Ireland feel the Spain

By Mark Daniell

15/06/2012

 The thing about Roy ‘you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry’ Keane is, often he gets angr.. “RrrrrrooooOOOOYYYYY!!!!” Ah, there it is… “RrroooOOOOYYYY KEEEEAANE is ANGRY!!!! You fans are playing shit! You players are fanning shit! RRROOOOYYY!!”

Here you go Roy. Sit down, have a nice mini box of raisins and think of a happy place. (Did anyone think of offering the Incredible Hulk a box of raisins? Instead of missiles or depleted uranium shells, just a nice mini box of raisins? It works in my household, I think they’ve been going about this wrong.) Have some raisins and think of your days at Manchester United, when you were the box-to-box man. Or the time you walked out on your country in the World Cup in South Korea. Anything that makes you smile. Just don’t have a pop at the fans.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, they want to see the team winning. Let’s not just go along for the sing song now and again.”

Life’s got to be tough when you go up against Spain and expect to see your team winning. Spain, who are, let us not forget, FIFA number 1, World Champions, European Champions and who have won the past 59 games in which they’ve taken the lead. Won, not drawn. Just to give you a comparison England didn’t win the last game in which we took the lead. Spain have won the last 59. That Spain.

So anyway, Roy, you were saying about Ireland… “The goals they gave away tonight at any level were absolutely shocking.” Really? Because I think it’s quite impressive that they didn’t let in more. Just a quick look at the stats shows that Spain had 76% of possession and 27 attempts on goal. Wait, wait, Roy, I don’t think you heard that, 76% of possession and 27 attempts on goal. I don’t want to belittle anyone here, but on that evidence 4-0 sounds pretty respectable.

“Yeah but RRoooOOO…” Wait, wait, have you got that last raisin out? No? Keep trying. (That’s raisin diplomacy.)

Of course with more teams, the new format Euro2016 will see this sort of mismatch more often, but it will also stop the group of death scenario and offset the hammerings by giving smaller nations the chance of winning a game or two. Is that a good thing? Well, for the competition, definitely not, since we won’t get to see grudge matches like France v England, Italy v Spain or Holland V Germany with as much frequency, which is what European Finals should be all about. But for the weaker nations, it probably is a good thing. They don’t mind if their team gets tonked 4-0, they just like seeing their team play against the best. If that means that they can only hope, not expect, but hope to win, then so be it. In a nutshell, they go along precisely for the sing-song, and they love it.

Which brings us neatly to the missing third year in the footballing calendar. You know the one, we have the World Cup one year, followed by the Copa America the next, then the Euros, then …, then the World Cup again. If you ask me, that’s quite a gap. FIFA have tried to fill it with some sort of intercontinental tournament called the Confederations Cup where the winners of each of the previous competitions fight for global dominance, but frankly that limits it to about four countries, and if you don’t come from one of them you don’t give a toss. A better idea would be to create an all-star team from each continent and pit those guys against each other, that way more countries would have a vested interest. So, say, in this case, we’d be keen to see how Ashley Cole got on in an all-star team against The Americas. And, most importantly it would be a unifying force for the various regions, when the Euro Crisis is splitting our continent apart, it would us of our common aims. But why stop there? If we’re looking at unifying forces, why stop at continents? The third year should see a global ‘Holy’ tournament with an all-star Christian team, an all-star Hindu team, an all-star Atheist team, an all-star Muslim team, a Jewish team, and an all-star Buddhist team. Talk about football as a force for good! That way, instead of getting angry about borders and refugees, people would feel assuaged by a cheeky offside goal that shouldn’t have been given. That’s raisin diplomacy on a grand scale. I really think S. Blatter needs to rethink his role in life.

Lastly, just because it’s interesting, I read that Mario ‘Always On The’ Gomes has so far in this tournament been in possession of the ball for a grand total of 22 seconds. 22 seconds, 3 goals. Cheeky b…