GESTALT IN NÜRNBERG
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

After the successful match in Kharkiv we lost lazily at Newcastle, then lost at home to the pinkies thanks to an incompetent referee you wouldn’t trust to flick a light switch, then beat Larissa of Greece fairly easily in the first UEFA Cup group game at home, then won lazily at hapless Derby, then knocked Luton out of the Carling Cup after extra time and a few bruises, and then defeated Birmingham with two last minute winning goals in an otherwise excitement-free home game. All in all, a good run, but still short of centre midfield decisiveness. If and when we get that we might really be in business. Come January it will be worth a transfer punt to try to avoid our standard stutter at the end of the season.

The most interesting game was the win over Larissa. This featured a quick return headed goal by Tim Cahill, a stunning pass-and-move down the left and a superlative first-time-belt-it-in-from-the-D goal by Leon, A Morecambe and Wise act between Tim Howard and Joleon to give the Greeks their goal, and a classic old time centre forward’s goal from Victor. The latter involved a cute through pass from The Gravedigger and a forward charge through the middle by Victor that saw him right-shoulder one large defender, then left-shoulder another, then scoop it low inside the ‘keeper’s right hand post where it was greeted lovingly by a much relieved Street End. A Dave Hickson réprise. Larissa were tall and athletic-looking and for a spell passed it around well enough to cause irritation and a furrowed brow or two. But it was a good win, well deserved, and would have been much easier if it hadn’t been for the comedy act. The general ease of it was surprising because Larissa had knocked out Mark Hughes’s fractious Blackburn in an earlier round.

Actually, everyone was impatient for the away match at Nürnberg. People can smell UEFA Cup trophy blood, in my view a bit too readily. It came around quickly enough and entailed yet another mass movement of fans, this time roughly twice as many as made the Kharkiv trip.

Nürnberg is a millenium-old Bavarian city in the region of Middle Franconia, on the Pegnitz river, one of the roots of Fichtian nationalism, with many better achievements and cultural memories than Leni Riefenstahl’s evil but melancholically brilliant film “Triumph des Willens” and Stanley Kramer’s timely “Judgment at Nuremberg.” It is also a partly-beautiful city lovingly rebuilt with tweezers in some areas from Allied terror bombing made in retaliation for earlier blitzkrieg attacks by the Luftwaffe. Fortunately the worst memories are beginning to fade on all sides as a new generation takes its place in the sun and places the Second World War as remote as the Boer War was to its predecessors (see here, and try to forget all that nonsense about “a basic flaw in the German character”). Fortunately before nazism disappeared it persuaded Europe not to make the same mistake again. What was supposed to last a thousand years actually lasted just twelve and it was twelve mindless, murder-ridden years too long.

An uncut version of Riefenstahl’s documentary masterpiece provides some wonderful romantic shots of Nürnberg a decade before it was atomised by the RAF and lost forever. That’s if you can ignore the images of one of history’s great civilisations en route to temporary individual and collective psychosis. It was all there……………dreaming spires, centuries old buildings, stunning roofscape, wide boulevards, beautiful bridges, castle, civic architecture, arts and trading culture. It was no accident the mad führer chose the city for nazi parteitag since it was at the literal and cultural centre of most German history for nine hundred years, at one time the nominal capital of the ‘Holy Roman Empire.’ Which, according to one of my long-ago history tutors, wasn’t ‘Holy,’ ‘Roman’ or ‘Empire.’ Hitler and his loopy cronies stole everything they could from German history and half-baked it into their own crackpot dystopia, even the soaring music of Richard Wagner. It was Spike Milligan who said Hitler got Wagner a bad name. Since lovable and much-missed Spike was also crazy I am quite prepared to take his word for it on the grounds that it takes one to know one. There were many important differences between the two, one of them being Spike’s famous head stone which reads “I Told You I Was ill.” Hitler didn’t have a sense of humour, a head stone, or even a grave, which is just as well because most ordinary citizens with a sense of history would be sorely tempted to dig up his bones just to piss on them.

Once there, I intended to go out to the Zeppelinfeld to exorcise some history ghosts, but I never made it. This was the parteitag venue designed by Hitler’s architect Albert Speer to hold a horseshoe-shaped stadium to accommodate 400,000 (yes, you read that correctly) once a year every September until the world froze over in a nazi hell. It never did get built, for which you and your children may thank your lucky stars and the brave young men and women who lost their lives to ensure you had the choice. Speer later became Armaments Minister and was the one who wriggled out of the hangman’s noose by telling the Nürnberg War Crimes Tribunal Yes he was guilty, but No he didn’t know how all that slave labour was sourced, and No he didn’t know they were worked to death, and No he knew nothing about the mass murder of Jews, though Maybe He Should Have, because If Hitler Had A Friend At All it was one Albert Speer. After which he thoughtfully stoolied on the other defendants. The more you read Speer’s defence the more you realise what a phoney he was. But as a good-looking, well-educated, professional middle class boy he knew how to pitch his own corner. It worked too. His well-educated, professional middle class peers sitting opposite on the bench believed him, swallowed it wholesale, and gave him a jail sentence. Had he been as thuggish and stupid as the rest of the defendants he would doubtless have swung from the same gallows. Instead, he got out in the 1970s and wrote a self-serving, typically self-deceptive memoir titled Inside the Third Reich. This all bore a rough resemblance to how Hitler also got off the hook in his trial for treason in 1924 and then wrote Mein Kampf.

That deadly and wicked history aside – if you can – my biggest gripe with Speer is that as an architect he made a good bin man. All his designs were cultural excrement of the first order. For all his brilliant intellect and organising evil genius he couldn’t design a building worth an artistic carrot. The only thing he knew was the miserable neoclassical gigantism that appealed, of course, to Hitler. His memoir contains no mention of contemporary influences such as the Bauhaus, Art Deco, the International Style or Futurism. Which is all you would expect from somebody who could only propound something he called “The Theory of Ruin Value,” which did nothing more than state nazi ruins thousands of years thence should have the same majesty as architectural remains of the distant past. Everything Speer did was ultimately for the exact opposite purpose to versammlungsarchitektur – architecture that brings people together. It promoted party racism and elitism. It tells you almost all you need to know about the era. Almost. The rest of course is in human tears and virtually beyond comprehension. But blaming it all on the Germans is historically dishonest. Where the nazis are concerned there is enough global guilt to last several millenia. We forget at our peril.

But, as I said, I never did get to the Zeppelinfeld. Casual relaxation got in the way, but there was never enough time for anything other than the most cursory of observations. A couple of days might have sufficed; a few hours was never going to be enough. In the event I got to see very little. Not that it looked that way coming out of Nürnberg Airport. We were through quickly enough, even after I made the elementary mistake of joining a queue dealt with by a passport controller with the face and attitude of a smacked arse. Inside and outside the place was scrubbed clean in a way the Brits long ago forgot after losing their pride and society to 1980s Daily Mail/Sun lower middle class paranoia and the breweries. Unfortunately German environmental gains are offset by their new architecture, which, in general, looks like low rise Disneyfied Legoland glinting in stainless steel, aluminium and brise soleil. Too antispetic for words, too straight-up-and-down, it usually lacks delight and surprise. No surprise then, when we were on an absolutely spotless bus and headed into the city, that the first crossroads and traffic lights featured an Aldi supermarket and a Burger King excreta. You sighed and knew it could only get better, which it did.

It was a pleasant enough drive in without any real sights. After all, Nürnberg suffered from war as much as Kharkiv. The difference was in the rebuilding. Though done in haste once the bombed-out ruins were cleared, there was at least a gesture to lost architecture. Pity so much of it is repetitious and without real style, but maybe that will be replaced by upcoming generations. There has been a perfunctory attempt to imitate traditional window patterns, stonework, render, heights and roof pitches. Mercifully, there has been little concession to high rise developments or the visual devastation of structural engineering-only “design.” (Take my tip, if any of your nippers ever show the slightest inclination to become a structural engineer or a quantity surveyor………thrash them regularly at five minutes intervals until they learn sense. It’s in their own interests. All Brit engineers of every description are the enemies of good taste. By comparison, quantity surveyors are only the third sex.) Every now and then an old building appeared to bookend newer buildings but this merely served to illustrate just how much was destroyed. A lot of the old buildings were constructed in red sandstone not unlike the Woolton red sandstone we see throughout Merseyside. It looked to me as though there had been a strong effort to keep old street patterns during rebuilding, and that at least provided a “new” vista every time you turned a corner. Square and rectangular street grid patterns are mostly for America’s strictly modular alabaster cities, (usually) not old Europe. Eventually the old sandstone city wall came into view with its turreted round guard towers and we skirted it for a short time before making a welcome turn through it and into the old city. I have a visceral dislike of suburbia anywhere – Pete Seeger knew exactly what he meant in his song “Little Boxes” – so I was eager to get into the heart of the older area. Nürnberg’s suburbs are no different to, say, the Wirral or Croydon, all without character and community and doubtless full of the same mortgaged-to-the-hilt suckers.

It appeared the polizei (who kept a careful but helpful low profile throughout) had decided there were strict parking limits for visiting fans in the old city area so we were directed to Hallplatz. From which the fans disgorged with the other coaches and quickly filtered through the narrow winding streets in all directions. Everyone’s legs and joints creaked and the clear air was gulped down to renew travel-congested lungs. Locals viewed the new arrivals with a natural mix of wariness and humour, though they were never less than helpful. As always in Germany you could immediately see what they have sustained and we lost, a healthy regard for the way they and their cities are kept and viewed. I don’t know how obvious this was to our invading fans because many of them were obsessively intent on finding a pub before indulging sociology or architecture.

We ended up in an old beer cellar down by the river, swiftly filled a cubicle with people and then filled our bladders with some welcome liquid refreshment. German white wine is unbeatable and its beer better than ours, though of course all beer is basically distilled shit, especially Guinness. But the place filled up with Blues so quickly it became oppressive with too many crowded into limited ventilation and little natural light. The singing quickly reached a crescendo and getting served at the bar was a minor Battle of the Bulge, the kind of thing many Brits seem to think comprises something called “atmosphere” but which merely signifies a lack of manners and a constant reek of alcoholic breath. After an hour we got off to the Hauptmarkt, the main market square, and a bar with outside tables. At least you could breathe and have a reasonable conversation even though it too was full of happy Blues intent on escapism.

A few more wines and a chat later and I went on a leisurely short walkabout in the winding narrow streets around the small square. Somehow, Nürnberg old city has escaped the very worst of American money influence. Almost, because a MacDonalds squats uneasily in a building opposite the six hundred and sixty years old Frauenkirche church. Or what’s left after Allied bombing did its work. It was only when I saw it I realised it had formed the backcloth to a short scene in Judgment at Nuremberg. Inside the old city walls small speciality shops still make a living despite commercial pressures. One wonders just how long they can cling on. Eventually I wandered into eight-hundred years old Saint Sebald’s Romanesque church. As an aetheist it was more out of curiosity than anything else. Religious mumbo-jumbo notwithstanding you have to say the building and its lovingly-cared-for contents are a stunning cultural experience and well worth another visit, as is much of the old city. And you couldn’t help wondering at the tumultuous scenes that took place in and around it for all its long life.

So I strolled back into the square and there encountered something I had rather I had avoided. Several Everton banners were draped around the outside of the five hundred and fifty-odd years old gorgeous Schöner Brunnen fountain (I know I keep mentioning the age of buildings, it’s just to give an idea of the sense of place). No problem with that since nobody was acting badly or objectionably and the banners had at least been arranged without being haphazard or disrespectful. What pissed me off was the banner reading “39 Dead Italians Can’t Be Wrong” listing the names of those who died at Heysel. So I approached the owner and told him his banner had nothing to do with football, rivalry or banter but had everything to do with disgracing every decent Evertonian in the city. It was like talking to a brick. His eyes were as dead as his breath reeked of beer. Some people are beyond reach so you turn on your heel and walk and leave them to whatever neurotic nonsense careers around inside their skulls.

Back at the bar, mobile calls and texts zipped all over the city, new meeting points arranged, cries of abandoned anguish, pleas for tickets, news that Nürnberg were actually selling tickets to English fans even though UEFA had told them not to. More banners and singing everywhere, all of it good humoured if getting toward the incoherent and just plain tired. Blues thronged everywhere, plainly out to make the most of a European jaunt because we don’t know where the next one will come from. Hungry, we finally got something to eat in a first floor restaurant facing the square.

Neil texted me to come up to Finnegan’s Bar, so we set off to find it. After the usual, “It’s up here!” “Fuck off, no it’s not!” exchanges we got into Königstrasse and a small square at the end, opposite the Grand Hotel where the team were staying. Appropriately it was dominated by one of the red sandstone turreted guard towers that looked uncannily like the one on the Everton club badge. This place too was wall-to-wall Blues STILL singing their hearts out and by this time talking fluent licorice allsorts and looking the worse for wear. Nobody knew where Finnegan’s Bar was, which was a bit strange because it was over in the corner and in a terribly claustrophobic basement, but it didn’t matter much because Neil had turned his mobile off and there was no way of finding him in the general bedlam, and I hate Plastic Paddy pubs anyway. We ended up in a bar out of the way around the corner called, “Brown Sugar,” a sort of Plastic Yank bar but not bad for all that. We assessed the game. Everyone confident, and not only because they were fuelled on local booze.

Back to Hallplatz, on the bus, and away to Nürnberg’s easycredit.com stadion. (Don’t you just LOVE the new sponsored football system?) It was a fair walk to the stadium down a tree lined boulevard with a low, bright light shining in everyone’s eyes to disconcert anyone who might feel like some mischief. Fortunately, nobody did. Which begs a strategic police decision derived from: do you get them in early, get them pissed and harmless through sheer tiredness, or get them in late so they can’t get pissed enough to cause too much trouble? The Nürnberg polizei had it about right despite one or two hairy moments during the game. Actually, once again the fans were terrific. I hope during the current run they can resist the inevitable goons we have in tiny minority in our ranks.

The stadium is an octagonal, two-tiered affair with a running track, red seats and an interesting roof designed for maximum acoustic retention. Which means nothing more than a shape to keep in as much crowd sound as possible. I haven’t seen a stadium roof shape like it before and I have to say it worked rather well. It’s a bit like a standard pitched roof with the inside angle lower than the outside angle, the result of which is to reflect sound back into the stands. Normally, stadium roofs angle up from the outside and reflect the sound outwards and away. Apart from that, nothing unusual…..better seat pitch and more and safer circulation space. It is a neat solution that shows just how much most Brit stadia have to improve to get to a reasonably civilised level.

Evertonians were mostly behind one goal and to its right in two sections in the lower and upper tiers. The only incidents of stupid behaviour I saw involved a small number of knobheads behind us in the upper tier who banged on some of the metal adverts on the front of the tier spectator retaining wall and could have dislodged them onto their own fans, and similar dickheads who found it necessary to bang and kick at a separating glazed metal partition between the two sections in the lower tier. Had we been in Italy or Spain the local bizzies would have simply waded in and truncheoned everyone in sight and then doubtless we would have had the usual guilty party whining excuses of over reaction. Fortunately, the German police held back even though they had the away section completely surrounded and under surveillance from the rear. Had one of the ads fallen or the partition given way they would surely have been in in a flash, and quite right too. Why these head bangers (who couldn’t have numbered more than twenty or thirty) want to spoil everything for everyone else is beyond me. The sooner we’re rid of them the better.

And so to the game. Which, in truth, didn’t amount to much apart from a dramatic end. European games are usually an odd hybrid mix of caution and sudden action, perhaps because of different national approaches to what a footy spectacle should entail. Personally I’d rather watch you applying two coats of emulsion to your hall wall than watch, say, the average Italian or Dutch game, both of which league genres are flush with individual skill but about as exciting and interesting as Michael Parkinson’s face.

At any rate we should have scored within seconds of the kick off. I just had time to settle in my seat before I was out of it again thinking we had scored after a headlong Blues rush from the kick off. Alas, the ball bounced around in the goalmouth and hit a post with boots slashing at it wildly before the Jerries hacked it clear to loud cheers from the red sections of the stadium. Had that gone in it might have caused all sorts of playing ructions. Instead, the game settled into dour, uncreative midfield waves. Both sides – forward – lose the ball – retreat – get it back – lose it again – flash of hope one way or the other – then safety first. No wonder Paul fell asleep. Our fans were more subdued than in Kharkiv and you couldn’t blame them, quite apart from the day’s libation. Every now and then the home section would break out into that jump-up-and-down shtick imported from South America and our lot would do their best to get going but it generally petered out in the face of what was going on on the pitch. Which basically was fuck all. It suited us more than them and it began to show. However, Nürnberg didn’t have much by way of creativity and we had Mikky, even though he was carrying an injury. Gradually you began to feel that if anyone was going to win it was us.

Occasionally interestingly, Yakubu was having a hard battle with their centre back and giving him an unspectacular but torrid time, backing in, going for headers, turning, trampling and shouldering. It must have been like a late shift down the mines for both of them. It had affects later. Apart from that there was a series of corners and fouls interesting only for their unusual geometry and the angles at which bodies hit the ground.

Then Nürnberg had two clear cut chances. The first came when somebody buggered up a simple clearance and it went to their man, centre left of the D, and he smacked one in low and hard to Tim Howard’s right. I was right in line with it and it looked home all the way until it went past the post by millimetres. Then a good move led to a similar shot from the same position and this time it WAS on target, only Tim got a brilliant hand on it and got it around the post the way he did in Kharkiv. A few years ago both of those would have gone in. But this is a different Everton. We made it to half time without letting one in.

The second half continued much the same way though the pace stepped up a bit and everyone on and off the pitch began to get a bit edgy in case of catastrophe. It stayed that way until a quarter hour left when Yakubu was again substituted by Victor Anichebe, plaster wrist cast ‘n’ all. Once again Moyesy’s substitution worked (lessons finally learned?) five minutes later when young Victor did an Anschauung turn through their weary centre back’s left side, left him first clutching thin air, then his shirt, giving away a penalty. Mikky took it and stuck it in, no sweat, top right, before joining the rest of the team over by the corner flag in front of us. Suddenly, dancing Blues appeared everywhere outside the away section, over in the main stand, in some nearby sections of the home fans, and all of it without a sign of acrimony.

You would have thought the Nürnberg defence had learned their lesson. Well, if they had they failed to apply it. Six minutes later Victor did it again, wide right, and cut in at an acute angle, got to the edge of the goal area and, with everybody screaming to him to cut it back, just cracked it in low across the ‘keeper and inside the far post. Bugger me with a brass loofah, the boy done it again. Home defenders collapsed to the grass, fresh out of hope and oxygen. Cue more old-fashioned mass disco dancing by Evertonians. We won again away in Europe. The euphoria couldn’t be banished even when we were kept behind in the ground for a half hour.

Thus ended another victorious European jaunt, and which of us thought we would use a phrase like that even a couple of seasons ago?

Appropriately, the Sunday after the Nürnberg game was Remembrance Sunday. For those who think beyond poppies and two-faced guilty European and American Establishments, our own included, I can recommend a great Joseph Losey film titled King and Country (1964). There can be no better or more poignant tribute to all the young men and women who put themselves in harm’s way then and now, and no more eloquent description of the real issues and actual human cost.

On the same day we also drew with Chelsea away and Tim Cahill scored with a superb overhead bicycle kick in the last minute. Footy may indeed be trivial, but it’s darn sight better than the horrors visited on us in the last century. (20/11/07)