The German national team has arrived in Thuringia for the first training camp before the European Championships. There were two hotspots in the tranquil town of Blankenhain on Sunday. Sport could once again take on a political tone.
The poster stretched across the federal highway 85 reads: “Welcome World”. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, because there is only one European Championship coming up. The German national team moved into their quarters just three weeks before the opening match against Scotland. The training ground is close to their posh hotel, and one of the two golf courses in the immediate vicinity is currently reserved exclusively for the DFB delegation.
Thomas Müller will soon be able to inform his Munich teammate Harry Kane about the quality and level of difficulty. The English national team is the next tenant of the German team and will be staying in the idyllic Weimar region during the European Championships.
Neuer is missing with an infection
In this respect, this is perhaps not an exaggeration, because this is how the whole world learns about Blankenhain. The place is about 20 minutes by car south of Weimar, the city that is world famous thanks to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.
On Sunday (May 26, 2024) there were two hotspots in the town of Blankenhain. One was the posh hotel, into which the DFB entourage gradually moved until the early evening. Many players were still missing. This was planned for the party animals from Bayer Leverkusen, the participants in the Champions League final from Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund and Marc-André ter Stegen, who still had a championship game to play with FC Barcelona. Manuel Neuer had to cancel at short notice for an indefinite period of time. The goalkeeper is suffering from a gastrointestinal infection.
Football and local elections
The other hotspot in Blankenhain was the castle in the town center, built in the 12th century. It will be used as a media center until Friday, but the large crowds on Sunday were caused by the local elections in Thuringia. The “library” and “wedding room” polling stations are in the castle. There are a lot of things to tick off. The district council, the town council, the mayors of the districts and the full-time mayor of Blankenhain were up for election.
The AfD is considered to be firmly right-wing extremist in Thuringia, and its state chairman Björn Höcke is one of the most extreme. Democrats fear that, despite all the scandals and convictions, he will represent the strongest party on September 1st, when the Thuringian state parliament is elected.
There is no AfD member on Blankenhain’s city council. “Common sense still prevails here,” Mayor Jens Kramer told the “Rheinische Post”. That is a simplistic view, because the AfD did not run for city council in either the past or current election. In the 2021 federal election, the AfD was the strongest party in the city of Blankenhain, receiving 27.9 percent of the second votes, 11.8 percentage points more than Kramer’s CDU.
Federal President Steinmeier will arrive on Wednesday
Mayor Jens Kramer will attend a press conference on Monday, which will also be attended by Thuringia’s Minister of Economic Affairs Wolfgang Tiefensee from the SPD and his comrade Bernd Neuendorf, the President of the DFB.
On Wednesday, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will visit the national team at the golf resort.
It could get a little political, just a year and a half after the end of the World Cup in Qatar, a few weeks before the start of the tournament, which many hope will be celebrated as “Summer Fairytale 2.0”, in which Germany will show itself to be as cosmopolitan as it once was in 2006, when the world was actually a guest.
2024-05-26 19:10:11
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