Heading into Euro 2024, which begins Friday, one theme leaps out at you – nothing.
Nobody is complaining about the choice of host nation (Germany). No one is appalled by the cost (minimal, as these things go).
Despite half-hearted efforts to stir fears about hooliganism, nobody’s panicking about that. No outrages about corruption or local politics or something that this or that nitwit said.
Just a lot of sports talk and leering photos of Jude Bellingham, who is the new David Beckham.
It is almost as though we have finally agreed to try to enjoy sports on their own terms.
For a while now, every big tournament has required a loud discussion up front about why it should not be held in the first place.
In Qatar 2022, it was workers’ and LGBTQ rights.
At Beijing 2022, it was China.
At Tokyo 2020, it was holding a Games at the tail end of the pandemic.
At Russia 2018, it was Russia.
We could go on like this for the length of the column.
The real sport of international sport has become explaining to people all the reasons that international sport is bad for you. It’s bad for the environment. It’s bad for local economies. It disadvantages the already disadvantaged. Worst of all, someone has to win, which is unfair to the losers.
But right now, with the Euro about to begin and the Paris Olympics six weeks off, you can feel something changing. That something is nothing.
What’s changed? Also nothing. None of the features of a big tournament that upset people are different. It’s still a terrific swindle that produces national sticker shock at the end. Like any night out, it’s a lot more fun for guests than it is for the person who has to do the dishes.
But after a quarter century of complaining, perhaps it has begun to dawn on people that they have one of two options – enjoy the party, or stop doing parties altogether.
COVID focused some minds. Through no fault of the host nations, those were the two least-agreeable Games in history. Beijing 2022 ended chaotically, with the Olympic movement abrogating its own charter in order to chuck Russia, thereby ensuring the Paralympics would go off. It was the wrong thing to do for the right reasons.
For a real moment there, you could see how this fun thing all of us have enjoyed throughout our entire lives might fall apart. First, Russia leaves. And then, bit by bit, everyone else. One day soon, the Olympics is more about a few friends getting together to toss around a discus than the whole world gathering to sort the best from the rest.
What is the world without the Olympics? Unless they really jazz up the general assembly of the United Nations, it’s a fundamentally different place.
The same rule applies in the globe’s only holistic team sport. Without soccer, thousands of small connections among countries collapse.
What do the average Mongolian and Ecuadorian have in common? An opinion on Lionel Messi versus Cristiano Ronaldo. That may be the end of the list.
After two successive World Cups defined by division, you could also see the end of that tournament shimmering in the distance. It wasn’t likely – a few people make far too much money off it – but it had become vaguely possible.
The Euro was another tournament in a parlous state. A combination of cost and corruption had made it poisonous to mention in the sort of countries that can afford to put it on.
The previous time the Euro was held, it couldn’t attract a host. The governing body tried to save its blushes by claiming the Euro was going on tour around the continent to celebrate its 60th anniversary.
Michel Platini, a great player and a terrible executive, described it as a “romantic” plan. As excuses go, this is a bit like the thing you blurt out when your mom catches you smoking in the garage.
That tournament was held in 11 countries. It only caught on in one – England – because the team and setting just happened to intersect at the end.
By viewership, the Olympics, World Cup and Euro are far and away the most popular sports tournaments in the world. A couple of years ago, you could imagine a near future in which they all faded away.
The biggest problem wasn’t organization. Sports tournaments will always be expensive. They will always privilege the rich. They will always kick up a lot of carbon and they will never leave a host nation better off than it was before the event happened.
The problem was the kvetching about problems to which there is no good solution. You don’t want the Qatars of the world holding a World Cup? Fair enough. Does that mean you’re putting your hand up?
Watching certain sections of Toronto and Vancouver freak out because – surprise, surprise – holding World Cup games is expensive gets at the nub of it.
When you say you don’t want sports in this or that country, and you also don’t want to pay for sports in your own, what you’re saying is that you don’t want sports, full stop. So say that.
Otherwise, quit your complaining.
The year 2024 will yet be a lot of things. Maybe one of them is that it’s the year we stopped moaning about how some nice things aren’t nice enough.
A plurality of people seem to have already got there with the Euro, and are headed that direction with Paris 2024. No big whinges. No cries of ‘Never again’.
Just a quiet appreciation of small pleasures in a world that always has and always will have bigger problems.
