By: Nelson Zhang

One of Germany’s forward player’s, Niclas Füllkrug, was taking a 300-mile journey on a high-speed train to the Euro 2024 opening game against Scotland. The team’s staff had told players to arrive on Monday, a few days before the opening game. But for some reason Niclas Füllkrug arrived later that week on Sunday. Why?

Well, in recent years, Germany has failed to upgrade their railroads causing a ton of traffic. This is causing a ton of delays already but now that even more people are taking the train to see the Euro games, there have been many more delays and railroad failures.

These railroad failures have been so bad and so many passengers have been waiting for hours. As a remedy, people were hired by Germany’s national railway Deutsche Bahn, to pass out ice-pops to all the overheated waiting passengers. While Niclas Füllkrug was finally boarded, he wasn’t surprised when he got crammed with high school students on a class trip fielding their questions about life with the national team.

By the time he made it to Herzogenaurach, he was exhausted having traveled for much longer than scheduled. When he arrived, he had hardly any time to prepare for an elite athlete on the eve of a major tournament. In Germany, as Füllkrug said, it pays to “have a bit of respect for Deutsche Bahn.”

To show how big this event is, millions of people from Europe, America, and all over the world are traveling to see the Euros. Yet as fans have come to Germany, many fans have been late and the rest lucky to make it to games on time.