What’s nowadays mostly marking the return to the so-called normality in Europe after the outbreak is the UEFA European Football Championship, a tournament played every four years. The tournament was scheduled for last year, but….
That is why the championship is still called EURO2020 despite happening this year.
The structure of the whole event sees 24 national teams competing match-by-match in stadiums spread through 11 European cities, rather than in only one country as it happened for all the previous editions. Begun in Rome on June 11th and finished one month later on July 11th in London, EURO2020, won by Italy, succeeding 2016 winner Portugal, motherland to the great champion Cristiano Ronaldo.
As we said, all this stuff appears to restore a normality perceptible in the people crowded in the stadiums’ stands, even if distanced and swabbed: people who have travelled from many countries only to see a match, a thing that would have sounded weird and irresponsible just a little more than one year ago.
And the crowds do not stay in the stands, as town squares and clubs are full of fans festing their beloved teams while watching the matches on a maxi-screen or listening the commentary via radio, without causing any surge in the epidemiological curve.
This has been made possible only thanks to the vaccination efforts, whose efficacy allowed 55% of European people to receive at least one dose of the vaccine and even prompted many governments to abolish the mask’s obligation. Therefore it should not surprise how, when on June 20th a correspondent of Italian news station TG1 was hugged and surrounded by fans during a live reportage on Italy’s win on Wales, the anchorman in the studio did not blame the crowd but he rather enjoyed the whole scene.
The old continent has eventually returned to fest and this championship arrives at the end of a series of experiments on the epidemiological impact of mass events like gigs or sportive games. Swabbed or vaccinated, people on the stands or in parties do not cause any increase of Covid cases, that’s the evidence which gigs and gatherings monitored by virologists has offered us, making us breathing more quietly today.
With the fear of the virus (but not the awareness of its presence) passed away, there’s again (and finally!) space for entertainment and jocular rivalries, whose main expression in Europe is football indeed. Russia Vs Poland, England Vs Scotland, Spain Vs Portugal, Italy Vs France, Germany Vs France, England Vs France, Portugal Vs France – France is not so loved through Europe – these are only few of the old-fashioned rivalries that cyclically entertain millions of fans from the football field. Each “contrast” between two nations lies on a past of mutual defeats and provocations that every true fan could enumerate by heart, remembering for example the time when French footballer Zidane headbutted the Italian Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup Finals.
All these “clashings” smell of a past once we believed would have never returned. Hence it is a pleasure to have eventually come back to these little things, instead of being always concerned to hear bad news every time watching TV. Now the latter is turned on only for sport and that’s, overall, the real happiness.
Author
Dario Pio Muccilli is the Star-Revue’s Italian correspondent, based in Turin. Email him at [email protected]
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