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Football is rarely just football. When the men’s European Championship kicks off in Munich on Friday, with host Germany facing Scotland, it does so against a backdrop of political turmoil. Ukraine is at war, the tournament’s only debutant Georgia is torn between the EU and Russia and, before the final in Berlin, the French far-right may enter government for the first time since 1944.
These issues will intrude on to the field. “Sport is always, at least indirectly, politics,” says tournament director and former German captain Philipp Lahm.
Two of the countries facing political upheaval are the bookmakers’ favourites, England and France. Since being appointed England manager in 2016, Gareth Southgate has become the voice of a new kind of Englishness: he stands for a multicultural nation, which can honour both his war-veteran grandfather and England’s young black footballers.
His England is also modest: it doesn’t expect to win just because it invented the game. Instead, it aspires to learn from more successful European rivals.
But this modesty is becoming less appropriate. England is now arguably Europe’s best talent factory. The three players at Euro 2024 with the highest transfer market value, as assessed by the Lausanne-based CIES Football Observatory, are all young Englishmen: Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka. (French superstar Kylian Mbappé came 15th based on contract duration, since CIES’s rankings were compiled when he was about to move to Real Madrid on a free transfer.)
So prodigious is England’s talent stream that half the squad in Germany — including youngsters such as Cole Palmer and Kobbie Mainoo — were not at the World Cup in Qatar 18 months ago.
That means that for the first time in Southgate’s reign, a trophy is demanded. If it isn’t achieved, European fans can enjoy their traditional laugh at England. Could an early failure — and the attendant national hangover — impact the UK’s election on July 4, a day before the quarter-finals begin?
British psephologists first asked a version of this question in 1970, when the incumbent Labour party unexpectedly lost the general election held four days after West Germany knocked England out of the World Cup. Tony Crosland, a cabinet minister, blamed Labour’s defeat partly on “the disgruntled Match of the Day millions”. Few historians share that analysis. This year, with Labour more than 20 points ahead in the polls, no mere football defeat could move the dial.
The run-off of France’s legislative elections is on July 7, before the semi-finals. The far-right National Rally could win enough seats to nominate the prime minister. If France is still in the tournament, a new anti-immigrant government could find itself pitted against a national team full of players of immigrant origin.
The two forces have faced off intermittently since 1996 when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of the current leader Marine, said: “It is a bit artificial to bring players from abroad and call it the French team”. Some of today’s players might speak out against the far right, as Zinedine Zidane did before the 2002 election.
French forward Ousmane Dembélé on Thursday called on people to “go and vote” in the legislative elections. Without mentioning National Rally, he said: “The alarm bell has rung. I think it’s necessary to mobilise to vote.”
Ukraine has bigger problems. In an official video announcing the squad, soldiers and ordinary citizens spoke the names of players, many of whom donate humanitarian and military aid to their country. The team qualified despite having to train and play abroad since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
When Georgia — powered by Napoli winger Khvicha “Kvaradona” Kvaratskhelia — qualified in March, fans celebrated on the streets. Then Tbilisi filled with pro-European protesters demonstrating against the so-called Russian law, which forces civil rights groups and media outlets receiving overseas funds to register as “foreign agents”.
Protests faded after parliament approved the law last month. But footballing victories could fill the streets again, potentially with political knock-on effects.
Every first-round match is sold out. Millions more will watch at fan zones in city squares, parks or Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. But many Germans are despondent about their own team, which has floundered since winning the World Cup in 2014. In a poll by the SINUS Institute and YouGov, 39 per cent agreed that their country’s professional football had hit its lowest point.
They might be underestimating their chances. Home advantage is worth nearly a goal a game in international football. Add to that the return to the national team of playmaker Toni Kroos, 34, for his last tournament before retiring from football this summer. Euro 2024 will probably also be the international goodbye for Croatia’s Luka Modrić, 38, and France’s N’Golo Kanté, 33, though Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, 39, seems to intend to play forever.
The first round will take a fortnight to weed out only eight of the 24 starting teams. Much of that phase will be of lower quality than the club football of the Champions League and English Premier League. International tournaments are becoming the sport’s second tier, partly because national teams lack the training time of club sides to refine their interplay.
But the knockout rounds should deliver spectacle. A European Championship features almost all the world’s best national teams, most of which now play attacking football. Even as the continent becomes a marginal player in geopolitics, football remains something Europe does better than anyone except Argentina.