The big tournaments, in particular, are rarely on. The 2010 World Cup lasted 31 days. Euro 2012 will last 24 days. That's 55 days in 4 years, a mere 3.8% of the time. Hardly a serious imposition for the haterz, and hardly adequate for us.
Yes, the other continents have their month, and there's stuff like the Confederations Cup. Plus, there's the usual club season for nine months of the year. 23 home games for Bristol City, the Champions League on ITV on a Wednesday, the FA Cup. I admit we aren't entirely ignored. But full on football jamborees remain rare and precious, and I fail to see how anyone can feel in any way miffed if they get a little attention while they're on.
The opening ceremony
They started with Group 1, as is traditional. This year it's considered the easiest group. Poland and Warsaw got the first game, so Ukraine and Kiev will host the final.The opening ceremony was before the match, which is traditional as well. We were informed it was not to be "a long drawn out affair", which went down well with everyone. Seb Coe, take note.
There was the usual floor show, dancers, streamers, large polystyrene objects, you know how these things go. It was all colour coded, red and white for Poland, blue and yellow for Ukraine, all black for - well, for reasons that remained unclear. Either Poland has a nationally respected tradition of witchery, or maybe they were meant to symbolise the referees. Best not to wonder why. Best to just let these things wash over you.
There was a piano, and suddenly someone was playing Chopin. He was Polish, you know. So was Copernicus, but I didn't see anyone wheeling on a polystyrene orrery. They could have put a guy in yellow in the middle, and red, white and blue dancers could have whirled round him to the music of Holst. Or Tchaikovsky, who was Ukrainian.
If only they'd asked me to do the choreography. I could have saved them some mistakes. I wouldn't have had the pianist doing keepy uppy, for a start. As a ball juggler, he was an internationally recognised classical pianist.
Towards the end they got the audience to hold up cards of different colours, to display the 16 flags of the competing nations. I couldn't help wondering what would happen if they asked England fans to do that. Everyone colouring the foreign ones in red and white, probably. I haven't addressed the subject of hypocrisy and racism yet, but I may well make some quite trenchant comments in the near future.
So that was the opening ceremony. I always enjoy them, not so much for the spectacle as for the accumulated memories of anticipation I've acquired down the years. In many ways they're the perfect moment, given that you've never got as much football to come as you have just before it starts.
Poland 1 Greece 1
So the kick off is almost a sad moment, marking the moment at which the amount of football left starts to go down. On the other hand, they are finally actually playing some football. And the game turned out very well, considering everyone's low expectations of it. Poland haven't made it out of the group phase in 30 years, making them the Scotland of Eastern Europe, while Greece have an even worse record at major tournaments, usually qualifying in fine style before crashing and burning against teams from Korea to Argentina. They did win Euro 2004, though, so can't be ruled out.But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before the kick off were the national anthems. Not that I'm a fan of nationalism generally, especially the pointy-headed versions of it that like to hang around the fringes of football, but I'd miss them on these occasions. We don't have them at club games, except when Welsh teams come to Ashton Gate and our fans mysteriously sing the British national anthem at them, so when they are sung they contribute to the sense of specialness.
And the actual words of a song aren't always the point. I don't believe in some divine entity that wants to Abide With Me, but you like to hear it at a Cup final. Liverpool fans can still bring a lump to your throat even though they they probably do walk places on their own sometimes.
The Greeks went first. I was expecting "Money too tight to mention", or maybe "Buddy can you spare a dime", but instead we got the Hymn to Freedom. I recognise you by the sharpness of your fearsome sword, it begins. I take back the previous two paragraphs. I hate national anthems, they're so - nationalist.
Poland's anthem goes Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live. It's a sentiment you might expect from a country with Poland's geopolitical dliemmas, but I would have gone with Dear God, thanks for the lovely country and everything, but did you have to sandwich us between Germany and Russia, you sadistic bastard? Choregraphy, national anthems, there's no end to the things I'll never be trusted with.
Poland's most familiar face was Szczesny in goal. He's the only Premiership player in the squad. The Greek keeper, Chalkias, is the oldest player in the tournament. Their only player who plays in Britain is Samaras of Celtic.
So not many household names, but you might have recognised some of them from European competitions, in particular Lewandowski, Piszczek and Blaszczykowski of Borussia Dortmund. They were champions of Germany this year, and all three are important to Poland.
And after a nervous first two minutes, it was Poland that took control. Lewandowski was clearly Poland's brighest hope. I know this because I typed Lewandowski is clearly Poland's brightest hope into my notes after 15 minutes, and in the 17th minute he scored. It would have been clever and insightful if it wasn't so fucking obvious. In other news, it's going to be dark in a minute. Told you.
He took his goal well. Chalkias came out for a cross he was never going to get, and Lewandowski came onto it while the keeper was in exactly the wrong place. He did what good strikers do in that position, he headed it down. He knew it would pass Chalkias at ground level, and wouldn't bounce up to a catchable height until it was safely beyond him and heading into the net.
A fine goal. And a home goal, just what the first game of every tournament needs. The crowd went wild. That's what crowds do in that situation, and it would have been weird if they hadn't. I've done it myself, without any sense of ironic distance.
Things carried on like this for the rest of the first half. Perquis missed a rebound from a free kick when it seemed easier to score, then headed another one wide. The Greeks substituted a Papadopoulos. Sorry, the Greeks substituted A Papadopoulos. Capitals are harder on a laptop. They brought on K Papadopoulos to replace him, which made me wonder if England had ever done that. Cole, Neville, Ferdinand, there's a few candidates. Anyone know?
Sokratis Papastathopoulos (not to be confused with either Papadopoulos) picked up a yellow card for a fairly innocuous challenge on a high ball. A few minutes later he got another one and was off. He wasn't the first footballer to be called after Socrates, but he must have been annoyed to get hemlocked for rather less offence than the original.
So at halftime it all looked done and dusted. Greece brought on Salpingidis on for Ninis, though, and five minutes after the restart he scored an equaliser out of nothing.
It was Szczesny's fault, really. He came for a cross his defender was already challenging for, didn't get it, and ended up sprawled on the ground. The ball fell to Salpingidis, who knocked it past the defender and in. Salpingidis also scored the goal that woke the Greeks up against Nigeria in the World Cup. In that game Kaita was sent off, and the Greeks took advantage. This time they equalised with ten men.
Soon after, Salpingidis got through again. Szczesny brought him down, gave away a penalty and got sent off. He now misses the Russia game, although he'll be available again for the Czechs.
Although they may well stick with Tyton, who saved Karagounis' penalty. He plays for Eindhoven, and was little unknown outside Poland and Holland until yesterday. It's a hell of a way to announce yourself, and he did well for the rest of the game as well.
Still one all then, and that's how it stayed. Salpingidis got the ball in again after 73 minutes, but another player was ruled offside. It was a close decision, but correct.
Overall it was a great start to the tournament. It's hard to see either team progressing though. Which is a little depressing, because you want the home nations to do well, or the atmosphere around the event can fall a little flat. The Ukrainians could also get to a quarter final, but realistically it would be at England's expense, so let's hope Poland can do it instead.
Russia 4 Czech Republic 1
I was rude about national anthems earlier, but the Czech one is lovely. Here are the words.
Where is my home, where is my home?
Water roars across the meadows,
Pinewoods rustle among crags,
The garden is glorious with spring blossom,
Paradise on earth it is to see.
And this is that beautiful land,
The Czech land, my home,
The Czech land, my home.
Water roars across the meadows,
Pinewoods rustle among crags,
The garden is glorious with spring blossom,
Paradise on earth it is to see.
And this is that beautiful land,
The Czech land, my home,
The Czech land, my home.
No blood, no swords, no dulce et decorum est. Doctor Who could sing it without a qualm.
The Russian one is the old communist one, doctored. Never mind. At least there's nothing about Stalin in it any more.
Howard Webb was in charge of the game. Cue lots of Twitter jokes about Ferguson's comments about his fitness, which was odd, because the ref in question then was Alan Wiley. That's the thing about Twitter, false memes fly with the same speed as true ones.
The game was played in Wroclaw, which is only 50 miles from the Czech Republic. Most of the singing seemed to be in Russian though, as they dominated the game. Dzagoev scored 15 minutes in, after Kerzhakov headed against the post.
It was a lead they never looked likely to lose. 8 minutes later Shirokov doubled it when he got to a loose diagonal ball from Arshavin which Cech was expecting his defence to cut out, and dinked it over him.
The Czechs did their bit though, in another entertaining game. Maybe we've been deprived in the last few weeks, but I'm really enjoying things so far.
Russia could have gone further ahead. Every time they nearly scored, the camera cut to a beautiful woman in the crowd, for no obvious reason. Not the same one, that would be stalking, but it you couldn't help notice the male fans they zoomed in on weren't being selected for reasons of pulchritude.
A few minutes into the second half the Czechs got one back. Pilar got inside Anyakov for once, went round Malafeev and knocked it past the covering defenders, who couldn't get back in time.
The camera cut to another smiling young woman, with Czech face painting rather than Russian. Yet again she was (metaphorically) sandwiched between men of less immediate appeal. This constant appeal to the lowest common denominator annoys me so much. Rage? I'm stiff with it.
The Czechs might have equalised when Rosicky shot from 30 yards in the 73rd minute. Malafeev stopped it, but it bounced up off his left arm. With Czech forwards closing, he twisted athletically to grab it before they could get in.
It was their last hurrah, as the Russians scored twice in five minutes. Firstly Pavlyochenko passed to Dzagoev, who took his time, measured his shot and put it beyond Cech's diving reach.
Then Pavlyochenko scored the goal of the day. Running down the left, he turned the Czechs this way and that, made himself half a yard and hit it hard and true. It was a pure striker's goal. The defenders didn't do a lot wrong, they're just not Pavlyochenko.
The Czechs did score right at the end of injury time, but it was ruled out for offside. It seemed to sum up their night.
So now we've seen the Group 1 teams. Russia stood out, which was expected, and it's really any of the other three to go through with them. You'd expect at least one Group B team in the semis though. We'll see them tomorrow.
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