It’s time. I don’t just think it’s time, I know it’s time, and I know it’s time because Soccernet has a giant clock on their front page telling me it’s time. “Brian,” it says, “only 2 days, 19 hours, 50 minutes, and 19 seconds till the start of Euro 2008. Make that 16 seconds! Just about time to unstake the tarp on your tournament coverage, wouldn’t you say?” Well, here we are. Tarp unstaked. In 2 days, 19 hours, 48 minutes, and 5 seconds, the official Euro 2008 anthem is going to ring out over a confused and hostile crowd at St. Jakob Park in Basel (Shaggy? What? Why?), and I plan to get you as close as a bag of potato chips and a fitful connection to ESPN Deportes will let me.
As you’d know if you’d ever tried to write blog coverage of Euro 2008 in exactly the same way that I plan to write it, the first thing we have to do is pick a team to follow. That is task number one, and it cannot be shirked. To shirk it would be the equivalent of eating dinner even though you have neither prepared food for yourself nor gone into a restaurant. Yeah, well, not on my watch. Play with conceptual impossibility on your own blog, Douglas R. Hofstadter. In these parts, we don’t throw like that.
Anyway, late last night, while all the house was asleep, I put on my listening shawl and crept into the study to play Chopin records. I’d read a lot of theories about the best way to pick a team, ranging from the resentful (root for Croatia because they knocked out England) to the resentful but historically inflected (root for Norway because they once pillaged and terrorized England), and I thought I had my own system locked down. And it wasn’t even based on a desire to humiliate England. Smoke that, England.
My plan was to sink into a contemplative trance and let the free movement of my mind lead me to the discovery of the team I’d wanted to follow all along, only without knowing it. I closed my eyes and let the gentle plinking of Chopin’s nocturnes take me down the winding paths of memory. One by one, moments from Euro 2008 qualifying matches passed before me like figures from a magic lantern. I saw Robinson miss that back-pass from Neville in Zagreb. I watched Christian Panucci head the ball past Craig Gordon in stoppage time at Hampden Park. Once more I felt the full tedium of France’s latest draw with Italy, and I thanked my lucky stars that they wouldn’t be playing again any time soon. After a while I seemed to drift back even further, to my early childhood, and I remembered the first time I ever heard a rumor about Cristiano Ronaldo going to Real Madrid.
In the end, I settled on Poland. That’s right, Poland. Maybe you’re surprised? Well, don’t be. Poland are coming like cannonballs. We are coming for you, Germany and Croatia, and for the next, oh, 2 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes and 57 seconds, I will harbor no doubts as to the likelihood of our success.
Anyway, for the duration of Euro 2008, this site will be bringing you ALL the hardest-hitting news from inside the Polish national team. Don’t worry, though. My passion as a fan of Poland is absolutely unquestionable, but it’s not like I know most of the players’ names at this point. I will keep it accessible to you, the benighted supporter of teams wearing orange or blue. Think of it as a way for you to learn a thing or two about the inevitable tournament winners while suffering the heartbreak of your own team’s losing campaign. As a Poland fan, I may not understand how you feel, but I certainly do pity you.
Oh, you’re wondering how I picked Poland? I picked Poland the way some long-ago person slipped into the first fur coat. Sometimes, your whole brain can tell you something is wrong, but you just know it’s right. There’s also a better than decent chance that the whole thing is Chopin’s fault. I’m not overlooking the possibility that he embedded subliminal cues into his musical scores those 160 years ago. Say what you like, but the man cared about his country.
Read More: Euro 2008
by Brian Phillips · June 4, 2008
You poor schlub.
It’s going to be 1939 all over again, Beenhaker or not.
It’s all because you have your heart set on trying to track down that Russian babe during the knockout stages while the rest of us still are paying attention, isn’t it?
Pardon my ignorance, but I’m useless at crosswords: where exactly were those clues you promised us ( http://www.runofplay.com/2008/05/15/not-without-its-stabbings-but-not-without-its-charm/ )?
Why is that everyone neutral I can find is supporting Poland? To paraphrase Ed Albee,
“You make government and art and realize that they are, must be, both the same. You bring things to the saddest of all points, to the point where there is something to lose. Then, all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? ‘Go Poland.'”
So if you had chosen to listen to Bach’s Goldberg variations you would have backed Germany?
Glad to stumble onto someone else who blends these two interests, and in such a bizarre way.
This is our year, lets go Poland!
Can’t wait for the kick off.
“Why is that everyone neutral I can find is supporting Poland?”
Like I said, 1939 all over again. A lot of good it did us last time.
I expect the good ladies of Toronto to knit socks to patch the holes in the Polish defence.
I live in a Polish neighbourhood here and there is many an old woman knitting various things on their front porch, so I’ll be sure to ask them, before I run away giggling.
…you need to lay off that Chopin stuff !! Next up you’ll be selling things you don’t even own.
It occurs to me that regular visitors here may be interested to participate in the pan-Galactic competion that is Euro 2008 Twatball (http://twatball.co.uk/).
Entries close immediately prior to kickoff of the opening match tomorrow, so time of is of the essence.
Should anyone be interested in knowing which players not to pick under any circumstances whatsover, my selections should be visible in the One Touch Football group.
Yes—I saw this on Spangles’s site and I think it looks like a brilliant game. The point is to pick a fantasy XI of the worst-behaved players in the tournament. You get points for every yellow card, red card, penalty won by diving, etc. I’m thinking of just picking Italy and seeing if they can win it as a team.
I got two or three Italians and two or three Portuguese in my team as well as disasters waiting to happen like Senderos.
The scoring system (which I of course didn’t read until after I picked my team) is quite complex, and deducts points for non-twattish behaviour like scoring goals.
As a result, guys like CRonaldo and Torsten Frings who I had seen as sure things are very much holding double edged swords.
Not surprisingly, Materazzi is on more teams than any other individual, and a large percentage of punters have Lehmann in goal.
One Matrix does not a twatball team make, Brian! Unfair.
A Barzagli, Grosso and – though it grieves me to say it – Ambrosini probably do though.
Haven’t checked the site out – but I’ll be surprised if Antonio Cassano isn’t on everyone’s list to do something massively awful.
And having thus successfully contradicted the meaning of my very first declaration, I will withdraw gracefully, like a Zambrotta tracking back.