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Munich, Germany
I'm the new blue blood, I'm the great white hope, I'm the new blue blood
My lone ticket for the 2006 World Cup in Germany was for Group Match 38. At the time it seemed just as important as any other of the group matches, although I will admit that when the groups were announced I was a bit bummed. Match 38 was decided to be Serbia Montenegro versus Ivory Coast, neither of which seemed to be a real contender, neither of which I really wanted to see. Then as the group matches progressed I saw both teams unable to win or tie a game, making me think even more that I was in for an absolute dog of a game. Luckily of course I was wrong, the game was an almost unbelievably high scoring 3-2 affair that managed to remain entertaining throughout the entire ninety minutes.
Of course the reason I applied for games in Munich was less about the group and more about the stadium. Allianz Arena, designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron and called FIFA WM Stadium throughout the tournament (since Allianz is not an official FIFA sponsor) is as nice as any stadium I have ever visited and probably the only one I have ever been to that was wrapped in glowing translucent panels.
While I was fairly lucky with the weather across all four time zones, it all seemed to catch up with me in Munich. All day long it looked like rain and stayed dry, but then from the unbelievably packed U-bahn train one stop from the stadium the platforms started looking a little wet. By the time I got to the station and the long walk over the grass roofed parking decks and past the way cool lights to the security checkpoint, it had not only started raining but it was raining quite heavily. It was a rare chance to actually use my all weather Olympus Stylus 800 that I was carrying around, a fact that explains the lower resolution and the slightly different proportions, for those of you who notice such things.
While thoroughly beautiful and really quite simple, Allianz Arena is nothing like what you would see in North America. Sure there were luxury suites, but there were also no escalators or hard to escape food courts, something that made the inside of the stadium feel surprisingly open. In general I was surprised by the lack of North American style marketing by FIFA- the few World Cup gift stands I could find carried hardly anything you would want to buy or even sell, a missed opportunity depending on how you look at things.
The stadium lights up at night in three different colors, white, blue and red. Since the stadium is home to two different football teams, it can change colors depending on who's home that night- red for the always popular FC Bayern Munich or blue for the who-the-hell-are-they TSV 1860. Among FIFA's demands (including taking the Allianz Arena text down) the stadium was only allowed to glow an all neutral white. Sure it was still cool, but supposedly nowhere near as cool as the red glow, at least according to the German family I was sitting next to in the stands.
Inside the stadium, the view from my fine seat, in the mezzanine level at the far end of the stadium. Luckily despite the rain and impressive lighting and thunder, Herzog and de Meuron allowed the balance of the seats to be covered under a wonderful canopy. With the cooler temperatures from the thunderstorms, it meant that the viewing experience was really quite wonderful and severely removed from anything you would have experienced down on the pitch.
Go-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-l.
Of the two teams I had seen, the more fun fans were definitely the Serbians. Right from the dangerously overcrowded platforms at the Marienplatz U-bahn station to the chants and small fire they started inside the stadium after the first goal, they were ready for action. The Ivory Coast fans who mostly surrounded me seemed to be waving Irish flags (their flags are eerily similar) and were considerably more restrained and surprisingly all white. As far as I could see there were only a handful of French speaking black Africans at the game, something which admittedly surprised me a bit (Wikipedia backs me up here, claiming that only 4% of Ivory Coasters- there's probably a better name out there- are not black Africans).
Geopolitics aside, this first picture featuresa lone scarf carrying Serbian fan celebrating as his team went up two goals, happily living in a moment that would slowly fade as Ivory Coast scored the next three unanswered goals.
