It's been great to enjoy Euro 2008 without the inevitable blood, sweat and tears that comes with following a home nation in a football tournament. We don't have to worry about broken metatarsals, or the lurid binge drinking stories that would grace the front and back pages of our newspapers. Even better, we don't have to read about WAGS and their handbags, their tantrums, or their shoes. It's fantastic - for the first time since Euro 96, we have a tournament where the football is genuinely taking precedent.
The positive attacking play from the likes of Holland and Portugal has led to some exciting matches; my money's on Holland - they've been phenomenal on the counter-attack, have scored plenty of goals and have strength in depth with van Persie and Robben coming off the bench to make a difference. Perhaps more importantly, they've shown themselves to be a team united (after each goal, most of the players have celebrated together with the manager, Marco Van Basten).
The absence of the home nations has led to supporters forgetting about nationalism and simply enjoying the football - it's amazing how nationalistic tendencies take hold during these events, and it's been a cleansing exercise not to worry about how dismally we're playing. I would argue that, even if we had qualified, we'd have struggled either way, as the quality of football from just about all the teams has been excellent.
0 comments:
Post a Comment