They have missed the summit of their mountain tour but have won the hearts of the fans: One day after the frustrating 0-1 defeat against Spain in the final of the football-EURO, Germany's football national players experienced a mingle with the fans at the fan mile in Berlin. 100.000 fans gave the DFB-team a warm to euphoric welcome at the Brandenburg Gate and celebrated with the DFB-team a small summer fairy tale, saying goodbye to the EURO. The attendance figures of the past days and of the World Cup 2006 of several hundred thousand fans were not achieved.

16 hours after the final whistle, the German players were already able to laugh again and were impressed by the chanting crowd and all the black-red-yellow flags. After the demanding mountain tour and the missed summit, the DFB-team with national coach Joachim Löw and team manager Oliver Bierhoff enjoyed the applause and could already forget a the frustration about the lost final for a moment. The players were wearing t-shirts with the print "The Germans are walking like this until 2010" which showed figures, standing up straight and side by side, what should symbolize the unity of the team. "Of course, we are disappointed if it ends like this after so many weeks of hard work. We would never have achieved that without the fans", said captain Michael Ballack and thanked all the fans.

Löw paid tribute to the final-opponents Spain but also promised: "We will qualify for the World Cup. Should we face Spain in a tournament once again, we will beat them." Thomas Hitzlsperger was looking to the future: "We hope that we can improve for one place at the next tournament and then win the title."

Lukas Podolski grabbed the microphone and motivated the fans to chant with him his famous "Humba, tätära". The comedian Oliver Pocher was singing with the team the song "black and white" and was joking about the walk of German opponents like, for example, of superstar Cristiano Ronaldo who had lost with Portugal against Germany in the quarter-final with 2-3. The "team behind the team" with cooks, physiotherapists etc. was showing a banner with the message "82 million plus 23 = one team".

The German team arrived at 2:00 p.m. with the plane in Berlin-Tegel. They were then driving directly to the Brandenburg Gate by police-escort. The parade of the players began with the song "Heroes 2008" of the band "Revolverheld". The Austrian pop-singer Christina Stürmer sang her song "Fever".

Jürgen Zöllner, Berlin's education senator, had asked the heads of schools to give all pupils the possibility to take part in the event by cancelling single lessons so that as many visitors as possible were able to come to the fan mile. But, Zöllner didn't want to allow "school holiday" for that day.

In Frankfurt/Main, where the German players were said goodbye after big tournaments until 2006, the anew ceremony in Berlin was criticised. "Of course, I'm not happy about that, at all. This is a serious loss for the city of Frankfurt", said the Mayor, Petra Roth, to the newspaper Bild.