Opposites attract

The Africa Cup of Nations was in Germany. I wore Mali’s famous eagle shirt to Ukraine’s emotional 2-1 win over Slovakia in Düsseldorf. An Irish man spotted my unusual attire in the stadium toilets. “Mali eh.” I was the only man from Mali at Euro 2024, I claimed. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that” he replied. I may not have travelled from Bamako, but I was one of few football fans to have sampled AFCON and the European Championships in 2024. They were diametric opposites, but both attractive tournaments in their own different ways.

AFCON tickets were much easier to buy and far cheaper. It cost £88 for thirteen matches including three quarter finals and some top category tickets. I paid just £1.30 for a second round match in Bouaké. Euros tickets were in high demand and no bargain. I applied for twenty matches in the initial application phase and got nothing. I was more fortunate in the first resale window and picked up tickets to four matches in the middling categories for a total of £360.

I was relieved to be going to the Euros. I had planned long in advance, booking hotels a year before at reasonable prices. It would have been crushing to have had to cancel them all. It was much harder to even find hotels that would respond to my messages in Ivory Coast. But there was more interrogation on arrival at Stuttgart airport than in Abidjan. “Why are you visiting Germany?” Football. “Which games are you attending?” I recited my list. “How much money do you have?” Errr, thirty euros. There was a startled look. ‘You have a credit or debit card?’ I did, although, as in Ivory Coast, Germany still loves cash over card.

The stadium experiences were vastly different. Security was lighter at the Euros, with no jobsworths confiscating my pens or being confused by a notepad. Germany’s gleaming arenas were ready made for tournament football and, remarkably, half of the ten from Euro 2024 will host Bundesliga 2 matches next season. It remains unsure whether even local Ivorian teams will use many of the stadiums built for AFCON.

Athletics tracks made viewing AFCON matches harder, and dissipated the atmosphere created by enthusiastic fan groups. Germany’s stadiums were packed with buzzing fans, the majority from the countries playing. The noise at Belgium’s 2-0 victory over Romania in Cologne’s traditional four-stand ground was deafening from both sets of fans. It might have been the best atmosphere from my sixty major tournament matches, helped by a liberal attitude to drinking beer in the host cities, on the streets and within the stadiums. Indeed, Cologne is so proud of its brewing heritage that it forced organisers to sell unbranded kölsch in the stadium despite Bitburger being the Euros’ official beer sponsor.

No beer was sold at AFCON matches. Water was more important to survive high temperatures and humidity, especially during six hours of a goalless double header in Korhogo. Plastic beer cups were easy missiles for the misguided at Euro 2024, but it was harder to throw small packets of water over a running track, although plenty rained down after the hosts’ 4-0 defeat to Equatorial Guinea. Euros beer cups proved good mementos as, unlike in Ivory Coast with its copious replica shirts, there was little else to buy in Germany.

Fan parks may have been an afterthought at AFCON, but were thriving hubs in Germany. There was even free sun screen in Stuttgart to protect pasty Danes and Scots. I watched England’s tentative display against Denmark on the largest of three giant screens in Cologne with fellow England fans. Scots, watching on the other screens, cheered the Danes’ equaliser, and replays of it. But it was good-natured banter, as football should be.

Restaurants and bars in Cologne were well set up for football viewing, with large screens inside and out. The chocolate fondant at Namos restaurant was certainly better than the televised goalless affair between France and the Netherlands. These reminded me of the maquis in Ivory Coast, informal streetside eateries which exploded into life when the football was on in the evening. The main difference was every match was broadcast on mainstream television in Ivory Coast, whilst German subscription channel Magenta had exclusive rights for some Euro 2024 games. I missed most of the second half of Slovenia’s match against Serbia as I fruitlessly searched for a bar with Magenta.

I used spare days in Ivory Coast to search for hippos, explore markets and watch a mesmeric panther dance. In Germany, I searched for the ultimate white wine in the Mosel Valley, far removed from the host cities. But I still bumped into some Scots wine tasting at Schwaab vineyard and saw tartan-clad men waiting for a train at a suburban station 100kms away from their match against Switzerland in Cologne. Indeed, a few Scots even appeared in their blue jerseys and, less comfortably, kilts at Aachener Weiher parkrun, the first in the parkrun alphabet.

Ivory Coast was niche, whilst Germany was very social. I met with lots of football friends, including Alfie who had interviewed me for his student newspaper Roar during lockdown and was now watching the Three Lions purr. But the tournament’s popularity meant there were no impromptu meets as in West Africa, where I bumped into Namibia manager Collin Benjamin and Cameroon forward Toko Ekambi’s cousin. I had travelled to Ivory Coast with Allan and Stu, but took in the Euros with my partner who loves the colour of international football. She even believed me when I joked that the groups in the Euros had been seeded based on the teams’ shirt colours.

Travelling around Ivory Coast required Monsieur Bamba’s driving skills and ear-plugs to block out an on-board preacher on the bus between Abidjan and Yamoussoukro. Germany should have been much more straightforward. Dennis, who I had met only once before at the San Siro last year, kindly gave us a lift from Stuttgart airport. We piled into his estate car, stuffed full of footballs from a training session with his sons. A crumpled copy of ‘Europe United‘ was on the front seat. “Did you drop it in the bath?” I asked before signing it with a flourish. Dennis drove us to our hotel, stopping at a dark viewpoint, and swerving Italian drivers beeping their horns after their victory against Albania. We, like many, then experienced endless rail delays. Indeed, we took fourteen planes and trains to and within Germany, and the only one that was on time was our Ryanair flight to Stansted.

Germany may have problems with trains, credit cards and a strange reluctance to serve tap water. But it was a proper football host with a buzz in the stadiums and cities that will hard to be replicate in future tournaments spread over multiple countries. “Allez les Bleus” echoed around Düsseldorf’s Altstadt into the early hours after France’s own goal victory over Austria. Alfie said to me “I’m a bit sad. Will there ever be a tournament as good as this again.”

I had been soaked by downpours, squashed by Scots on trams, dehydrated by pork and beer, and paid £132 to sit behind an Israeli who filmed that France match in its entirety. Yet it had been great, and may never be the same again. But there are always new opportunities in football. AFCON spread across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda could be the football hipsters’ choice for 2027.