Word of the Month: Der Schlachtenbummler

Word of the Month: Index

There is an obvious reason for the present WoM, the UEFA 2020 soccer tournament taking place, in spite of its official name, right now, in the summer of 2021. Schlachten is the plural of Schlacht (battle) as in Schlacht von Waterloo (Battle of Waterloo). Bummler is a noun derived from the verb bummeln, to dawdle or, and that’s the meaning in the present term, to stroll in a leisurely fashion. A Schlachtenbummler, then, is a person who strolls from battle to battle, where the battles in question are typically not of a military nature.



The term is used most frequently to denote soccer fans who travel from town to town to watch matches, especially those involving their favorite team. The general connotation is that they behave peacefully—nobody would call soccer hooligans Schlachtenbummler (the plural is the same as the singular): Yes, they look for battles, literally, but they want to participate in them, not just watch them. The accompanying photo shows my two brothers and me as Schlachtenbummler during the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

An aside: There is an obvious relation, both linguistically and semantically, between Schlacht and the verb schlachten (to slaughter). But this does not mean that one is derived from the other; rather, both derive from a Middle High German word for "kill" [Source: Online Duden].

UEFA Euro 2020, played this year

In the past, I created posts on which soccer fans among my friends and I could discuss and comment on the games played during a concurrent soccer tournament. It was great fun, and I am doing this again for the UEFA Euro 2020 competition from June 11 to July 11, which was delayed by a year due to the pandemic.

For the group phase, Germay finds herself in the mother of all "groups of death", Group F with, aside from Germany, the reigning World Champion, France, and the reigning European Champion, Portugal. Hungary will complete the quartet.

In the old days, only the first- and second-placed teams of each group advanced to the elimination rounds. This would have meant that Germany would have to finish ahead of France or Portugal in Group F to get beyond the group phase, a daunting prospect given the decidedly mixed record of the German side over the past several years. But UEFA, in its wisdom, decided in 2016 to increase the total number of participating teams from 16 to 24, which makes it necessary to start the elimination phase with a round of 16 that also includes the 4 third-placed teams with the best records. That is to say, 4 points in the group phase (1 victory and 1 draw in 3 matches) will probably be enough to advance. In fact, even 3 points may be enough, as demonstrated by Portugal during Euro 2016: They tied three times during the group phase, advanced to the elimination round as a third-placed team, and won the tournament in the end! And so, even a team with a checkered recent record like Germany's has a chance to advance beyond the group phase.

I will start the discussion in my first comment with a few additional observations about the German side.