<p>To those who want to support Austria just because Austrians are \"Teutonic\", 2 pieces of advice: </p><p>(1) Find out a bit more about Austrian football, e.g. check their world ranking.</p><p>(2) Be prepared for disappointment.</p><p>From what I understand from newspapers and magazines, although many Austrians lined the roads to welcome Hitler\'s invading army in the 1930\'s, modern Germans and Austrians do not share the \"brotherly love\" some members here believe to exist among all \"Teutonic people\". The Austrians in particular consider their German neighbours arrogant, just like many other non-Teutonic Europeans.</p><p>I am not sure how many of those who plan to support Austria can read English, but this article, by German sport writer <font face=\"Arial\">Raphael Honigstein, a Bavarian writing for the website of the respected English newspaper The Guardian, is quite interesting:</font></p><h1><font size=\"1\">The Euro 2008 hosts who are worse than Haiti</font></h1><h1><a href=\"http://football.guardian.co.uk/europeanfootball/story/0,,2191564,00.html\"><font size=\"1\">http://football.guardian.co.uk/europeanfootball/story/0,,2191564,00.html</font></a></h1><p>The article is not easy reading, but very interesting if you can understand it.</p><p>If you cannot be bothered to read the entire article by Honigstein, read just the following paragraph (on how Austrian fans look at their national team\'s participation in Euro 2008):</p><p>\"The situation is so bad that a public petition to withdraw from the competition is gathering pace. Michael Kriess, the man behind \"Austria shows backbone - Initiative for an Austrian-free Euro (for football\'s sake),\" was seen collecting plenty of signatures on Saturday night. He\'s the son of an ex-Austria international and the team\'s performances apparently hurt his \"aesthetic sensibilities\". The rest of the nation just seems embarrassed. The mood in the republic is as flat as a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnitzel\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Wiener Schnitzel</font></a>.\"</p><p>That attitude, I suppose, is not what fans of all things \"Teutonic\" expect from a \"Teutonic people\".</p><p>I also wonder how the German fans and Austrian fans will react if they find out there are fans of Germany in far away China who will also support Austria because of the Austrians\' \"shared racial and cultural background\" with the Germans. I suspect they will be surprised. I also suspect the Germans won\'t care who else their foreign fans support, and the Austrians won\'t be grateful. I just hope they--the Austrians--will not be offended.</p><p></p><p> .S.</p><p>My apologies for posting in English. While I can read Chinese and write Chinese with pen on paper, I have lived in Canada for 20 years and never had the chance to learn to input Chinese characters on an alphabetical keyboard before moving abroad.</p> |
