Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 16 June 2008 / Leave a comment

Wild Turkish delight, 26 trucks of turf, four hours sleep: the omens for German victory are gathering with the rain clouds, says Jonathan Wilson.

It was 02:09 this morning when the text arrived: "Euro 2008 SA decided to replace the playing surface at St Jakob Park following last night's match". Sometimes the Uefa machine can be efficient but unfeeling. Fortunately I wasn't asleep. I wasn't even in bed, but was still walking back from the station to the flat in which I'm staying in Bern, having made the long and crowded journey back from Geneva.

Seven hours there from Innsbruck, and about two-and-a-half hours back after the game, but thoroughly worth it for that extraordinary last 15 minutes in which Turkey came from two down to beat the Czech Republic 3-2. The only shame - and I say this just because it would have been funny, not because I particularly cared who went through - was that, amid the madness, the Czechs couldn't have found a late equaliser to force Turkey to play the penalty shoot-out with Tuncay Sanli in goal.

The whole day had had a slightly dreamlike, hallucinatory quality. I'd managed about four hours sleep in Innsbruck thanks to Spanish fans la-la-la-ing their way through the night in the street outside my hotel, and had been unable to sleep on the 0839 to Zurich because of some Russians enthusiastically playing cards (this has been a very noisy championship; oh, for the peacefulness of Baden-Baden). I'd finally fallen asleep on the connecting train from Zurich to Geneva, only to be woken by ITV's Gabriel Clarke, two seats down, engaging in telephone conversation with Colin Kazim-Richards. "And Neil sends his best as well..... Neil? Neil Warnock.... Yeah. He showed me a list of the players he'd been going to sign if only they'd gone up.... No.... No.... No, of course you're better than Palace...."

I was expecting the Turkish fans to be raucous on the train - dreading it, to be honest - but they still seemed vaguely stunned by what had happened. "I will get back to the hotel, find the highlights on TV and watch it again," said the girl who was sitting opposite me. "You know, Greece last time just kept winning and winning. Unbelievable result after unbelievable result. Now, we have beaten Switzerland in the last minute and then this. Maybe this is our time. And we are doing it playing football - not like Greece. For them it was all defend, defend, defend. For us it is all attack, attack, attack. Turkey is more beautiful than Greece."

Well, perhaps. There is such a wildness, such an unpredictability, about Turkey [27.0], and they will play with such a sense of liberation and belief that Croatia ([9.4] for the tournament) can hardly be relishing the quarter-final. The new pitch will concern them too. "The existing pitch will be removed overnight Sunday and a new pitch, brought in from the Netherlands in 26 trucks, will be laid as from Monday," Uefa's statement went on, meaning it will have under three days to bed in. When you think of the problems connected to the new pitch at Wembley, and the treacherous surface in Moscow for the Champions League final, that does not bode well.

It's not as though rain in Switzerland in June is uncommon. It was raining when I arrived, it has rained every day since and it's raining now. That's why the country is lush and green and full of lakes. It famously hammered down 54 years ago when they hosted the World Cup, and back then it had a decisive impact on the final result.

The pitch for the final, played at the Wankdorf Stadium only 10 minutes' walk from the flat where I'm writing this, became so churned up and muddy that the great Hungary team of Ferenc Puskas, Nandor Hidegkuti, Jozsef Bozsik et al couldn't get their passing game together, and after taking a two-goal lead, ended up going down 3-2 to a West Germany side they had beaten 8-3 in the group stages. For the Germans, Fritz Walter was exceptional, which is why heavy rain is still known there as Fritz-Walter-Wetter. Twenty years later, on home soil, it was after similarly heavy rains that West Germany upset the equally highly-favoured Dutch to lift the World Cup for a second time.

They still have to get past Austria tonight (they are [11.5] not to do so) but, if they do, Germany must fancy the omens ahead of a quarter-final meeting with Portugal.

Tags: Croatia, Czech Republic, Euro 2008, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey