Welcome

Welcome to my latest blog. It's about the 2012 European Championships. So why have I called it the Commonwealth Cup? You tell me. Comments are open.

There is a reason. I haven't just pulled some arbitrary crap out of my arse and demanded that my readers make more of it than I could. There's plenty of time for that later.

It's already a record breaking tournament, Euro 2012, inasmuch as it must be the least eagerly awaited international football tournament in living memory. Of course, being English, by eagerly awaited, I mean eagerly awaited in England, and by international football tournament, I mean one with England in it. Sorry for the narrow perspective. We aren't an entirely insular nation, but football doesn't always bring out the best in us

By living memory I mean mine, which goes back to the 1970 World Cup. In particular, I remember crying when Germany came back from 2-0 down to beat us 3-2 in the semi final. My dad told me real men don't cry at the results of football matches, a sentiment I knew to be profoundly wrong even then. Although I'd turned four shortly before the 1966 final, I have no memory of it.

So I can't say if for instance our 1950 trip to Brazil loomed larger or smaller in the national mind, although the lack of TV can't have helped. I do remember a certain flatness about Euro 2008 and the 1994 World Cup, but that was because England didn't qualify.

This time, you would think all the crucial ingredients were in place. England have qualified, top of their group if not exactly in peerless style. Every game will be on terrestrial TV, including all of England's. All the squads except Greece and Ukraine have Premiership players in them, with names the fans should know. England have a new manager, untainted by previous humiliations.

And the tournament follows a spectacular season, culminating in a thrilling last day in the Premiership and an English triumph in the Champions League. Yet people are giving it less attention than they gave the Jubilee. What's the problem?

It's partly down to John Terry, whose pre-tournament behaviour has cast yet another long shadow, but mainly it's because no-one expects England to do their duty. And you can't blame them. Where other nations can find four or five world class players and a supporting cast of international plausibles, England's big names are all ageing, unproven or under a cloud. Just to cobble together a squad Hodgson has had to take half Liverpool's unforeign players and a keeper who's been on loan to Cheltenham most of the season.

We do have Joe Hart, and hopefully a game or two from Rooney. Do we have anyone else who'd get into the German or Spanish squads?

There is one chance, which is that simply by being so unfancied England stand a chance of sneaking under everyone else's radar, like Greece and Denmark in previous competitions. Unfortunately, everyone keeps saying that simply by being so unfancied England stand a chance of sneaking under everyone else's radar, like Greece and Denmark in previous competitions. This proposition raises expectations, thus undermining itself and creating the kind of logical paradox that drove Bertrand Russell to month long sulks and ridiculous bouffant hair. It is likely because people say it is unlikely. But people keep saying it's likely because it's unlikely, which makes it unlikely, which means no-one can say it's likely because it's unlikely, which makes it likely again. Etc.

Anyway. The nation isn't that engaged. Which is a mistake. Yes our team is a bit shit, but England's woes are hardly the point. We always lose in the end, which means we always have to sulk for a day at some point, and it doesn't much matter when. What matters is that there's going to be a festival of football. With a lineup that makes Sunrise look like some trustafarians banging their bongos in the park.

Mesut Ozil will be there. Xavi. Shevchenko and Lewandovski, both on home soil. Van Persie. Ribery. Ronaldo. Yes he's a twat, but still.

Beyond the established talents, there's a myriad of possible breakthroughs. Like Pogrebnyak of Russia and Fulham, for instance. He was on Match of the Day a lot this season. OK I was usually drunk (who watches Match of the Day sober?), but I'm fairly sure he made me ooh and aah a few times. And talking of oohs and aahs there's Götze of Germany, a player who ought to get the Twitterati sniggering. Apparently he's good at opening things up if they're a bit tight round the back. He likes to spread it out really wide and hold it there.

There's other names you might vaguely know, without being quite sure how. Juanfran? Won the Europa cup final this year, with the other Madrid, Atletico. No Falcao, he's Brazilian, but Spain bring Llorente from the losing finalists Bilbao, who saw off Man United so convincingly.

And the fixture list itself should be enough to get you red-cheeked and panting, even if Götze doesn't. Holland v Germany. Spain v Italy. England v France, for Christ's sake.

There's history there, of the political as well as the sporting kind. Poland v Russia should be keenly fought. Sweden v France is a rerun of the Thirty Years War. The previously mentioned England v France is a rerun of the Seven and the Hundred Years War. That's 137 years of French wars re-enacted for you.

More relevantly in the context, Holland v Germany takes us back to the 1974 World Cup Final, Italy v Ireland to Ray Houghton's goal at Giants Stadium in 1994. They shouldn't even have let him in, he's only 5 foot 7.

Portugal v Holland, meanwhile, will hopefully include several veterans of the 2006 game that had more red and yellow cards in it than any other game I've seen. Don't tell me you disapproved. We all disapproved, or would have done if we'd been able to stop laughing. Shakespeare needed his fools for comic relief, and so do we.

See, I told you there were reasons to be getting excited. So why aren't you then?

Well, I'm doing my bit. I've taken three weeks off work, with the goal of hauling the nation out of its collective torpor and filling it with football frenzy. Alliteration, innuendo, gratuitous historical references, I'll be shoehorning it all in somehow. I might even describe some football.

And in two days, it's all going to kick off. Can't wait.