English fans are a strange breed. You can criticise, with some justification, their general behaviour (more on that later) but you can’t fault them on their passion for their team. And for their country. Sitting a stein’s throw away from them at Nuremberg, and then being in their company willy-nilly for much of the next 24 hours, exposed this reporter to the best and worst. The best is seeing their pride in every national symbol, from flag to songs to team. When the national anthem was being sung, I saw two fans, probably several lagers down already, wrapped in each other’s arms and singing with deep emotion. Through the match every national symbol was trotted out, from “Rule Britannia” to “Football’s Coming Home”. Wayne Rooney was the object of particular affection, especially when it became clear that he was coming on.Alas, the other side of those same fans became evident on the ride back to Erlangen. It’s a short ride, about 20 minutes, but on a coach packed with chanting fans, obviously the worse for drink, every moment was hairy. I was sitting on my own outside the main compartment when I was joined by a group of young Germans — and boy, did I feel safer! Problem was, the English were beginning to get a bit out of hand, in particular teasing the couple of young German girls who were trapped in that carriage who couldn’t really figure out that their leg was being very crudely pulled. They were being egged on by a drunk American (probably the only thing more obnoxious than a drunk English fan) who seemed more loyal than the Queen’s men. The singing and chanting got louder, with little concern for anyone else and I could see the youths next to me visibly tensing; within a few minutes they too began singing, in hushed tones, their own songs.It’s easy to imagine now just how terrifying and destructive English hooliganism must have been in its heyday, in the 1970s and 1980s; the images of those trains wrecked by Manchester United and Liverpool supporters, the stories of the violence, of the policeman’s eye being sucked out after he was beaten nearly to death, came flowing back. Hooliganism is less rampant now but this tournament will put that theory to test. The English are right up there, along with the Dutch, Germans and the newcomers, the Poles. I just hope I’m not on that train.My incredible luckThe brighter side of yesterday was my incredible luck, twice over. First, getting a ticket for the England match. Let me explain how the system works. Way back in December-January, when you apply for your accreditation, you also apply for the matches you wish to see. So you plan out your itinerary, with little idea of distances, train timings or hotel bookings, and hope for the best. Indian journalists have it easy and tough; easy because we don’t have to follow any particular team. The tough part is that ticket allocation is entirely up to FIFA, and entirely arbitrary. There’s no telling why some get tickets and others don’t, except that journalists from non-playing countries are at the back of the queue. If you haven’t got a ticket, your only hope is the “waiting list”, where the allocation is equally arbitrary. Anyway, I didn’t have a ticket for the England match but was on the waiting list. So, an hour before kick-off, we were all asked to line up and be dealt our fate. As I said, I got lucky: I got the ticket, and it was right up with the best of them, at a seat with a table and a TV! Others who got tickets through regular means were non-desk, which means they seat in a seat like the fans.Brush with a starMy luck didn’t end there. After the match, the usual rush down the stair to get to the media centre was met by a procession coming up. First I saw this huge man — Peter Crouch with meat on him, if you will — with a child in his arms. There was a posse of uniformed security men all over the stairs making a kind of cordon. And then I understood why: Mrs Beckham along with young Brooklyn (and I recognized him from his England T-shrt which had his name on the back) and their personal bodyguard. Mrs B, wearing one of the 60 sunglasses she’s brought along, and possibly a Roberto Cavalli dress, is very slight (or maybe I’ve been in Germany too long!) and looked neither this way nor that as she proceeded to join her husband. That was my fleeting brush with a star, almost making up for Brian Lara’s non-appearance.
