Day Five

We've seen everyone now. These were the first games with teams we'd seen before. And there's poignancy in the fact. It's now two years until we see a team for the first time in a major international football tournament. The clock is ticking, people, the clock is ticking. Enjoy yourselves, enjoy yourselves, ...

Greece 1 Czech Republic 2

I can't believe I called Ireland v Croatia the comedy game before I'd seen this one. I'm not sure about running it before the dramatic one though. I don't think Sophocles would have approved.

I missed the first goal as I was making a cup of tea. A foolish mistake, it's clearly not the kind of tournament where you can do that.

As I was putting the milk in I heard the commentator say he was relieved by the Greek selection. "There was a concern that the back four would have twenty eight syllables in their names". Worse, there would have been two Papadopouloses and a Papastathopoulos. Fortunately for everyone having to speak or type Papastathopoulos was suspended and one of the Papadopouloses was injured, so neither were available.

The Greeks might have stopped the second goal if they had been. I wouldn't have trusted their back four to carry a table, never mind hold off the dynamic Czech attack. Four corners, four defenders, it would have baffled them. Six minutes in, Gebre Selassie made one of his overlapping runs down the right, picked up the pass that came through the line unchallenged and knocked it back across the box, past the keeper. Two of the three players chasing it were Greek defenders, but somehow Pilar got the first touch with his knee, and bumped it into an empty net.

The Greek team really are a depressingly poor watch for a hopeful blogger. I've been waiting all these years to write a post that compares them to Achilles or the 300 Spartans, and they've never yet given me a chance. The fans dress in bronze age helmets, but they never get the heroes they deserve. It wouldn't be so bad if they lost heroically, but they never go out with a bang, it's always a whimper.

They did get the ball in the net after 40 minutes with Fotakis' header, but it was given offside. It was very tight, but looked level. It would have galvanised some teams, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on Greece.

Finally the Czechs gave them one back themselves. A limp pass from Samaras bounced amiably into the penalty area, and Cech went to grab it. Somehow he fluffed it, and it rolled to Gekas, who kicked it over an unguarded line and into the net.

Cech tried to blame the defender, Sivok, who'd been coming towards him at the time, but replays show he'd missed the ball completely before Sivok got anywhere near him. They did bump slightly afterwards, but a goalkeeper needs to be able to grab a straightforward ball and hold on to it through a collision in those situations. As far as I could see Sivok was guilty of nothing but having a Vulcan name.

The goal gave Greece some encouragement, but they never seriously troubled the Czechs themselves. Ignoring their freak year in 2004, Greece's record at major tournaments is played 14, won 1, drawn 2, lost 11. Now they have to play Russia.

Poland 1 Russia 1

This was the one we'd been waiting for in Group A. Poland were at home, and it was Russia's national day. There was also the political angle.

Which was rather sharper than for instance the one between Holland and Germany. Germany occupied Holland for five years, and were booted out two thirds of a century ago. The Russian occupation of Poland lasted two centuries, with a 30 year hiatus, and only finished in 1989. A stronger analogy might be to the Germany v Holland final of 1974, if the German support that day had displayed a banner saying This is Germany. Which they may have done, given that it was. Warsaw isn't in Russia though, and the Russian fans that chose to wave a banner saying it was may not have trying too hard to move on from a difficult past.

Officialdom were doing their bit to raise the tone. They covered the stadium in well meaning banners. RESPECT: say no to racism they said - in English. In English?? For fuck's sake.

This amounts to saying you know those people you don't like, the ones who bestride the world with imperialist fervour, whose money markets fuck you over like a good 'un, whose moneybags clubs take all your best players? They're the ones that don't like racism. I don't like pop tarts, but if someone told me bankers hated them I might see them in a different light.

Yes, you're right, let's focus on the football. And an excellent game it was too. The Poles had the best of the first half. After 18 minutes Polanski thought he'd scored from a Lewandovski pass, but it was just offside. It was Russa that scored first though, after 37 minutes, when an Arshavin free kick was headed on by Dzagoev. It followed a violent foul by Wasilevski, so there was some justice in it, but it was a kick in the teeth for the home crowd.

Lewandowski had some chances, as he did against Greece. He shot narrowly over from 25 yards in the first half, then went round the keeper in the first minute of the second, but the keeper got back at him. A few minutes later the keeper just beat him to a loose ball on the edge of the 6 yard box.

They got their equaliser on 57 minutes. It was a counter-counterattack, a clever trick if you can pull it off.

Poland were going forward with the ball, but lost it. Arshavin charged down the pitch and laid the ball along the edge of the Polish box, but it was intercepted by a Polish defender. They gathered the ball and played it up to their forwards, who were still in position from the previous attack. Obraniak passed it to Blaczszowsky, who cut inside and hit the best shot of the tournament so far.

The rest of the game was a tense affair, especially for me. I was drinking Guinness, and didn't want to miss any of the action, so I was waiting for somebody to be injured or substituted so I could go for a piss. In the end biology won, as it always will in this crassly physical world, then as soon as I got back Polanski had to go off for treatment. I didn't miss anything crucial, but it got me thinking anyway.

There's a sports bar up the Gloucester Road which has solved this problem. The urinals are positioned in front of a narrow window, starting at shoulder height. This protects the drinker's modesty, whilst the slanted glass enables him to see the TV on the wall just below.

There are times when it's supremely satisfying to be in a space which has been designed with your needs in mind. Surely a simple amendment to the next Housing Act could oblige developers to introduce this innovation in all new housing?

The full time whistle set up a tense final day on which all four teams might get through to the quarter finals, but no-one was guaranteed to. Any combination of two is still possible except Poland and the Czechs. In fact Poland now have to beat the Czechs or they don't progress. On their showing tonight I wouldn't bet against it.

Day Four

I'm going to let you in on a secret. I never enjoy England games.

There, I've said it. It's the tension, you see.  If you're behind, you're miserable. If you're ahead you're terrified. If it's nil nil you're frustrated. You're only actually happy if you're way ahead. The last time I really enjoyed an England game at a major tournament was the Denmark game in 2002. The last time before that was Holland in 1996.

Most games are like going on a first date with indigestion. The hope that things might go well mingles awkwardly with the memory of all the times it didn't, plus you can't finish your burger.  To be honest, I think I've gone a bit odd with it.

England 1 France 1

I can't see the point in a match report about a game you all watched, so instead here are some facts.

FACT ONE: Lloris, the French goalkeeper, is also their captain. He is not to be confused with a loris, which is a tiny, tiny monkey from the rainforests of south Asia.

One Lloris

Two lorises

A loris would never be accepted into the French national side as a goalkeeper, as they don't speak French so couldn't organise the defence at corners. Also, they are normally found in small groups of three or four, and would struggle to adapt to the squad system.

This separation of loris world and Lloris world cuts both ways.  A Lloris could never survive as an insectivore, and his inability to conceal himself with leaves and twigs would leave him vulnerable to predators.

You can tell how important the distinction between a loris and a Lloris is from the fact that I've imported two images to illustrate it. The last time my readers got even one image out of me it was an Abrams tank on its way to Baghdad.


FACT TWO: This fact came courtesy of @Pundamentalism on Twitter.

Fact: It's easier to hit Joleon Lescott's forehead than it is to get a shot on target

This may be why Peter Crouch hasn't been selected, as his forehead is both smaller and further away.

FACT THREE: 15 of the 22 starters play their club football in the Premiership. Both goal scorers play for Manchester City, as well as the goalkeeper who let in the French goal. For which he was unfairly blamed in my opinion. If your two defensive lines run into each other you've got one line not two, and one line can easily be shot through.

FACT FOUR: Scott Parker is the most English looking man in the world. More precisely, he's the most Londonish of all Londoners. If ever anyone lost their virginity on Clapham Common it was him. To Amy Winehouse, I expect, in the back of a Reliant Robin. I see from Wikipedia that he was born in Lambeth. He probably stood straight up and did the walk.

FACT FIVE: According to the rules of football, referees are supposed to make decisions by applying well-defined criteria consistently.

Amazing, but true. Of all my facts, the hardest to deduce purely from observation.

Sweden 1 Ukraine 2

By the time this one started most of us were too drained by the previous three hours to care, but it turned out to be an excellent game.

Ukraine play in yellow, so the stadium was mainly yellow as well. Sweden normally play in yellow  themselves, but it's customary to defer to your hosts in the matter of colours, so they played in bluey black instead. Their shirts still had a yellow stripe though, and their fans were in yellow.

Grass under floodlights is yellowy green. To summarise the colour balance, it was like watching a thousand canaries fly through a field of buttercups to the sound of Coldplay. After the emotional rigours of the England game it was quite soothing.

Sweden as a team depend very much on Zlatan Ibrahimovic. We were treated to a closeup of his boots, and learnt that they were sponsored. I'm not surprised by that, I'm no longer surprised by any absurdities of that kind, but I did notice they had Zlatan written on them. Now I can't claim to have lived a life entirely without bombast, none of us can, but I have to say I've never felt the remotest urge to put my name on my shoes. Either his mum did it so he wouldn't get them mixed up with someone else's, or he's a very vain young man indeed.

He's a genuinely good player though. He hit the post with a first half header he should have buried, but then scored soon after the restart. It was Yarmolenko's poor defensive header that gave him the chance. It went straight to Kallstrom, who knocked it back to Ibrahimovic on the six yard line. He'd been marked two seconds earlier, but now he had a free shot. One nil.

Ukraine were angry, because they'd had a man down at the time. The convention that play stops for injury seems to have almost entirely broken down in western Europe now. Maybe it survives in the Ukrainian league, where most of the national team play, maybe it's just annoying to give up a goal.

It didn't matter, as Ibrahimovic's act turned out to be the warmup for the Shevchenko show. He'd missed a chance in the first half as well, but three minutes after Sweden scored he equalised. The commentators had just been talking about substituting him for being a bit old, but he looked young enough when he got ahead of Mellberg to get his head on Gusev's cross. It was a relief for Gusev after some earlier errors, and it certainly got the home crowd singing. Look at the stars, look how they shine for you ...

A few minutes later, he scored again. This time it was a corner. He peeled off his unheeding marker with no apparent trouble and fired a sharp header between Lustig and the post. On reflection Sweden may have felt it was a mistake to have Ibrahimovic marking him, but it does give us a rather neat narrative arc.

The goals drove the managers into a touchline frenzy. Watching them flail about in adjacent technical areas they seemed the perfect odd couple for a sitcom. A Swedish schoolteacher forced by circumstances to share a flat with a Ukrainian truck driver. Gene Wilder and James Gandolfini would be perfect.

Sweden had several good chances before the end. Ibrahimovic was unlucky, as his shot bounced back off the keeper before he'd had time to move. Elmander and Mellberg both missed in injury time.

It finished 2-1 though. It was the result the tournament needed, to give the home fans hope. Now we have to hope England can take it all away.

Day Three

It was a big day, an exciting day, and I really wish the BBC had got it. I admit it makes sense to give Adrian Chiles the Croatia game as he's half Croatian himself, but there's one huge reason to prefer the BBC to ITV. Salford.

Yes, Salford, which is where the BBC coverage is coming from. Because it's so ugly (evidence), they film inside. ITV, on the other hand, have flown their whole team out to Poland and rented space in every beautiful city square in the country. Having spent all that money they seem to feel obliged to do everything on a balcony, so they can film Gordon Strachan in front of that basilica which looks old but was actually rebuilt in 1946. Strachan himself, of course, is a genuine Baroque original.

I'm generally all in favour of an outside broadcast, but they haven't been able to solve the technical problems. Sometimes it's the wind fucking up the mikes, the rest of the time it's brass bands, which seem to be everywhere they go. Either amateur salsa nights are a big thing in Poland, or Chiles baiting is their latest national sport.

There are other problems with the ITV coverage beyond sound quality. I think for instance of the tweets and texts they insist on running under their talking heads. If you must do that it's important to make the font big enough to read, and therefore big enough to ignore. ITV's was only legible if you squinted, which of course meant you found yourself squinting.

And while I'm at it, Roy Keane. They wheeled him out specially for the Ireland game, which makes him quite literally a professional Irishman. I realise they've paid for him now, but couldn't they just stick him in a bar somewhere and tell him he's doing the local colour? It's not like he's teetotal or anything, is it?

Fourthly and most obviously, the adverts. It doesn't really matter what your pundits think if their analysis has to be squeezed between two commercial breaks in a halftime slot. Also, football attracts the shoutiest ads. Did you know that billionaire financier Joe Lewis owns a large slice of Ladbrokes? If you're in the Bahamas right now, why not hunt him down and belabour him repeatedly about the face and body with a baseball bat, all the while screaming LADBROKES! GAME ON! into his baffled face in a cod Italian accent.

Spain 1 Italy 1

The Spanish national anthem is my favourite. It has no words at all. It's an awful grating racket, obviously, but at least it isn't an awful grating racket with a bloodthirsty lyric like most of the others.

The Italian one is more typical of the genre. Apparently Victory has bound Scipio's helmet upon her head, so let us join in a cohort, we are ready to die. This, I feel, may account for their lack of military success in more recent times. I'm sure cohorts were a great help at the battle of Zama, but military technology has moved on since then. If the Austrians are gassing you in the Dolomites, you may not want to be moving any closer together.

They'd got their formations right for the game though. You felt they'd learnt from the way other teams played in Spain in the World Cup. Back then team after team clammed up against them, hoping to contain their midfield and stop the through ball, but got tired and gave up the crucial goal after an hour or so. Today, Italy came to play.

And it worked for them. They had to survive some scares, like everyone else who plays Spain, but they had their own moments as well. Their best chance of the first half came right at the end, as Motta had a header which Casillas saved athletically. It was just after Balotelli got booked. It wasn't an awful tackle, just a bit high, and he might have got away with it if he hadn't been mouthing off earlier. One to watch, we all felt.

Spain, meanwhile, looked just a little bit fallible at times. The odd loose pass, some slightly idiosyncratic goalkeeping, nothing that would shock you from Poland or Greece, but this was Spain.

They had their moments though. Of course they did. They started with none of the four players identified on the squad list as a striker, but if you can play midfielders like Fabregas, Silva and Iniesta you'll probably get some chances, and they did.

Five of their eleven starters play for Barcelona, four for Real Madrid. Just stop and think about that for a moment. Nine out of eleven from two clubs. At this level, that's a hell of a thing. It gives you a cohesion no other national team could dream of. In this country it would mean nine from the Manchester clubs, and can you imagine them using that many English players? Or finishing first and second if they did?

The second half started dramatically. Fabregas and Iniesta shots were pushed wide. Balotelli got the ball off Ramos on the touchline, but then dithered long enough for him to get back and tackle. Almost immediately, del Bosque took him off for di Natale. Everyone makes mistakes, but Balotelli's always seem to be expressions of his personality. He'd got booked for petulance and recklessness, he'd fluffed his big chance - at this level that's enough.

An hour in, and against the normal run of things, Italy scored. Di Natale held his run just right, pushed through to get on the through ball and played it perfectly past a splayed Casillas. The contrast between di Natale's finishing and Balotelli's was obvious.

I'm not sure why the equaliser was such a surprise. Spain always score at about this point. Iniesta to Silva to Fabregas, it went. Barca to Barca, via Manchester. A small stepover from the Spaniard, a huge leap forward for Spain. Kind of what we expect.

Torres came on for Fabregas, and the rest of the game seemed to be about the chances he missed. First he got through on Casillas, who tackled him without going down and played it out for a throw in. Then he had a lob from outside the box which drifted agonisingly over. Shortly before, di Natale had stretched for a cross and just flicked it wide. But then he'd already scored.

It ended one all, a gripping match from two titans of the game. We'd had our main event, so the stage was set for the supporting feature. Who schedules these things?

Ireland 1 Croatia 3

They sang the Irish national anthem in Gaelic, but I looked up the translation. Out yonder lies the Saxon foe, it goes. Could they possibly mean us? Would they include Jackie Charlton? Soldiers are we ... mid cannon's roar and rifles' peal ... For love of the Gael, towards death or life ... oh for Christ's sake. How far we've come, and yet sometimes I don't think we've got anywhere at all. If people don't think war is glorious any more, why do they sing songs like that?

I do feel a certain warmth towards the Gaelic language, the only Gaelic speaker I've ever met having helped us push the car out of the Irish mud, but it must have been a challenge for the players. Nine of the eleven starters were actually born in Ireland, by the way, before anyone starts, but they're mainly east coasters, who speak English.

The weather was vile. Bad news for the players, but good for the cameras, which got to do lots of those slo-mo close ups with players grimacing and spray flying around.

The Irish played in shirts 1 to 11. It wasn't any kind of objection to the squad numbering system, they just selected numbers 1 to 11 in the squad. I guess Trappatoni knew who he wanted to play early on. That's nice. I like a manager who knows his mind.

Although he may have had his doubts when Croatia scored in the third minute. As soft goals go, it was Andrex quality. A cross was deflected, and Mandzukic slipped on the edge of the box and looped in a gentle header towards Given's right corner post. It should have been stopped, but Given was moving the wrong way and couldn't quite get across to keep it out.

There was an element of bad fortune to it. Mandzukic's body language in the split second before he slipped suggested he would strike at the opposite corner. His header was actually an excellent moment of improvisation, but a keeper of Given's standard will feel he should have done better.

It was a shame. We all want the Irish to do well. Some of their fans went with a banner that said Angela Merkel thinks we're at work. You want fans like that to have something to cheer.

After 18 minutes, they did. They got a slightly questionable free kick forty yards out, Corluka let St Ledger get on the wrong side of him on it and St Ledger headed home. The Irish fans celebrated with a Poznan in Poznan.

There seemed to be a whistle in the crowd as the kick came over. It wasn't the first time, it had happened a few times to apparent Croatian advantage, but you had to wonder if it was a factor in the goal.

The game as a whole reminded me why I like Championship football so much. It's lovely to watch the Xabis and Iniestas of this world doing their thing, but sometimes you want to see a bunch of also rans slipping and sliding in the mud as the ball flies anywhere but where they meant it to go.

Like many Championship games, a few talents stood out above the white noise of the rest. Jelavic has injected an element of flair into Goodison Park, and it looks like he's done the same for Croatia. Ireland don't really do flair, but what they lack in that department they make up for with a certain kind of monosyllabic punchiness. Dunne to Doyle, Doyle knocks it down to Duff, Duff to Keane. It may not be pretty, but it does cut down on the typing.

It was flair that told though. Just as Ireland were looking to the halftime whistle there was a scramble on the edge of the box,Ward hit his clearance about 150 degrees the wrong way, Jelavic was way ahead of the rest and it was 2-1 at the break.

Shortly after the restart it was 3-1. Mandzukic had another header, and Given wasn't quite quick enough. It his the post, bounced back off Given's head and went in.

As time went by, what tension there was in the game dribbled away. Keane went off for Shane Long of West Brom. He used to play for Reading, and he's caused us a few problems at Ashton Gate, but it was hard to see him doing a lot against Croatia, and so it proved.

Andrews headed just wide in injury time, but it didn't really matter by then. Ireland were well beaten, by a Croatian team you wouldn't expect to challenge either. Now they have to play Italy and Spain. It's a very long way to Tipperary, but on this showing they'll be back there soon enough.

Secretes and lies

Firstly, some technical issues have come up in the course of writing these first few posts, and I thought you should know.

1. Don't drop a bog roll on your laptop keyboard. If you do, it turns on caret browsing. Then you have to Google caret browsing to find out what the hell it is.
2. If you come here and the latest post is poorly capitalised, full of typos, bizarrely off key and full of mismatched and incoherent thoughts, it's because I've accidentally hit Publish rather than Save while I'm making notes during a game. Come back later, and the typos and capitals will be fixed.
3. No, the heading isn't an example of this.

Gary and Harry

They had Harry Redknapp on the BBC panel yesterday, and Gary Lineker took advantage of the halftime break to do an impromptu interview with him. He asked him all the questions we've been wanting answers to, and Redknapp told him everything we wanted to know.

Is the universe infinite? It's finite but unbounded. Is there a God? in the sense that there's a Captain America, but not in the sense that there's a Scunthorpe. Why do we only realise how to live when we're too old to do much about it? It's a combination of biological inevitability and the illusion of hindsight. Where's the bog roll gone? It's gone wherever it rolled to when it bounced off the laptop.

None of those subjects actually came up. The real conversation was more like this. Did you know Hodgson was going to get the England job? No I didn't, I heard about it through the media like everyone else. Were you approached? No I wasn't. Would you have taken it? It would have been hard to refuse, but I like being a club manager and in some ways I was relieved not to be asked.

The highlights are here (Harry Redknapp would have accepted England job).

All of this raises questions, most pressingly how much of that is true? If it's all true, if the FA never discussed the job with Redknapp and didn't even tell him he was out of the running, if it never occurred to them to send him a courtesy text to the effect that Hodgson was about to get it, then that's a funny way to treat a manager you might well be looking to in a few years.

Don't forget, Redknapp was all over the media as the people's choice. Most people wanted him to get it, and thought he would. If they really didn't acknowledge him at all that's actually bloody rude, to him and to us. Surely they aren't that incompetent? Are they?

Gabby and Roy

After the game Gabby Logan talked to Roy Hodgson (Roy Hodgson talks about Rio Ferdinand's Euro 2012 omission). Ideally, he'd have been called Rabbie, but you can't have everything. If only he was fatter, or poorly dressed.

You all know what it was about. There were no other questions of comparable urgency. The BBC only bothered spelling it out in the link for the benefit of future historians. It was about Ferdinand, and by implication about Terry. Logan avoided his name like an actor trying not to mention the Scottish play, but it loomed all the larger for its absence.

Hodgson said he chose other players over Ferdinand at first, and when he had to get a replacement for Cahill was looking for someone "at the lower end of the squad", and didn't want to bring Ferdinand in just to put him on the bench.

 He looked like someone in a hole, and he certainly kept digging. By the end, he'd managed to say that the very suggestion that the player he took was as good as the player he didn't take was an insult.

Frankly, I wonder about all of this. I wonder about Hodgson's visible discomfort and Redknapp's lack of it. I wonder if the first interview was really that impromptu. I wonder if 'footballing reasons' can have the narrow definition implied. Hodgson seems like an honest man, and he certainly sweats a lot when he's facing tough questions (see?). Redknapp didn't sweat at all that I could see, but then he wouldn't.

I like Redknapp. You know when you like someone because you're happy to see them, and I'm always pleased to see him on the TV because he's good value. Liking someone is an emotional response, not a character reference. Hodgson seems a bit prim. This is no bad thing in the world he moves in, but he's got none of Harry's roguishness at all, and we do like a rogue. Especially a dry one.

There are, shall we way, alternative explanations for events. Perhaps the FA offered Redknapp the job, but he turned it down to stay at Spurs, where he seems happy. As a courtesy, he would have agreed not to undermine Hodgson by showing him up as the second choice. It wouldn't have seemed a huge evasion compared to all the other evasions he was accused of at the time (he said, carefully).

So Hodgson comes in, and the first situation he's faced with is the John Terry one. Ferdinand, like Wayne Bridge, declines to share a squad with Terry, and Hodgson, like Capello, decides that Terry is more central to his plans. Because racism is more embarrassing than shagging, he lies about it. Because he's not naturally a bad man, he feels (and looks) damned uncomfortable while doing it.

Of course, the version both managers have given us might be factually correct in all respects. I've no evidence for anything I've just said. Look at the clips and judge for yourselves.

Day Two

This was the day everyone was waiting for. The Group of Death. The teams ranked 3rd, 4th, 9th and 10th in the world. Well, the day everyone else was waiting for. I'm just happy as long as someone's kicking a ball about in front of a camera somewhere.

Honestly, that's all it takes. Go in your back garden, kick a ball against the shed for a few minutes while someone films it on their phone, turn it into an animated gif and DM me. I'll be stuck in this chair for hours. So you can imagine how I am right now. If it wasn't for Asda Online I'd starve to death about the middle of next week.

The two ranking teams in the group are Holland and Germany. Denmark and Portugal are considered unlucky to have drawn them. All these teams have won it before except Portugal, and they've been in the final.

Holland 0 Denmark 1

Holland made all the running early on and van Persie and Robben both had decent chances, so it came as a shock when Denmark took the lead after 23 minutes.

Poulsen ran at the defence, who blocked him off perfectly well, but a ricochet came to Krohn-Dehli on the left. He ran past a defender and hit it through Stekelenburg's legs.

The Dutch kept at it. They had a shout for a penalty turned down when Agger handled in the box, then Vlaar didn't properly connect with a header from a corner. Robben hit the post after a terrible clearance from the keeper, but they couldn't do anything from the rebound. Affelaye waltzed past the Danish defence, and shot narrowly over, then van Persie miscued one after not really controlling it properly. You felt it would come, but at halftime it hadn't.

The second half carried on as the first had finished. Robben, van Persie, van Bommel, each in turn found new ways to miss. Van der Vaart and Huntelaar came on for Afellaye and de Jong, and carried on in the same vein.

With ten minutes left the Danes took Rommedahl off for Mikkelsen. You may remember Rommedahl from his Charlton days. He's back in Denmark now, at Brondby. Danish players often like to semi-retire to Denmark, I've noticed. Their Superliga is roughly the same standard as the Scottish Premier League, with a few big teams and the rest at about Championship standard. You can drop down a level as your legs get tired and put your kids back in a Danish speaking school at the same time.

He's fit for an old 'un though, Rommedahl. Apparently he can do the 100 metres in 11 seconds, even when the chip shop isn't about to close. He may have felt his fitness justified keeping him on for the end, as everyone struggled to get through the tired minutes, and wasn't best pleased to be taken off.

But it was the Dutch that needed their strikers. In desperation, they brought Kuyt on. Turning to Liverpool players in desperation may turn out to be one of the themes of this tournament.

It didn't help, although the Dutch did have another handball appeal, this one much better. The final whistle went, and somehow Denmark had won. Holland had 28 attempts on goal, but none of them went in.

This happens sometimes. Say on average one attempt in ten goes in (WARNING: stat pulled out of my arse), the odds on missing 28 in a row are low but not astronomically so.  No point in being upset. You pick yourself up, you make another 28 chances against Germany, you take 3 of them. I wouldn't rule it out.

But it was an unexpected setback, and there won't have been many fireworks around the Zuiderzee last night. Especially as it disappeared decades ago when they diked it off and turned into a freshwater lake instead. It's a good thing I check these things. The question now was whether Portugal could do to Germany what Denmark had done to the Dutch.

Germany 1 Portugal 0 (so no, then)

Now I think about it, putting the score in the subheading may slightly reduce the element of dramatic tension for those of you who aren't following events as determinedly as I am.

The early stages in this one were notable for the high pressing line both sides were keeping. Instead of letting the opposition play it out from the back, they forced them to kick it away. Of course, they then faced the same problem themselves. It was tactically correct, but made for a scrappy first half.

Podolski had a couple of decent chances in the first half hour, but miskicked one and skied the second. Germany were bossing the game, but their own sloppiness combined with Portuguese solidity to frustrate them.

In fact it was Portugal who nearly scored, just before the break. Pepe's shot hit the corner of the bar, landed on the goalline and bounced back into play. Cue much chat about Lampard's effort in the last World Cup, also against Germany just before halftime, but this one clearly didn't cross the line.

The second half started much more openly. Portugal seemed to have decided it was time to give it a go. For one dizzying moment Ronaldo seemed to be clear, but Boateng got back at him.

72 minutes in, Gomez scored. The cross took a little nick off a defender, and looped invitingly onto his head. He put it comfortably beyond the keeper, and Germany were a goal up.

Yes, Germany. Mario Gomez has a Spanish father and a German mother, and grew up in Germany. He's good enough for either squad, but chose Germany as a youth team player nine years ago. This is a decision that may have looked better in 2003 than it did in 2010, but perhaps this is his (and their) year.

His goal tonight bought him another few minutes on the pitch. Klose was about to come on for him, but after he scored Löw waved Klose back on the bench. He brought him on anyway in the eightieth minute. Klose's getting on a bit for a whole game, but he's still Germany's senior striker.

Portugal brought on Varela for Meireles, and pushed forward. Ronaldo's shot forced Neuer to concede a corner, and Nani's cross bounced off the bar. Then it came to Varela, on his own in the box, but Neuer smothered his shot.

Nani's shot in the last minute of injury time was deflected for a corner, which Alves headed over, and that was it.

It never quite comes off for Portugal in tournaments, does it? They knock England out on penalties every now and again, but they tend not to get any further than that. They did get to the finals in Euro 2004, when they hosted it, but they lost to Greece.

Today couldn't have gone much worse for them. Not only have they lost to Germany, Denmark are now three points ahead. If they don't beat them next, they're probably going home.

For Germany, the expected good start. There's a Stephen Hendry quality about them, a certain resilience, which we came to anticipate as a matter of course from 1970 to about 1990. It disappeared for a decade or so, but recently they've looked like the Germany of old. You never beat them by much, they always seem to come back, and the moment when you think they've lost their mojo is the precise moment when they find that maximum break.

Tomorrow it's Ireland, or as I like to call them, Tony Meo.

Day One

Finally, after 698 days without a major international football tournament, we're under way. It's impossible to explain what this means to non-fans, some of whom are given to describing football as "always on". This is clearly delusional. I mean, it isn't on right now, as I type this. It wasn't on yesterday when I got in from work. There are loads of times football isn't on, even for people with Sky Sports.

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.

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.

The players - age and experience

In my previous post I talked about the clubs players have come from, and the squads they're in. Here's a bit of personal stuff about the players themselves. How many caps they have, how old they are, who's got birthdays during the tournament, what rude words their names are anagrams of. The usual questions.

The most capped player is Iker Casillas, the Spanish goalkeeper. He has 129 caps, not bad for a 31 year old. In his day job, he plays for Real Madrid. If he gets hurt, they've got Barca keeper Valdez waiting in the wings with Liverpool's Pepe Reina. Not a bad choice, really. Who have we got again?

Second to Casillas comes Anders Svensen on 126 caps, then good old Shay Given on 121. Shay Given is an anagram of veiny gash, which tells us nothing. Ryan Giggs is an anagram of saggy ring, for that matter. With virtually every word in the English language having been co-opted into the world of double entendres, the odds on anyone's name having a vaguely suggestive anagram must be high.

 So it must be worth your time making some up. In the comments, please.

Moving on. 12 players in all have over 100 caps. None of them are English. England's most capped player is Ashley Cole, on 93.

10 players have no caps at all, including Jack Butland and Kaspar Schmeichel. 117 players have less than 10 caps, including 8 from England. The tournament average is 30.3 caps. England's average is 25.8.

The most experienced team are Spain, with 42.8 caps each, the least are Poland, with 20.2. This bodes well for Spain, less well for the Poles. On the other hand, you do start to wonder what happens to Spain when the golden generation retire.

After sending Walcott to the 2006 World Cup, Arsenal and England nearly provide the youngest player in the tournament again, with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, all of 18 years and 9 months old. This time though the honours go to Holland, with Jetro Willems of PSV, who’s seven months younger. Jetro’s family come from the Dutch Antilles, which used to be their equivalent of Gibraltar, inasmuch as hardly anyone knew how they came by them, but everyone was certain they couldn’t manage without them now. Then they got their independence, and it all turned out perfectly well. Just saying.

We’re almost guaranteed to see more of Willems and Oxlade-Chamberlain than we did of Walcott back then. You may remember he was dragged along by Sven before any of us had really heard of him. In the end he never got on the pitch, even when Owen limped away after viciously tackling himself, then Rooney was sent off for backheeling someone in the balls. It hardly seemed worth giving him the time off school.

The oldest player, Kostas Chalkias of PAOK and Greece, is two months shy of twenty years older. Unsurprisingly perhaps, he’s a goalkeeper. Four out of the oldest ten players are goalkeepers. Whereas the average tournament player is 27 years and 177 days old, the average goalkeeper is 406 days older.

22 players have a birthday during the tournament. Kamil Grosicki of Poland will be 24 on the day of their first game, the tournament opener against Greece. Should Greece top the group, Kastos Katsouranis would get a quarter final on his 33rd birthday. Frank Lampard will be 34 the day after England’s last group game, so let’s all hope he isn’t celebrating it on a plane (I wrote several days ago, when it might have mattered where the hell Frank Lampard was flying to). 4 players could get birthday semifinals, most plausibly Samir Nasri on his 25th.

No-one gets a final on their birthday, except my mate Toby, who probably won’t be playing. Unless they need a band.

So there's all your stats. Bring on the football.

Club and country

Every time one of these football festivals come along I do what comes naturally, and make a spreadsheet. Actually, two spreadsheets. One to track fixtures, groups and tables, the other to look at the squads.

A futile pursuit, you might think, what with perfectly good equivalents existing online, and as far as the first spreadsheet is concerned I really have no defence. With the squads, though, there is a kind of justification for the behaviour, which is that I can then analyse the data I've acquired.

So here are some of the things I've learnt. Or made up, if you prefer. The figures are all correct, give or take the vagaries of Wikipedia and the odd injury (I've had to seriously edit several squads, notably England's), but the interpretation is another matter. The devil is in the detail, which must be why I like details.

Galacticos

It's a top teams' tournament, the Euros (WARNING: other sentences may not alliterate). Out of the 368 players in 23 squads, 71 play for clubs who won their domestic trophy this year.

And all the big leagues are in there. Yes, there's a smattering from the Balkans and the Low Countries, plus Anders Svensson from the not entirely terrifying Elfsborg, but you can guess which champions are most strongly represented. Real Madrid, Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus. The winners of the top four European leagues. And that doesn't include either Champions League finalist, or for that matter Barcelona or Man Utd.

The national distribution of clubs is also revealing. English clubs employ 79 players (the verb seems to fit), more than any other nation. Of the English clubs, Chelsea have the most names on the list, with 9 players from 6 countries, while Arsenal send 8 from 7. The Manchester club manage 15 players between them, City just pipping United (again) with 8 against 7. Liverpool, surprisingly perhaps, send as many as United.

Or so I typed when I was drafting this a few days ago. Since then, though, Lampard and Cahill have limped off into the sunset, replaced by some Liverpool squad fillers whose names I forget, and now Liverpool have the highest representation of all the English clubs, with 9 players, 6 in the England squad, and Chelsea are down to 7. Ashley Cole and John Terry are the only English Chelsea players left.

I'm being unfair to Martin Kelly and Jordan Henderson, just like Gary Lineker on Twitter, and I can only clarify with the same speed as he did, and the same mournful complaint. They're perfectly good players, but why no Ferdinand? Well, we all know why, but between Terry's mouth and his dick some of us are beginning to wonder how many tournaments in a row he's going to be allowed to ruin. Lineker didn't say that, but I wonder if he's thinking it?

Well, I did say there would be some interpretation, and I may well find myself interpreting John Terry at regular intervals throughout this tournament. For now, though, let's look at something less unsavoury.

Lesser lights

Most of the English teams represented are in the Premiership, but the Championship get a look in, with 10 players on their way. It’s a good thing Ireland qualified, or there'd only be 3. Ward, Doyle and Hunt are still officially on the Wolves books for now, while Leicester, Derby, Hull and Millwall have laid on the others. Mysteriously, everyone seems to have decided they could do without Bristol City players, even Ireland. I thought it might have been worth checking if Cole Skuse's granny had ever been to Cork for a coddle, but apparently not.

Before we start taking the piss out of Irish food and football too much, we should remember that England have dipped into the Championship pie as well, pulling out an unfamiliar plum in the form of Birmingham City's Jack Butland. A fine prospect, obviously, but what does it tell us about England that our third best goalkeeper has spent half  the season on loan to Cheltenham? To be fair, he was shortlisted for the League Two November Player of the Month trophy. I don't think any of the other squads have anyone who can claim that.

Can you guess the other notable name from the Championship? It's Kasper Schmeichel, of Leicester and Denmark. Now that Lampard's out, are there any other sons of famous footballing fathers going? I think we should be told, which is my way of saying I think you should look it up.

And finally, abroad

That was a lot about ten Championship players. You can expect that from a Bristol City fan, but the Premiership have 69 players at Euro 2012. That's an average of over 4 per squad, spread across 14 countries out of the 16 competing. Unless Szczesny breaks a leg or Greece play Ukraine in the later stages, every game will have at least the possibility of Premiership involvement.

Which hides another, more interesting story. Chelsea Liverpool are the most represented Premiership side, but three European teams do better. Bayern Munich have 12 players there, Real Madrid 11 and Dynamo Kyiv (or Kiev) 10.

Compared with the Premiership sides, a much larger proportion of those players come from the same country as the team. 5 Spaniards from Real, 8 Germans from Bayern and a whopping 9 out of 10 Ukrainians at Kiev. Only Ognjen Vukojević has to leave the country for Croatia's group games in Poland.

Spain also have 7 from Barcelona. They could virtually call themselves Real Barcadrid. There's only 1 striker available to them, Ronaldo and Messi having other loyalties, but they'll be providing Spain's keeper, defence and midfield as usual. 7 from Barca plus 5 from Real makes 12 from another planet.

It's a similar story for Germany. 12 from Bayern or Dortmund, and all of them domestic champions or Champions League finalists. They also provide the core of the defence and midfield, holding the line and putting it through to the showoff expats up front.

All set for July 1? Germany v Spain? It hardly seems worth playing the games. Now get on with playing the fucking games.

Home comfort

It's the homogeneity in their squads that's made such a difference for Spain and Germany in recent years, and it must surely be Ukraine's best hope as well. The Kiev 9 get 5 from Ukrainian champions Shakhtar Donetsk, and 21 out of 23 play in the Ukrainian league. The whole English squad plays in England, but no more than 6 from any team, and that's Liverpool. They know each other, and half the other squads, but they haven’t played together as much.

Poland have none of the unity of the Ukrainian squad. Only 5 of them play in Poland, and no team has more than 3 Polish players there. You could look at this two ways. On the one hand, Poland has more players who can fight their way into one of Europe's more prestigious teams. On the other, they’re much less familiar to each other.

My guess is Ukraine will be the better of the two hosts. Kyiv and Shakhtar are both good teams with strong recent records, and any team built from them is likely to be competitive. I had a look at Mark Lawrenson's pick for the Polish starting XI (Poland team profile), and there's a solid spine from Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund (including keeper Szczesny), but not much else.


So there's my spreadsheet fuelled analysis, and it's nothing you wouldn't have expected. The best players from the best clubs, haute cuisine with a bit of Lidl pate thrown in, John Terry's a twat, Ukraine to go further than Poland, Germany v Spain final. Nothing especially controversial really.

Of course now Spain and Germany are bound to go out early, closely followed by Ukraine. Poland will go from strength to strength, finally beating Ireland in front of 65,00 baffled Ukrainians to lift the trophy, presented to them by the Nigerian child that John Terry saved from drowning. Just remember where you read it first.

Technical addendum

You can make your own spreadsheet if you like. Just go to Wikipedia (Euro 2012 Squads), and copy and paste each team into the spreadsheet package of your choice. You have to do some jiggery pokery to get the data into the formats you need, which can be tiresome. Who am I kidding, that's quite obviously the very best bit. But then, you're the one per cent that didn't skip this bit, so you already knew that.

HINT: the age and date of birth data come inconveniently joined in the same cell. Make some blank columns, and use LEFT, RIGHT, TRIM and general date functions to separate it out. Then copy the results, paste them as values and reapply date format to the resulting integers. Or you could edit 368 cells manually, but where's the fun in that?

I will also send you mine if you like, as a CSV file. Follow me on Twitter, ask me to follow you, then DM me with your email address.

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.