Lightning actually strikes twice. In February, a combination of a Sydney storm and a Wellington airport curfew delayed our arrival in New Zealand by 24 hours, complicating a holiday of a lifetime. On Friday night, similar weather, this time at Munich, threatened to ruin a trip of a lifetime – or at least one that had been in the works for more than 30 years.
My first England game: March 1985, a friendly against the Republic of Ireland at Wembley, with Leicester’s Gary Lineker scoring his first international goal. My first away game: November 1991, in Poland, with Tottenham’s Gary Lineker scoring his last competitive goal. Now, in my 12th tournament following the men’s team, I had a ticket to watch their first final on foreign soil.
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There was just one problem: my bus from Munich to Berlin was still at Gatwick on Saturday morning. If I didn’t sort something out quickly, my friends and their teenage sons would be at the match without me.
It’s not just about England. I’m a tournament junkie, I went in 1994 and 2008 when England didn’t qualify. If you love football for the drama of the unscripted, not just your own team, there’s nothing better than a month immersed in this chaotic party. I tried to boycott Russia 2018 but gave up when we reached the semi-finals; the delayed, Covid-hit Euro 2020 was only at Wembley; I’m firmly committed to boycotting Qatar.
After eight years without a tournament to enjoy, I booked a cheap flight via Munich in January, planning to go to Berlin with or without Bukayo Saka and a ticket. The final was my eighth match of Euro 2024, thanks to Ollie Watkins, and many people watched in bars and fan zones.
Thank the captain of the cancelled Munich trip: he came to make the announcement himself. You are entitled to a seat on the next available flight, but that doesn’t help much when all the planes to Germany are full. I have to start over. I will have to wait to negotiate compensation and insurance.
Amsterdam, Switzerland and Poland are all fully booked. But there’s a flight to Paris at 8am for £125. So how do I get from Paris to Berlin? Deutsche Bahn says yes, there’s a train for around €130 (£109). Great.
I book the flight and click to book the train. But not for the first time, DB disappoints me: the seat selector offers me options when I try to complete the transaction for a train with a mandatory reservation, but at the last moment it tells me that the journey is not possible. I try again, but this journey, other “available” services, other websites play the same game.
I paid to go to Paris. Gareth Southgate has already lost me a fortune; the math in my head is that this tournament has delayed my retirement by a month. I am constantly grateful for his need to attack my bank balance, but I certainly can’t start over with another flight. So what’s next?
There are buses from Zurich to Berlin; I know this because two months after I booked my first bus from Munich, the same company had an accident on the same motorway near Leipzig, with a service from the Swiss city. Still, there is a cheap train from Paris to Basel – under the circumstances – and there is plenty of time to get to Zurich by direct, 12-hour bus at 9:25 pm. One accident is not reason enough to refuse the start. After all, lightning doesn’t strike twice…
This time it was nothing like that. The flight to Paris was 40 minutes late, and every taxi stop increased my stress level, but I had set aside four hours to get to Gare de Lyon. I arrived in Zurich with over two hours to spare. The addition of an unexpected ferry across Lake Constance did not disrupt the plane, trains and double-decker journey. I was at least twice as old as 90% of the passengers, but I staggered off the bus at Wannsee at 9.30am, then headed to Potsdam to rest in my hotel.
Relating to: Heartbreak in England again as Spain take Euro 2024 crown – Football Daily
Fifteen hours later, the question was, was it worth it? On the train back to Potsdam, a reply came from an unlikely source, a couple of England fans in their 20s. Only worse than the result, one of them had confused my yellow Dortmund Euros jersey with an Oranje jersey: “Oi, the Dutch have already gone home.”
I wasn’t in the mood to accept it quietly. I pointed out the text; it was Dortmund yellow, not orange, and this was my eighth European Championship with England. I was definitely not a Holland fan. I read the previous seven eliminations in 30 seconds. Peace was declared and they asked how this compared.
The journey, I explained, was the worst. But as painful as it was to lose a second consecutive final, the six defeats we failed to reach, the last two of which the winners never had to reckon with, hurt even more.
I do my best to make travel affordable. In February, when the autumn Nations League fixtures were announced, we were queuing up to check in for a flight to Australia. By the time we had checked in our luggage, I had return flights and a hotel in Dublin for September, plus a trip to Helsinki via Tallinn in October, with a ferry crossing, all booked on my phone, mostly single-handedly, before prices skyrocketed.
This is not 58 years of pain, I am only 56. With or without Southgate, the journey of a lifetime continues from Dublin.