Football can unite us more than words can.
Football can unite us more than words can.
An ode to European football and the simple culture of popular sports, music and beer garden tables. This is Europe at its best, as seen from Berlin.
It's Sunday the 23rd of June; the weather isn't quite summer yet, but Berlin - a little further north than London or Paris - is offering one of those long evenings characteristic of Midsummer's week.
I am walking through the streets of Prenzlauer Berg, the East Berlin district where I live, on my way, like many others, to a venue set up for public viewing with friends: some food, plenty of beer, and conversation - but not too much. Tonight is Germany's game and, as you may know, the team has completed the first round of qualifying for Euro 2024 with a well-deserved draw.
What I see along the way surprises me in a pleasant way, especially in 2024, when all we hear about is a disintegrating society, a country uncomfortable with its role as a land of migration, tribal conflicts and indifference. Two girls, already dressed for the match, the black-red-gold flag painted on their cheeks, are talking in English: one of them is a new Berliner, not yet able to speak German. A car passes with a couple: he with a short beard, dark skin, she in a hijab. The German flag, the official emblem of this European Championship, was fluttering from the windows of the car.
As I continue towards the heart of the neighbourhood, I see a father with his two children - a boy and a girl - both dressed as mini-footballers, bent over the Stolpersteine, the stumbling stones that commemorate the victims of the Shoah. There's room for remembrance as well as happiness. Just before my destination, I see a colourful table outside a small restaurant: fans of different national teams - Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands - sitting together. They must be friends, I think.
I have spent a lifetime working in popular culture - first news and commercial broadcasting, then sports media, now marketing and communications - and although I often indulge in high culture and delve into my historical and political passions, I know that events like this - European football at its best - do more to create a sense of unity than ten institutional communication campaigns, a hundred essays of three hundred pages, a thousand boring conferences of pretentious intellectuals talking to their peers.
Long live football! Long live popular sport! Long live collective events that are easy to understand, beautiful to watch and open to all. The next day, an intellectual friend of mine told me that she and her husband were not interested in football, only tennis and skiing.
Ignoring football during the European Championship is like ignoring the Superbowl in the United States and saying you prefer golf. Could a true American ignore the Superbowl without feeling a little less American? And if we are talking about music rather than sport, could a Brit say that he has never listened to the Beatles because of his preference for classical music without feeling a little less British?
We desperately need it: a pan-European popular culture.
This is the whole distance between a certain way of living Europe - abstract and not really passionate - and the desire to develop here, from below and in the streets, a European feeling. This sentiment can only be popular, otherwise it's not a sentiment, it's just an idea.
It needs popular culture:
sport, music, television,
in order to develop this feeling.
Europe is a thought that still needs to become a feeling. The phrase I use in this article has been with me for ten years: since I heard it uttered by Bono Vox exactly ten years ago, in 2014, at the European People's Party (EPP) Congress in Dublin. In school text books, under the heading of great speeches that inspired the development of the European Union, you can find Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, Joachim Gauck, Jacques Delors. For me, the words of Bono Vox remain the greatest inspiration: delivered by a rocker, a popular artist, a master of simple sounds and words. The kind of words that only popular culture can give us.
Hearing this speech again, ten years later.
Listen entirely or start at 6:30, where the call for Europe to become a sentiment begins:
Here the main text transcribed, with some cuts:
I love Europe. For all our achievements, nearly 60 years after the Treaty of Rome, Europe is an economic entity that still needs to become a social entity. Europe is a thought that still needs to become a feeling.
That’s right, Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling. Now, this is the point when right-minded—or, er, centre-right minded—politicians start squirming in their seats. (…)
Our relationships are what define us. And relationships are the stuff of emotion, are they not. And I want just for a second to allow myself to get emotional about project Europe. Even just the fact it still exists. Because 12 months ago, that didn’t look so certain, did it? The euro and all that. I am still extremely grateful it exists, and want to thank you all for holding on to it so tightly.
Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling. When Americans talk about their United States, they get all misty eyed, they get emotional. Hell, when the Irish talk about the United States, we get misty eyed.
Do we think that way about Europe? And if not why not?
There are 54 countries on the continent of Africa and the people who live in them call themselves Africans. How many of us call ourselves Europeans? I think more of us would if we were united not just by bonds of interest, but by bonds of affection… if we cared more about each other’s pain… would we do something more to help each other?
(…) Chancellor Merkel, you said in 2007: “We do not really need to give a soul to Europe—it already has one.” Well Chancellor, I agree, but maybe you agree we find it tough to show.
I’d argue that the soul of Europe is most visible when we’re facing outward. When we’re facing inward, we’re Irish, you’re German, you’re French… we’re us, you’re them… Of course, we’re not always going to agree. That’s democracy.
But facing outward, that’s when we become one: that’s when we’re EUROPE:(…) when we unite around something bigger than ourselves, like for example the Eurovision Song Contest… ok, no … the champions league… no…. even better, when we behave like champions in Brussels ….like last year, when the Parliament, President Barroso, many of you here, and our own Minister Richard Bruton did something remarkable. You passed an anti corruption law--- requiring oil and gas companies to make public what they pay for mining rights – so that in poorer countries more of the wealth under the ground ends up in the hands of those that live above it. (…)
If anyone wants to see how it plays out when you’ve got no transparency, you might ask our Ukrainian friends. We’ve all heard about Yanukovych did you read about his vast opulent mansion, which even a rock star might find… a bit excessive. You may have read Global Witness and a Ukrainian NGO are reporting that this place was part-owned by an anonymous UK shell company—perfectly legal, and perfectly corrupt.
When Europe stops and exposes corruption… Europe reveals its soul. We know there are other opportunities, and even in this election year, these don’t have to be partisan issues. Things like a financial transaction tax, which could be used to fight extreme poverty and help unemployed young people in Europe and in Africa. This stuff is not left or right. It’s not Irish or French-ish. Neither are these African issues, or Middle Eastern. They are human issues, and you—as you stand, and when you serve—can make clear we see these as Europe’s concern.
(…) Let’s remember where the idea of One Europe really came from: out of war, out of what Churchill in 1946 called “the tragedy of Europe.” The alternative, he said, to “tearing each other to pieces,” was “to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety, and in freedom.”
Aren’t those still the stakes today? After all, the rise of extreme nationalism is happening again, and don’t mean nationalism as in “I’m proud to be Irish.” Which I am. You know the kind of nationalism I mean. The ugly kind. The primal hate.
Especially when times are tough, we see Europeans turning against migrants, turning against Roma, turning against immigrants… searching for scapegoats. Sometimes it’s a Jewish scapegoat… Sometimes a Roma one. Sometimes African, sometimes gay… Nationalism isn’t choosy. It’s an equal opportunity hater.
But make no mistake: its real victim is the idea behind Europe. See, nationalism depends on the idea of purity. And Europe depends on this idea of plurality.
But I want to argue, “Europe” cannot be just a logical alternative to nationalism, it must become an impassioned one—an affair of the heart as well as the head. Our plurality… needs to show itself with purpose. Like that gaelic word, meiheal. We hear that ideal… by many different names… from the young European activists who are telling us—telling you, to be specific—to stand by the poorest of the poor. (…)
We hear that ideal from the activists who risked—and in some cases lost—their lives in Maidan, Independence Square, in Kiev. One of those activists, I read, made a handwritten sign that said, “Europe Starts With You.” And she stood alone, this young woman, I believe her name is Anastasiia, with her sign beside the monument. This was back in dark cold November (2013). Before the violence. Before the crowds had started to build. “Europe Starts With You.” That’s what she wrote, that was her challenge to her fellow Ukrainians.
But the challenge is not just theirs—it is ours. In that speech of 1946, Winston Churchill looked back at the collapse of the League of Nations—that well-intentioned instrument that failed to keep the peace. “The League of Nations,” the great man said, “did not fail because of its principles or conceptions. It failed because these principles were deserted by those States who had brought it into being.”
Nearly seven decades later, we know Europe is strong. And Europe can be stronger still. Our principles will not fail us. But in the spirit of Sir Winston, let us not fail our principles. Because the world needs Europe. And Europe starts with us. Thank you.
Bono’s speech at the European People’s Party Congress in Dublin, 7th March 2014
Greetings from Berlin,
your Italian-German-European
Valentina