Nationalism at the European Football Championship: Pyro, pathos, patriots: How nationalistic is Euro 2024?

At least there is calm in the sky over Berlin: the feared thunderstorm did not materialize; instead, on Saturday evening the sun cast long shadows on the felt lawn at the Brandenburg Gate. The air smells of summer rain and Dutch pyrotechnics as the broadcast of the quarter-final game begins, which after the wolf salute scandal has become the indicator of nationalism at this European Football Championship in Germany.

Netherlands against Turkey: 70,000 people on the Street of June 17th, who soon raise their hands and laugh: 1-0 for Turkey! Beer cups fly, a smoke candle is lit, crescent moon flags are waved. And? And? And? Yes, unfortunately, it is also present here in the UEFA fan zone, although not ten thousand times like in the Olympic Stadium, but you can see it sporadically: the wolf salute of the Turkish right-wing extremists. Men and women place their middle and ring fingers on their thumbs and spread out their index and little fingers: the ominous sign of the gray wolves.

One who just showed the greeting is Hatice Demir. Why is she doing this? “I have to honestly admit, I have never used this symbol in my life, but I did it today in protest.” The 32-year-old is not just concerned with the punishment for the Turkish defender Merih Demiral, who was sentenced because of his Wolfsgruß goal celebration in the round of 16 was banned for two games by UEFA. For the engineer, who came especially from Bavaria to watch the quarter-finals in Berlin with her family, the greeting doesn’t just belong to the right-wing extremist Gray Wolves. “This animal symbolizes the Turks.” Nobody complains about the German eagle. Where is the real problem?

KLA and Identitarians in the stadium

The quarter-finals have been completed, only three games remain, then the 2024 European Championship finals will be history. A good time to take a closer look: Were Merih Demiral’s unspeakable wolf salute, his imitators on Saturday and the general excitement symptomatic of this tournament? Is this European Championship a continuation of the Germany-flag-heavy 2006 World Cup summer fairytale under the auspices of the shift to the right that has affected the entire continent in 2024? Or was the Slovenian UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin right when he said that the football spectacle in Germany was “finally a classic football tournament again”?

Things have gone quite well for the hosts so far. The general shift to the right is hardly noticeable around the national team; on the contrary, the DFB team has built an impressive firewall towards the right in football. The AfD’s leading candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, recently called the German national team a “foreign legion” and a “politically correct mercenary force.” Thuringia’s state chairman Björn Höcke wrote in the “Weltwoche” that he could “no longer identify with our national team.” “Rainbow ideology springs from every pore” in football, he writes in the Swiss dirty paper.

This contempt for right-wing thinkers may be one reason why there was hardly any talk of derailments from German fans. The negative headlines were reserved for others. Hundreds of thousands of football supporters traveled between Hamburg, Stuttgart, Leipzig and Cologne over the past four weeks, and some of them attracted unpleasant attention: Albanians and Croats joined forces to chant Ubi-Srbina (Kill Serbs!) during the group game in Hamburg. Albanians waved KLA-flags. During the competition between nations, the nationalists feel right at home among the crowds of fans. Serbs hung flags in Munich with the outline of independent Kosovo marked as Serbian. In the Austrian fan block in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, a banner suddenly appears with the inscription “Defend Europe”, a slogan of the right-wing extremist Identitarians.

European Championship tournaments are a time for gestures and symbols, but not everyone gets off as unpunished as the fans: striker Mirlind Daku from the Albanian team shouted nationalist songs through the megaphone and was banned for two games for it; Kosovar television reporter Arlind Sadiku had his accreditation revoked after he showed the Albanians’ double-headed eagle gesture at a Serbia game. UEFA, which has written respect and tolerance on its colors, is taking relatively courageous action, as was also shown after the wolf salute.

Fad Wolf Salute

Halftime in the Berlin quarter-finals: party on the fan mile! The supporters of both teams jump back and forth exuberantly: “To the left, to the right!”, the choreo that the Oranjes have already performed in Hamburg and elsewhere. A little away from the crowd, Ali Özdemir stands arm in arm with his wife. How does he feel about the wolf salute? The 55-year-old sighs. The whole discussion about the wolf salute was far too overheated: “If you play it up so much in the media, then it will become a fad.” He also believes that many people show the wolf salute out of pride in Turkey and not because of it right-wing extremist meaning.

But it’s not that easy: the wolf is part of the founding myth of Turkey in late antiquity. This means that the animal symbol is significantly older than the right-wing extremist Gray Wolves, who have appropriated the greeting since the middle of the 20th century. Even during the First World War, this founding myth also formed the ideological basis for thinking about superiority and, not least, for the genocide of the Armenians. As a positive symbol of Turkish national pride, the wolf salute is questionable for several reasons.

For Turkey fan Ali Özdemir, it is clear that the greeting is not used out of decency. However, he found the debate about Demiral exaggerated. He believes that it has given younger people in particular a reason for this hand signal. And: “Perhaps Demiral didn’t even really know what gesture he was making.”

Connected through football

Friday evening in Stuttgart, final stop for the German team. The team bus is ready for its final journey in the catacombs of the stadium. After the quarter-final defeat against Spain, the DFB team returns to camp in Herzogenaurach. “Germany is united by football” is written on the blue bus. Every other participating country is also “connected through football” – it is the official motto of this European Championship, thought up by UEFA marketing strategists.

Connection, really? When Julian Nagelsmann talks about “Tristesse” just a few steps away from the bus parking space, he is not referring to the European Championship exit after a dramatic 120 minutes. The national coach talks about Germany, life and the society in which “everyone wants to be more individual than their neighbor.” How different things are with his team: Together they managed to “wake up the country.”

Nagelsmann is moved. A bit of pathos at the moment of departure must be allowed. The wave of enthusiasm for the DFB team was immense during these days of the tournament, with 26 million television viewers watching the quarter-finals, a market share of 80.9 percent. Nagelsmann’s national team is popular.

A day later, the national coach sat in another press conference, the last for him at this tournament. On the microphone he fights back tears, he is still touched by the “symbiosis between fans and a team”. “Of course there are much more important topics in life than football,” he also says. But the world’s most popular sport offers a big stage. This EM was also misused – by people who discriminate against others and display racist hostility. “Yes, we have problems in the country,” says Nagelsmann. In terms of sport, it is necessary to “think in terms of solutions”. And that’s what he also wants for society: “Don’t always see the negative immediately, but work together for a better future!”

The large European Championship stage was used quite impressively by the many people who did not want to exclude people, but wanted to celebrate a peaceful football festival together. In the Stuttgart stadium, no Spaniard has to be afraid of the black, red and gold crowd – their own team is cheered and the victorious opponent is respected. This image could also be seen in other stadiums and many cities. Everywhere people were connected by football. Admittedly, this sport is a difficult playing field because many, often unpleasant, politically motivated actors use it for their own purposes. But if you don’t shy away from using this field in a positive way, good things can happen. Nagelsmann sums up: “Together we are stronger!”

Out for the disturber of the peace

Final whistle in the fan zone at the Brandenburg Gate: At the end of this memorable quarter-final evening, only the Oranje fans are left cheering. In the Berlin Olympic Stadium, their favorites turned the game around, 2-1 for the Netherlands. The Turkish captain Hakan Çalhanoğlu is crying on the screen, the half-moon fans are crowding the concession stands at the Tiergarten: get the three euro cup deposit back, then quickly leave.

It has become dark. Wolves’ greetings were hardly to be seen on the Straße des 17. Juni, no wonder, there were no more Turkish gates. Hatice Demir also wants to head home. She no longer showed the wolf head. The biggest excitement occurred away from the video screen, a brief scuffle between Turkish and Dutch fans after the 2-1 score. But the police quickly intervened: the “ultimate high-risk game” of the European Championship also largely took place peacefully.

The Turkish exit means reassurance for the rest of the tournament: instead of nationalism being a constant topic, there may be more talk about football again. Hatice Demir is smiling again: “My 2-1 prediction worked out – but unfortunately for the wrong team!” she jokes.