It couldn't be nicer: The finals of the European Football Championship began on Friday in Rome with a tailor-made start.
This Saturday the transcontinental spectacle will continue in Baku, Copenhagen and Saint Petersburg.
And if only a few rays of Rome's glamor remain until the final in London's Wembley Stadium on July 11th, then this tournament, which was previously criticized as a potential super spreader event, can become a veritable football festival in eleven countries.
Matthias Rüb
Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.
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Anyone who experienced the day of anticipation in the Eternal City and watched the game in the Olympic Stadium that evening must wish for such a success with all their hearts.
But especially in Germany, after a year and a half of a pandemic, many instructive warnings seem to have forgotten the liberating wishes.
Not so in Italy, where the virus, which originated in China, is known to have ravaged Europe first and worst at first.
It started with the weather.
Most beautiful sunshine, a little humid towards the afternoon, a little cooling towards the evening.
Even weather god Jupiter showed himself to be Tifoso: Thunderstorms with heavy rain raged in some places in the capital region of Lazio and in Rome in the early evening, but the area around the Stadio Olimpico on Viale dei Gladiatori was spared.
The Italians are wide awake anyway
The whole day long Italian and Turkish fans celebrated together all over Rome, in the "Football Village" on the Piazza del Popolo there was a festival atmosphere. The opening ceremony kept the balance between frugal and furious. Italy's national tenor Andrea Bocelli sang “Nessun Dorma” (Nobody sleeps!) From Puccini's Turandot, but the nation was wide awake anyway. U2 singer Bono, guitarist The Edge and DJ Martin Garrix performed additional music, including the official EM song “We Are The People”.
The first act of the inevitable frills was fireworks, combined with significant emissions development in and around the stadium.
But the second act of frills was emission-free: shortly before kick-off, the Adidas match ball was driven to the center circle by a remote-controlled, small model car from the tournament sponsor Volkswagen, an electric vehicle of course.
The official play equipment of the EM is called “Uniforia”.
The made-up word, so one learns, is made up of the terms “Unity” (unity) and “Euphoria” (enthusiasm).
So much folklore of unity enthusiasm must be evident in a time ravaged by the virus, which has marked our continent with internal and external boundaries as it has not been in living memory.
Both teams showed how enthusiastic it really is in (post) pandemic Europe while fervently singing their respective anthems: the Turkish “Istiklal Marsi” (independence march) and the Italian national song “Fratelli d'Italia” (Brothers of Italy).
Can you imagine that the European song (joy of beautiful sparkles of the gods) will ever be shouted out so heartily by 22 men (or women) on the lawn, by tens of thousands of spectators in the stands and possibly millions in front of the screens?
A huge traffic jam before the game
In any case, in Italy, a good one and a half years after the outbreak of the pandemic in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, after three waves of infections and two nationwide lockdowns, the urge for a national awakening can be felt. From Monday on, half of all twenty regions of the country, where two thirds of the country's almost 60 million inhabitants live, will be considered the “white zone” with the lowest risk of infection and the fewest restrictions.