The manager was followed onto the coach home by his fatigued team putting forward their own slightly less confident shows of inscrutability, looking down at the pavement and narrowing their eyes slightly against the sun, as if rows of lederhosen-clad Bavarians were not playing a maniacally cheery song on either side of the walkway, trapping them in parade.
I felt for them; they’d done their best. The jolliness of trumpet and tuba most definitely sounded better on the way in, when the band were there to greet the arriving Scots team who had hopes of advancing to the tournament’s second stage. To be played right back out again by psychotic, high-energy oompah, no mercy for the hangover of the night before’s loss, was somehow apt. Many onlooking Scotland fans often feel like a great joke is being played on them by the cosmos. All this scene lacked was a laugh track.
There is form for oompah mischief in European football. This anecdote is from Rayleigh Brass Band secretary Kevin Hall, recounting some band lore. “We were contacted by one of the popular tabloids around the time of the Euro 2001 football tournament. It seems that the German supporters had rustled up a large oompah band to play all night outside the hotel where the England squad were staying. As a retaliatory strike, the newspaper thought it would be only polite to return the compliment for the German team, so they were out to hire a full English brass band. Whether it was due to the short notice given, or the desire to avoid involvement in an international incident, the band graciously declined the invitation.”
In the end, The Sun sent an open-top bus to the German team’s restorative country hotel with an improvised band of four pre-ban Page Three girls dressed in dirndls and carrying a giant sousaphone, a tuba, a French horn and a trumpet. Some years later, Germany goalkeeper and Arsenal player Jens Lehmann recalled being woken up by the group loudly playing tapes of Bavarian brass music at 5am in the hotel lobby, and credits the stunts for England’s 5-1 victory over Germany at that day’s match in Munich. Hotel management phoned the police on the band and several paper staff and reporters who were working on the tabloid’s “The Oompah Strikes Back” headline were arrested and fined 80 euros each for a breach of the peace. Oompah: when it’s not a fever dream, it is the rudest wake-up call.