Germany vs. Scotland: Why you have the right to support both teams

Next Friday, the 2024 European Championship kicks off. The opening game is between Germany and Scotland. I am a Scotsman with a German passport and spouse. Everyone wants to know how I feel about the game.

The last time Scotland played Germany in a major tournament was at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. I happened to be living in Germany at the time, spending a year in the city of Bielefeld (North-Rhine Westphalia) as part of my studies. I watched the game with a group of German friends I’d made over the course of that year. When Gordon Strachan scored to give Scotland the lead, I not only jumped around and celebrated loudly, I openly gloated in front of my friends, and taunted them too. They responded by ignoring the excitable idiot (but have somehow retained me as their friend).

It was hard to work out if they didn’t care, or if they just knew that West Germany (as it still was) would never lose a group game to a team like Scotland. Five minutes later, Rudi Völler equalized. In the second half, Klaus Allofs scored what turned out to be the winner. There was barely a cheer in the room, let alone a verbal or physical pile-on, which was the very least I’d expected, and thoroughly deserved. At that time, young Germans simply didn’t think it was the done thing to be patriotic. It was too soon.

So how do I feel about Germany vs. Scotland now?

In short, I wish this wasn’t happening. In the intervening years, I’ve come to very much feel that I belong in this country. When Germany plays -— both women’s and men’s teams — I want them to win. True, I won’t take defeat with a two-day silence like I used to when Scotland was eliminated from the World Cup. Yet there’s a lot to be said for the general spring in the nation’s step and mood when its soccer team is on a good summer run.

I’ve often re-told the story of the enthusiastic fan sitting me behind me in RFK Stadium when the U.S. played Guatemala in a World Cup qualifier in the fall of 2000. He had a foot in both camps, and a flag for each nation. It didn’t matter to him which team was attacking, he roared them forward. When Brian McBride scored the winner for the U.S. in the 72nd. minute, the fan celebrated like it was the Fourth of July. I’ve no doubt he would have done the same if Guatemala had grabbed the winner.

I loved that he took the positive route and saw it as a win-win situation, and had no qualms about showing it. He would surely have been delighted with a tie as well. For Germany-Scotland, however, a tie would be the only possible good outcome for me. Certainly, if Scotland wins then it would be one of the most sensational results in our sporting history. But it would also poop the party here in the host nation, just as coach Julian Nagelsmann’s been getting the team back into a winning groove. I don’t want that. I want to see smiles in the queue at the bakery every morning.

Not that I think a Scotland victory is anything besides a very remote possibility. Decades of disappointment have tuned me into a vibe of permanently low expectations. Should Scotland lose, though, it will just be more of the same old outcome – we made it to the finals, but were not good enough to do anything when we got there (no Scottish team has ever got beyond the group stage of a major tournament). Predictably depressing.

I will of course be watching the game, but I wish that I had a good excuse not to. It’s set me off thinking about what constitutes loyalty to a nation. My parents are Scottish, but I have never actually lived in their country. I didn’t even set foot in Germany until I was 20 years old, and only then because it was dictated by my education. At the same time, I grew up in England only ever wanting it to lose, while after living in the U.S. for 15 years I still very much retain a soft spot for your national teams, a whole decade after leaving. Where should my loyalties lie? Does it even matter?

Nationality should be as fluid as any other facet of our identity. How I express my support towards Germany, Scotland, England or the U.S. should affect no one but me. In any case, it’s nobody’s business but mine. For players with dual-nationality forced to choose between nations, though, the issue can be much more harrowing, especially when barracked by morons hiding in the crowd who have become upset by somebody else’s personal choice.

There was uproar in Germany this week when a survey published by the TV station WDR, conducted while making a documentary about diversity in soccer, revealed that 21 percent of German fans would prefer to see a “more white” national team. That’s an alarming bigotry rate of one in five. It’s also another reason for me to urge on Germany’s multi-ethnic team at Euro 24. As always, the problem is not the color of someone’s skin, but the people who are unable to accept that the history of humankind has always been shaped by its enlightenment and evolution.

Forecast: Germany 2 Scotland 0