Football Results and Football Politics

TEL AVIV — If you think the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yan­kees is intense, you should watch inter­na­tional, live foot­ball (soc­cer) some­time. Euro foot­ball can be war by other means.

I’ve started watch­ing my first Euro­pean 2008 Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship here in Israel, but I’m not sure who I will sup­port. My two favorites, Israel and England’s foot­ball team, did not make it through the pre­lim­i­nary com­pe­ti­tion (thank you, Rus­sia), so I’ve been ask­ing Israelis who they sup­port. Their answers have been intriguing.

Most Israelis sup­port the Nether­lands because that coun­try helped to save Jews dur­ing the Holo­caust, and it is a strong sup­porter of Israel today. Every­one hates France because the French peo­ple are seen as increas­ingly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. For obvi­ous rea­sons, the only Israelis who will sup­port Ger­many are those whose fam­i­lies orig­i­nally come from there. Peo­ple gen­er­ally sup­port the coun­tries from where their fam­i­lies come — a friend of mine is com­pletely sup­port­ing Poland, and I empathize because my mother’s fam­ily is orig­i­nally from there. How­ever, some Israelis claim to pre­fer cer­tain teams specif­i­cally because of their par­tic­u­lar suc­cess and style while they play the game.

Last night, while at a bar, every­one sup­ported the Czech Repub­lic against Switzer­land. I have no idea why. But in the sec­ond game, every­one sup­ported Por­tu­gal against Turkey. Peo­ple insisted that it was because Por­tu­gal is a class-A team that’s on the same level as France and Italy, but I can­not help but won­der if it was also because Turkey is a Mus­lim coun­try. I asked a bar­tender if Turkey likes Israel (after all, their gov­ern­ments are extremely friendly), and she sim­ply said, “Not really.” When the Czech Repub­lic won, the whole bar erupted into cheers.

Tonight, every­one is look­ing for­ward to Ger­many vs. Poland – talk about World War II nos­tal­gia (or, per­haps, bit­ter mem­o­ries). Only one per­son I know is sup­port­ing Ger­many. It will be inter­est­ing to see if any­one else in the crowd does.