Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 23 June 2008 / Leave a comment

Jonathan Wilson updates us with his latest movements at Euro 2008

A major irritation at this tournament: fans who spend their time looking for themselves on the big screen rather than watching the game: what is going on? A classic example came last night as Andres Iniesta was booked after 11 minutes for a foul on Fabio Grosso. Normal
people, surely, would have been looking on in concern at a key midfield presence getting himself a stupid yellow card early on. But the camera picked out a group of colourful fans, and they responded in the vacant manner to which we've become accustomed, jigging about and
grinning as though they'd just won the lottery. It's as though their greatest ambition in life was to be an extra in a bad Mastercard advert. What is this obsession with seeing yourself on TV? If you like the look of yourself enough, just buy a pocket-mirror.

Even worse, just before the end, as the camera focused on a smiling waving couple, a hand snaked across the picture from the right of the screen and waved up and down. It was shortly followed by the gurning face of a bovine idiot, looking like this was the best thing had had
ever happened to him. What was he thinking there? Hmm, I wonder what my hand looks like on TV? Here's a clue: pretty much exactly what it looks like on the end of your wrist. It's the thing with the fingers.

Does that sound tetchy? Well, I was tetchy yesterday. Partly, it was the downer that followed the massive high of Russia's victory over the Netherlands the night before. Partly it was cumulative effects of a lack of sleep. Partly it was the moronic security at Dusseldorf
Airport (partly it was the fact that I had to go to Dusseldorf to get from Bern to Vienna). But mainly it was idiot fans, willingly participants in Uefa's ongoing programme of lobotomisation. These people deserve the sort of abject fare Spain and Italy served up.

But back to Dusseldorf. To begin with, passport control was desperately slow. Why did I have to go through passport control when I was in transit, you ask? Because Germany and Austria are signed up to Schengen and Switzerland isn't, I think. Having crawled past the official - he barely glanced at mine, so God knows what was going on with the people in front - everybody was herded up a narrow flight of stairs at the top of which stood the German aviation authority's pride and joy, a failsafe way of ensuring passengers got to the right gate: an angry, stressed looking man with a moustache.

Given nobody in Dusseldorf seems to have come up with the notion of signs, he had to ask each individual passenger where they were going, and then lead them to the right corridor. Then came the slowest X-ray machines in the world, and a surfeit of dazed looking staff - early
volunteers, perhaps, for Uefa's experiments. One official pointed at a woman's bracelet, which even from 20 yards back was clearly metallic. She ignored him, walked through the scanner and, guess what? The beeper went off so she had to be personally scanned, delaying
everybody yet further. Thank you so much.

I would have missed my connection by ten minutes, but fortunately, it was over an hour late. Presumably this counts as management genius. And then, when I got back on the plane, it turned out it was exactly the same plane I'd got off two hours earlier, with exactly the same
cabin crew. So that meant another exchange with the stewardess who smilingly listened to your drinks order (coffee on the Zurich-Dusseldorf leg; apple juice between Dusseldorf and Vienna) and then gave you orange juice anyway.

Two hours of brute, boring, unimaginative football was just what I needed to round off the perfect day. Anybody who thinks penalties aren't the right way of euthanising games should be forced to watch this on a permanent loop. So should the Uefa lackeys who by the time you read this will no doubt have reimagined the game as a strategic nail-biter.

Now, sleep.

Tags: Andres Iniesta, Euro 2008 fans, Euro 2008 travelling