The Near-Holy Experience of Watching Euro 2020
After having been postponed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, the quadrennial European soccer championship began in June, hosted by 11 different cities across the continent. Euro 2020 (as it has continued to be called despite now taking place in 2021) follows a season unlike any we had seen before in world football, during which many teams across the globe played the majority of their matches without any fans in the stands.
It was a strange and often disorienting experience. Watching the season on television, viewers could feel the hollowness of the stadiums echo through the screen. We could hear each player call for the ball, hear each howl of a coach’s instruction, and hear each thud whenever a foot made contact with the ball’s synthetic surface. Some channels attempted to fill the void with
