It was going to be the trip of a lifetime, the opportunity for me to take Callum to see Scotland compete in a major tournament for the first (and maybe last) time.
In the end, Callum couldn't make it to the first game in Munich, where Scotland faced Germany, the host nation, in the most extraordinary of stadiums.
Callum had his last GCSEs on the Friday of the Germany vs. Scotland game, and so Colin Burns, one of my best pals and from my hometown, travelled with me on Wednesday with all the excitement and giddy anticipation of teenagers travelling away for the first time ever.
We flew into Berlin late Friday evening and stayed over there (way too much to drink). Then, we travelled by train all the way through Germany from Berlin to Munich to arrive in the middle of Thursday.
We'd even managed to get tickets for the unofficial Scotland opening party where Glas Vegas and Kyle from The View were performing with about 2000 Scots people going absolutely mental with the anticipation of being part of the opening game of a major tournament for only the second time ever and for the first time since France in 1998 where we had such a close game against Brazil.
Thursday was extraordinary, an unbelievably brilliant day.
And then, on Friday, we joined 200,000 Scots who had descended on Munich.
We were in that square where about 100,000 Scots congregated in the afternoon before the game. Before we headed up to the stadium in Munich, we were filled with anticipation, not for the possible chance to beat or even draw with Germany, but just to be there on the stage at the start and just to compete.
I'd had it all planned out.
I would write a blog on Saturday, but after the bomb that exploded in the stadium in Munich, the mushroom cloud of the German football team that absolutely tore us apart, and after the way that the Scotland players just didn't seem to turn up and froze in the headlights I couldn't face writing the blog on Saturday, and so something else went in instead.
As we dissected everything endlessly through social media and then discussions and with everyone we met, I had to start thinking about was I deluded in trying to come here? Was this the right thing to do? Was it fair to inflict it upon my son who travels with me on Tuesday back for the next two games?
And then, I had to return to one of my first principles.
It's the process, never the result.
Some of my 'English friends' who might read this, who were the first people to put the boot in after the result and have a good laugh at the Scottish performance (I never understand why people think it's okay to do that), will think that I'm making excuses for spinning things around.
But the trip that Colin and I had was so extraordinary (apart from about 81 minutes of football) that it would be hard to put it down, hard to centre it around the result of the game and not the process that we've gone through for those three days.
Even the 81 minutes of football in which Germany tore us apart were still a riot. The Scottish fans are what they say they are—" No, Scotland, no party," after all. It took a fifth goal by Germany close to the end of the game to even partly silence the Scotland fans behind the goal in Germany.
As the dust is properly settling, I will look back on elements of the three days I spent with Colin in Germany for the opening game of Euro 2024 as some of the most extraordinary memories I've ever had, and that was the point, wasn't it?
I know it's a football competition, and we're there to win games and to progress to next rounds, all of that stuff but Scotland have broken my heart on so many occasions, and you don't get to choose your football team, your football team is the one that you develop into because of experiences that you've had before and Scotland are my football team as opposed to other people who have club football teams.
So what Scotland gave us over those three days was an extraordinary sense of anticipation and extraordinary memories with 200,000 other fellow countrymen in a city in Munich, where we were wonderfully welcomed and had the most amazing time with the German population.
For me and Callum, it's on to the two other games now. It's a chance to share that type of thing, that type of experience, that type of memory with my son and me on a crazy interrailing trip around Europe.
I'm not confident about the results, but it doesn't matter.
I am there for the memories, for the experience, for everything that goes around, the football.
Blog Post Number - 3841
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