The headline on the German newspaper being read by a fan sitting on Gdansk's lovely, Copenhagen-like waterfront, was succinct: "Bye bye Greece we can't rescue you this time," was its rough translation.
Unlike in Athens, in Gdansk business is booming this morning. Not for the first time the place is over-run with Germans. They have been here before. In fact they once got all proprietorial about this city, renaming it Danzig and building U-boats in its dockyard.
History is everywhere here: you can take a boat trip along the river and have pointed out the very spot just down the coast where the first shot of the Second World War was fired. Nearby in the resort town of Sopot, you can stay at the Grand Hotel, maybe in the very same suite that Hitler checked into in 1939 to watch at first hand his tanks roll into Poland.
Among the pictures of celebrities who have stayed in the hotel they have displayed on the wall of the bar you can see Marlene Dietrich, David Niven and Michael Douglas with Catherine Zeta Jones. But perhaps not surprisingly there is no photographic evidence on display of Hitler's stay.
Tonight the city will be witness to a different kind of history. It is playing host to the Euro 2012 quarter-final that cheerfully mixes sport and politics: Germany against Greece, the deficit derby, the one forum in which the Greeks might come out on top even if the Germans impose penalties.
Just outside the bar in which I am writing this, a street trader is selling Greece and Germany souvenir half and half scarves for five euros a piece; just about the only financial arrangement these days in which the two get equal billing.
Let's hope the German chancellor Angela Merkel, who will be at the Gdansk arena tonight, has bought one. She could give it to the new Greek Prime Minister as a gift. Then five minutes later demand it back and insist he give her too his trousers as interest. That way their relationship will start as she means it to go on.
Mrs M will certainly have been impressed by the trader's enterprise: he must have moved quickly to get his product out on the market, no one expected this to be the line-up at this game.
As they have before in this competition, Greece have got here by punching above their weight. Economists would suggest the Greek football team is everything the country's economy is not: disciplined, organised, competitive. Three shots on target converted into three goals so far in this competition: they are the very model of efficiency.
But no one was making such jokes around the Greek training camp this week. There, Giorgios Samaras took exception to anyone who made any connection between Greece's woeful fiscal relationship with Germany and this game. No bail-out gags for the Celtic striker. This is just a football match, he said. Nothing more.
Try telling that to the folks back home in Athens, who see this as an unbeatable chance to get one over on their economic oppressors. This is the one place the Greeks are able to look the Germans in the eye as equals. Or near equals. And anyone of Greek descent is relishing the moment, relishing the thought they might for once better the nation they regard as responsible for imposing such misery on them right now.
And it would be great to imagine they could achieve here what they will never manage round the negotiating table: superiority over the Germans. But however hard you look you can't see it happening.
Unlike the Greeks, the German team absolutely mirrors its nation's economy: it is modern, powerful and built to dominate. What is striking about watching them in action is how athletic their players are: Schweinsteiger, Lahm, Ozil, Neuer are extraordinarily strong. Plus they have skill, intelligence, experience and tactical nous.
This is the team which best offers real competition to the all-conquering Spain. Indeed, the way they have set off in this tournament it is hard to see beyond them as winners.
In truth, the only reason Greece stand in their way is because of the abject complacency of the Russians. Andrei Arshavin and his team-mates simply thought they had to turn up in their final group game to progress. Instead they found dogged, resolute, admirably committed opponents who refused to yield to such unearned sense of superiority.
Even as they parked the chariot, it was magnificent to watch the Greeks defend. But unfortunately for them, the Germans will not offer such a route to success. They will not take their eye off the ball. They will hound the Greeks from kick off to final whistle. It does not promise to be a pretty sight.
Indeed, it makes you think on the football pitch as in the world economic forum there can only be one winner tonight. And it won't be Greece.