Matt's World Cup Diary

Day 7 – France v Togo

Another trip down to Cologne – and we’re beginning to work out tactics for finding seats on the packed trains. With a couple of our group having gone home, we’ve enough tickets to be able to give one to Danny, despite being a season ticket holder at Bochum (now promoted to the Bundesliga) he’d got no tickets for the World Cup, which I guess proves the ballot was random.

In theory, the evening game gave us a chance to look around Cologne, reputedly the nicest of the cities we were visiting. A couple of our group embarked on a boat trip along the Rhine, but the reviews were underwhelming so we settled into a bar in the shadow of the admittedly magnificent cathedral to watch Ukraine seal second place in the Spain group – meaning we’d be watching them next week.

As before we were supporting Togo, to the extent of making up words to a national anthem , chorus “Let’s Go, Togo, Let’s Go to Togo” and telling people we came from the capital “Togo Town”. On the way to the ground Mark trying to remain cool amongst a see of brightly coloured shirts and silly hats utters the phrase “Oh god more caped twats” as a couple more fans get on the tram draped in Togo flags – unfortunately for him they’re Scottish and take issue with his description. The combined might of Togo fans (England and Germany branches) manage to drown out the chants of Allez le Blues with made up Togo songs.

Our seats this time were adjacent to the hospitality area and so we got to climb to the top of the stand past hordes of VIPs stuffing their faces in the restaurants. When we made a quick exit for the train at the end, many were still eating obviously having made very little attempt to watch the football.

The difference with this game was it was probably the first where German supporters made up the majority of the crowd – despite France only being about an hour’s drive away. Far from causing a muted atmosphere it was as noisy as ever with the Cologne locals singing songs about their – just relegated – team and local hero Lucas Podolski as well as starting off multiple Mexican waves, which usually I abhor but fitted the occasion perfectly. Our heroes defended bravely and for a while we thought they might manage to do enough to put the French out, but ultimately they let one in and again showed little commitment to actually getting an equaliser.
 

Which way up does this go again?