Germany as Host of EURO2024

There are some similarities between Hattrick and the real world: Germany is hosting the European Championship this year. While "Albärt", the UEFA EURO 2024 mascot, still has to get fans in the right mood for the tournament starting on 14 June 2024, half of the European Championship matches have already been played in the Hattrick version.
This article summarises the reports of the European Cup so far.

The first edition of the U20/U21 World Cup was held in Germany. Later, the NT World Cup Edition 8 also took place in Germany. This makes Germany one of 8 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Oceania, Trinidad & Tobago) that have hosted both an NT and an U21 World Cup.

At the end of last year, LA-Alpa published an article about the allocation of tournaments for the national teams (23388) and showed that it can be even better: 9 countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Sweden) have already been allowed to host 3 tournaments, and Oceania has already hosted all 4 tournament formats (1 NT-WC, 1 U20-WC, 1 NT-CC, 1 U21-CC).

Where the host of the NT WC was recently voted on, the EC was chosen at random, as before. It therefore came as a surprise to everyone that Germany would host the tournament in its 37th season for the very first time since the introduction of the new selection team format in Edition 32. It joins the list of Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Poland and Ireland who have previously been chosen to host the European Under-21 Cup.

Admittedly, the number of games that are actually played in the host country at continental championships - compared to the World Cup games - is really manageable. After all, the 10 matches during the group stage are played as home/away games, leaving only the play-off matches (4x quarter-finals, 2x semi-finals and 1x final) for which German teams' stadiums provide a home.

It is part of the etiquette of the selection teams that the host country opens a tournament thread in the World Cup Forum. With the motto "We love beer 🍻, we love cars 🚗, we love football ⚽", the thread started immediately after the elections, with an overview of the most successful teams in the European Cup so far (17579379.1), as well as an overview of when which important events are coming up (17579379.4), and the preparation of an HT replay table (17579379.5), which you can use to determine how much luck or misfortune you experience in the tournament.

I also launched an appeal to all newly elected coaches to register for a Europe-wide community game (17579411.1). I had already tried something like this in Edition 35 by inviting my group opponents at the time to a joint community game. At that time there was only positive feedback from 5 countries, so I was very surprised when 41 out of 48 European countries signed up.

He who says A must also say B, but I quickly realised that this number would be bigger than I could manage on my own. So I knocked on the door of Merschi (3750637), who had once managed a press centre for the former U20 Germany, and was very pleased (and also really relieved) when he told me that he actually had free capacity and could support me with theses based on the events of the Euro games for the community game "true or false".

The rules of the game and the theses had to be translated into the national languages, and there were also 10-15 volunteers (some of them even official LAs) who agreed to do this. Some were even prepared to organise the entire game for their community so that we only had to send them the theses. A big THANK YOU to all helpers!

We started the community game with a test round, followed by 5 theses for each match day, which each participant could answer with "True", "False" or "Skip/Pass". Correct answers were awarded one point, incorrect answers a minus point, and no points were awarded for skipped statements. In addition, each participant could earn bonus points for each consecutive round in which they took part. Almost 300 participants have taken part in the game so far.
As there was little or no participation in some (smaller) communities, we cancelled the game early and collected the individual participants in a mix group.

But there's more: Before the tournament started, I shared some statistics in the World Cup forum, for example that ksv222 (12692321) got the most votes in Poland with 2,714 votes, Edwyn (1801142) got the most votes in Scotland in percentage terms and that the election in Bulgaria was decided with only 6 votes (17579379.8).
Someone else shared an overview of how users from European countries around the world had settled into the coach's chair.

I also shared an overview in which -Teseo- (11758956) took the crown as England coach with the most U20/U21 and NT campaigns so far (23 in total), as well as who was brand new to the job (17579379.24) and who has won the most medals so far (17579379.25). In the last category, a German user was in first place: JabbaPapa (1761372) with 6 medals during his 9 terms of office so far - an impressive record!

Before the first game of the European Cup was played, I shared from my U21 coaching experience (Edition 34+35 U21 Liechtenstein and 36 U21 Germany) what to look out for at the beginning of a turn and what course to set (17579379.18) et seqq.
I also shared observations on how to animate the community with a view to the European Cup, e.g. with storytelling around the U21 squad, voting for banners and jerseys and other types of community games (17579379.51).

On 23 February 2024, all the tournament preparations came to an end and the first match of the Europe Cup was about to begin. For each match day, I shared a preview of the games against a certain background, for example, which neighbouring countries were playing each other and who had to travel the furthest distance or which games had the most players already in the dressing room, see (17579379.76) et seqq.

After each matchday, with the help of usually anonymous helpers, I filled in the aforementioned HT replay table with the HT replays for the individual matches and shared them per matchday, as well as a conclusion from them, for example, who has played a particularly unlucky tournament so far or who has forced the best HT replays on the matchday.

So that these bare figures don't just stand there, I started interviews in which I asked the coaches about certain achievements or happenings and shared their stories.

The group stage still has a few weeks to go until mid-April, when the venue for the European Championship play-offs will change to German soil. It is not yet clear which stadiums will be chosen for this.

The European Championship final will be played on 26/04/2024, and then we will know who will succeed as the European Champions after Spain in Edition 36.

I wish you further lots of fun at the Europe Cup Edition 37, hosted by Germany.

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