PARIS—You learn lessons every day, living in this city. Yesterday’s important lesson: always call ahead.

The Polish bar we’d metro’d all the way across town to watch Poland-Austria at? Very closed. As in, forever. Serving up pints of Zywiec no more. Pushing up the daisies. This was an ex-Polish bar.

This was a bad situation for two reasons. One, we had to coordinate a backup plan between several friends, with no obvious second-choice Polish bar in mind (and an intense desire for perogies overwhelming my rational thinking). And two, such furious texting and relocating meant we still would be en-route somewhere else instead of watching the second half of Germany-Croatia—which we’d abandoned at halftime with Croatia up a goal and looking the sprightlier side versus a German team that had controlled all phases versus Poland four days previous.

We missed the end of Croatia’s 2-1 victory, which coach Slaven Bilic called bigger than the win that knocked out England at Wembley last November (hey Brits, remember that game? Yep, I do). On top of that, the Polish restaurants we did call universally informed us that they were in fact “proper restaurants” and would certainly not be showing a silly football match. So we’d resigned ourselves to dining and viewing at just another Parisian bar, when I spotted a big brown van parked at a traffic light, with a Polish flag flying from the aerial and a “Solidarnosc” flag draped across the rear window.

I wandered up to the window, where two very large shaved-head guys were talking to three men in the cab.

“Do you guys know a place to go watch the Poland match?” I asked.

“No Polish bars around here,” the driver said.

I said that this was a pity, and unzipped my cardigan to show them my red “Polska” T-shirt. The driver almost lost his mind.

“Mon frère!” he yelled, before grabbing my hand and breaking into a long string of what I suspected was Polish. I explained that I didn’t actually speak Polish, at which point he switched back to French to offer me a plastic cup full of clear liquid.

Here’s an old joke: how many Polish rocket scientists does it take to figure out what said clear liquid was?

“Drink! Drink!” his colleagues shouted. I obliged by sucking back half the cup of vodka. “No, all of it,” they said, and when I crossed the street back towards my gang seconds later, I was already drunk.

“They say we should go right here,” I said, indicating the Alsatian brasserie we were standing in front of.

So we didn’t manage to find a Polish bar, or Polish food (though Mlle. Trotter and I did share a plate of pickled beets), but we watched the game with a gang of big, brawny, loud Polish men (Sarkozy’s famous Polish plumbers, perhaps?) who were waving their flags and teaching us Polish football songs (“Pol-skaaaaaa! Biela i Czerwony!”—Poland, white and red), and lighting up cigarettes every few minutes, at which point the waiter would walk over and politely ask them to put them out, smoking indoors being illegal in Paris.

Oh, right, the game!. Austria, as they did against Croatia, looked far from the worst side in the tournament (“paging Doctors Switzerland and Greece! Doctors Switzerland and Greece to the OR for emergency footballectomy”). In fact, the hosts thoroughly dominated the first half, to the delight of our covert Austrian friend Gregor, who was doing his best to contain his excitement in the presence of our new, massive Polish buddies.

Unfortunately, where the Austrains were skilled in creating first-half scoring chances, exploiting Poland’s disastrous attempts at running the offside trap, they were equally wasteful in finishing, squandering at least four of the types of chances that Cristiano Ronaldo finishes 19 times out of 20.

And neither Gregor nor the thousands of rowdy Austrians present in Vienna were surprised, after so many chances wasted, when Poland netted the only goal of the first half off their only real chance. Brazilian-born, officially-Polish-since-May Roger Guerreiro tapped home a gimme in the twenty-ninth minute. (Of course, one Polish-born player did score on the night: Germany’s Lukas Podolski netted his third of the tournament in a losing cause, tying David “Don’t Call Me Silva” Villa for the tournament scoring lead.)

Poland turned the tide in the second half, sorting out their defense and generally controlling the action, and just when things looked their bleakest for the hosts, British referee Howard Webb blew his whistle two minutes into injury time and awarded a somewhat dodgy penalty kick to the Austrians, when Big defender Sebastian Prödl was pulled down in the box (on a play that many referees will let slide). Ivica Vastic converted the spot kick to clinch the 1-1 draw.

Austria now have a chance to knock the Germans out of the tournament with a win in their final group clash on Monday night. As implausible as such a result sounds (yes, I know I called it the only sure-thing game of the tournament in my preview last week), the Austrians have, in their first two matches, looked capable of at least scaring the Germans, and with the home crowd in Vienna sure to be off their rockers with excitement, the Austrians could reprise the still-talked-about-to-this-day “Miracle of Cordoba” where they knocked the Germans out of the World Cup thirty years ago in Argentina. (Edi Finger’s call of “Tor! Tor! Tor! Tor! Tor! Tor! I werd narrisch!” is the Austrian cultural equivalent of “Henderson made a wild stab at it and fell … here’s another shot, right in front, they score! Henderson has scored for Canada!”)

Yes, I know we had a pretty by-the-book first five days, but as Croatia and Austria showed last night, maybe the goofiness that we tend to associate with the Euro tournament is just beginning?

Thursday Recap

Winners: Croatia 2-1 (Austria-Poland draw)

Top player: After a first half without much action, Austrian goalie Jürgen Macho did everything short of scoring a goal to keep his team in the game in the second half, turning away at least three excellent scoring chances by the Poles. This while suffering the indignity of being called “Macho,” as in Randy Savage, by the French commentators on M6 (Gergor assures me that in Austria it’s pronounced “maho”).

Best goal: The first of Croatia’s two goals looked pretty cute in real time, but in slow-mo replay it was even more impressive, with Danijel Pranjic’s perfect long cross being footed home by Darijo Srna who actually poked it from between the legs of German defender Marcell Jansen.

In-game beverages: I finally discovered the “girafe” of beer—a 2.5L self-pour keg in a tall, clear plastic tube that looks like one hell of a bong. The name is a play on both the long-necked animal and the ubiquitous French carafe. We split two girafes of Stella between six of us = good times.

Tonight’s Games

A desperate Italy faces Romania in the appetizer for tonight’s main event between France and the Netherlands. After experiencing the FFF’s first match in sleepy Saint Emilion, population 2,000, I’ll be hitting the opposite end of the spectrum, viewing the match chez Paris (metropolitan pop. nearly 12 million) in the hopping Bastille neighbourhood. The Netherlands were impressive in their opening 3-0 win, so France has its work cut out for it tonight. Despite last night’s lesson, I won’t be calling ahead to make sure there’s a French bar showing the game at Bastille. I’ll trust my instincts on this one.

Predictions: Italy 1-1 Romania, France 2-1 Netherlands

Tags: Euro 2008

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Posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 9:36 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.