Straight Swap, Messi for The Falklands
By Mark Daniell
13/06/2012
Frankly, for the impartial, you couldn’t have asked for a better set of results than last night’s. Group A is a nut that has cracked wide open, and I don’t mean one of those metal nuts that drop behind the radiator and ruin your evening, I mean a big old coconut, with hair and everything. Every team can still qualify, every team can still go home early. The Czechs have turned it around, the Russians have slowed up, the Greeks are a mystery and the Poles are at home. That said, I didn’t see last night’s games as the flavour was a bit too Eastern European for my liking (I went to the movies instead*) so I’m not going to enthral you with post match analyses.
No matter, because tonight is when the Euros really get tasty: It’s Holland V Germany (capital V), “the greatest derby in international football”. The game the Germans say has lost its significance, and the one the Dutch want to win above all else. You think we hate the Germans, imagine if the Germans lived in Scotland, that’s how much the Dutch hate them. The only thing that could have possibly made this tie any tastier would have been a German-backed bail out for the Dutch, but even the crazy Dutch aren’t so crazy as to get themselves in the German pocket.
History relates a thousand awesome anecdotes about this rivalry, ranging from Frank Rijkaard flobbing into Rudi Voller’s perm to Ronald Koeman wiping his ass with Olaf Thon’s shirt to my personal favourite when, post victory, a bunch of Dutch fans decided to cross the border into Germany and trash the nearest village. That’s like the intramural stuff back at school. Tonight’s match has got added spice too, because, following the Danish pasting, Germany have the opportunity to knock the Dutch out of the tournament. I think I speak for us all when I say we expect, no, no, we require some punching.
Meanwhile let’s not forget Portugal v Denmark. Portugal have a secret weapon in Cristiano Ronaldo’s shorts, by which I mean that the shorts appear to be specially tailored to ride up when he nears goal, which is worrying for defenders and TV viewers alike. Again, a loss for the Portuguese means an early exit, so they almost have to attack from the start.
Finally, and much more significantly, Roy Hodgson has admitted that with two club substitutes (clubstitutes?) up front, England need a bit more in attack. Impossible? I think not: just last weekend Messi scored a hat-trick against Brazil, bringing his international form nearer to his Barcelona record, and taking his tally of goals this season to 82. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could convince him to switch nationalities (a la Di Stefano). But we'd need to make it worth Argentina’s while… Let’s think, is there anything we have that Argentina want?
*Prometheus... so you're saying, wait, what?