Wednesday reaffirmed the commitment of President Joe Biden to a strong and enduring bilateral strategic partnership based on shared commitment to democracy, the White House said.

New top story from Time: What Learned About Ourselves In the First Year of the Pandemic

https://ift.tt/3dTjNPp A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter . SUBSCRIBE HERE to have an It’s Not Just You essay delivered to your inbox every Sunday. March is the anteroom of months. It’s both the end of last year’s winter and the beginning of the new year’s spring. It’s half slush, half-quixotic hope. I had my first baby in March–a child that arrived nine days late, already a solid little being with startling almond eyes and the appetite of a toddler. I had no idea what I was doing; we two just hunkered down and tried to figure each other out. I still flounder at the start of every March, for different reasons every year, staggering out of February a soggy, angsty creature whose clothes don’t fit. But somehow, I slip-slide toward the end of the month, and things start to make sense. Maybe the vernal equinox is what helps get us back on track every spring. It’s that moment, usually, on the 20th or 21st of March, wh...

New top story from Time: The Split in How Americans Think About Our Collective Past Is Real—But There’s a Way Out of the ‘History Wars’

https://ift.tt/3gOBoti What are Americans supposed to know about the history of their country? Whose stories should be taught in classrooms, whose should be omitted and who decides? Such questions inform recent education bills like Louisiana’s HB564 and Iowa’s HF802 , which prohibit the teaching of “divisive concepts” and are just two of the latest entrants in an often-contentious dialogue reaching back to the founding of the Republic itself. But while there’s been a steady stream of opinions from politicians, pundits and professors about where to find “Historical Truth,” it’s always been hard to know how exactly the American public would answer these questions. Our recent national survey of people’s understandings and uses of the past, the full results of which will be published this summer, gives voice to the unheard masses. A collaboration between the American Historical Association and Fairleigh Dickinson University , and funded by the National Endowment for the Hu...

My precise view

Search This Blog