Where just a few days ago tens of thousands of Scottish football fans celebrated their Tartan Army at the European Football Championship, this time it was the English who were "on the move". On Tuesday, England met Slovenia in the Cologne stadium and so the numerous supporters of the Three Lions were now cavorting around Cologne Cathedral.
One Englishman, who flew into Cologne from London in the late afternoon, was only marginally interested in the game. Sir Rod Stewart, an avowed supporter of the Scottish team anyway, had a job to do. ONE LAST TIME he was to be on stage in the Lanxess Arena at the same time as the England game and present the songs of his career to his fans. No sooner said than done.
Stewart managed to make sure that none of the almost 20,000 people in the arena were even remotely interested in the fact that Harry Kane's England were "breaking one off" against Slovenia just nine kilometres away and couldn't get past a meagre 0:0.
Sir Rod reigned supreme in the arena, organising a party that lasted a good two hours. Right at the start, the 79-year-old "belted out" ADDICTED TO LOVE, YOU WEAR IT WELL and HAVIN' A PARTY, three songs that really got the crowd going. Rod didn't give himself or the fans a break. With TONIGHT I'M YOURS and the Bonnie Tyler classic IT'S A HEARTACHE, he got the party going again. And so it continued. In between, the audience occasionally breathed a sigh of relief during songs like TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT or I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT and Sir Rod was also able to take a deep breath during one or two costume changes.
When he disappeared backstage for a new outfit, his band took over at the front and continued seamlessly where Stewart had just left off. The singers then belted out I'M EVERY WOMAN and HOT STUFF to the 20,000-strong crowd. This didn't dampen the atmosphere in the arena at all and now even the last person realised that the party zone in the cathedral city wasn't in the stadium that evening, but in the Lanxess Arena.
Rod Stewart naturally took the opportunity to reiterate his anti-war stance and once again dedicated the song RHYTHM OF MY HEART to Ukraine and the war-torn Ukrainian people. His "Fuck Putin" was well received in the cathedral city - unlike recently in Leipzig and Budapest, where some fans responded to the singer's statements with whistles and boos. But in Cologne, Rod received nothing but pleasant applause. "Yay instead of boo" - wrote the Kölner Stadtanzeiger newspaper.
The two hours in the arena came to an end far too quickly for many fans and Stewart stepped on the accelerator once again at the end of the show. BABY JANE, SOME GUYS HAVE ALL THE LUCK, DA YA THINK I'M SEXY and the legendary SAILING brought the marvellous evening to a close.
The press also had high praise for Sir Rod. "He surpasses himself on this evening," wrote the WAZ newspaper from Essen. "He is a real multi-functional tool, a confident professional at the microphone. And an eternally young singer to boot, with his shirt unbuttoned wide open and his bum full of bumblebees: He does jumping jacks, gyrates his hips, wiggles his outstretched bum and conjures up figures on the floor in a way that only figure skaters can. Not a trace of a man who will complete his eighth decade next year," enthuses the Aachener Zeitung.
There's really nothing to add to that.
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