My job is to coordinate pricing strategies with out Joint Venture partners. What this means is that I am constantly communicating with our partners at Air France, KLM, Alitalia, and Virgin Atlantic.
During normal times, communication works pretty well. But there is a time every two years where coordination, cooperation, and friendship completely fall apart (I'm taking a little poetic license on how bad it gets since it is really not that bad).
Every four years the World Cup comes around. But a little lessor known cup to those of us in the U.S., is just important to those in Europe. The UEFA European Championship, or Euros, is also played every four years, two years apart from the World Cup. And it is almost as important to those in Europe as the World Cup, with almost the same energy, pageantry, and status.
Unfortunately, the Dutch really blew it this year and they didn't even qualify. Pretty sad for a team that came in third two years ago at the World Cup. So all the excitement and energy that comes to the Netherlands normally during the Euros is gone. And it is depressing.
Have no fear, for I have many French colleagues that have volunteered their team for me to support. With that, we decided to go downtown to Rembrantplein to an expat bar that is well prepped for large groups to watch soccer. I walked up to the place a little late, and was amazed by the amount of French people gathered to watch the game.
Man was this an experience. The fans were chanting, singing, and dancing while cheering on their team. They taught us several chants but the favorite was something to the sentiment of screw you Albania, but a lot more crass.
The game was exciting in the second half, where you could feel that France was going to score. But it didn't happen until almost the end at the 90th minute. And then the place went crazy.
And here is a video to share about the excitement that George filmed right after the goal. Notice the poor devastated Albanian fans as he runs outside.
France ended up winning 2-0. And it got me excited for the rest of the Euros.
P.S. I'm still a true US fan, but I'm not waking up at 3am to watch their games.
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