The Layman

Often regarded as the Prince of Ukrainian football, Andriy Shevchenko announced his retirement from international football yesterday evening.

Before the European Championships, nobody was optomistic about England’s chances. Wayne Rooney was suspended for the first two games and the FA had appointed a manager that many were unsure about.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s expression said it all as he slid on the Kharkiv turf on Sunday night; this is a Portugal team that means business at Euro 2012.

Surprise, surprise, Spain are through to the quarter finals of Euro 2012, having qualified as group winners. They have amassed 7 points, but, perhaps ominously, they haven’t played that well in 2 of the games, the Ireland game being the exception.

A country on its knees, austerity is taking its toll, 1 in 2 live in poverty; these are not usually phrases that you read in a blog about football. However, bear with me, as it may help to encapsulate the happiness, albeit brief, that the people of Greece felt on Saturday evening.

The limited number of teams in the European Championships (for now) not only guarantees some quality but it also means that teams with a lot of history, and ergo rivalry, meet up quite often.

The big news coming out of the England camp today is not the doubts over Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker playing every game in the tournament or anything from the press conference (as it contained Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck, twas to be expected) but something rather disturbing and sinister.

It’s a funny old world when a team can lose its opening two group games in a major international competition and still be able to progress with a 1-0 victory in their final game but this is the situation the Netherlands find themselves in.