Euro 2008: go for the plucky plumbers

[Moggy]

June 4, 2008
Euro 2008: go for the plucky plumbers
There's only team to support now with England absent; Indiana Jones and David Cameron

Robert Crampton

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw times2 yesterday. Seven Times writers were asked whom, in the absence of any of the home nations, they would support at Euro 2008. Between them they came up with the following: Germany, Austria, Croatia (anyone see a pattern emerging yet?), Turkey, Spain, Portugal (how about now? It might help to think of a significant event that took place around the middle of the last century) and finally Holland. OK, so Holland doesn't fit the bill, but as for the rest, I shake my head sadly at the collective amnesia. The war has only been over for 63 years, after all.

The accepted method for choosing who to back in an international tournament, once England have gone out on penalties (or don't make it in the first place, as is the case this summer), is to examine the remaining contenders' behaviour during the ultimate good-versus-evil, winner takes all match-up of 1939-45. I thought everyone knew that. Applying this time-honoured rule, the scale of my colleagues' misjudgment becomes clear. Croatia? Enthusiastically genocidal Nazi puppet regime. Turkey? Signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, a crucial part of his diplomatic preparations for Operation Barbarossa. Spain? Stayed out of it, sympathetic to the Axis, run by murderous fascists. Portugal? See Spain. Germany? Say no more. Austria? Worse than the Germans.

Given the other choices, the inclusion of the Dutch, the only one of the seven to have picked the right side, was a surprise. I'd have thought Vichy France might have got the nod, or maybe Italy, provided Mussolini's granddaughter turned out at centre back.

To be fair, given the war criterion, the other qualifiers don't leave much room for manoeuvre. Romania? I don't think so. Sweden and Switzerland? Sorry lads, everyone knows you like to sit the big ones out. The Czechs? Sorry to let them down again, as per 1938, but it's not as if they really stuck up for themselves then, is it? The Greeks gave it a go when the forces of darkness swept in, but their effort pales beside that of the two front-runners and in any case, their football, while effective, is very dull.
Background

In terms of blood expended, we should back the Russians, but that Nazi-Soviet pact still niggles and, besides, that pact's victim was with us from start to finish. Charging panzers on horseback? Providing lots of Battle of Britain pilots? Doing the early donkey work on breaking Enigma? Being really good cleaners? Getting behind plucky little Poland is the least we can do >>>>

Times