England can now qualify for Euro 2008.
If we draw with Croatia at Wembley on Wednesday night, we qualify. If we beat Croatia, we win Group E.
But will Euro 2008 be any good?
It’s 16 teams and three weeks of football : June 7 to June 29.
Never mind whether Steve McClaren’s England will do anything, will the European Championships be any good ?
It should be. It has a chance to be good. Less bloated than the World Cup, a shorter, more compressed tournament should provide colourful spectacles and exciting matches. I’d love to see some teams playing football as it should be played, without fear. And I’d love to see two or three great players playing with authority, playing with exciting skill and power.
But who are Europe’s great players now?
Zidane has retired, Maldini and Totti have retired from the national team, as has Figo, who is still playing for Inter but has recently broken his leg in a game against Juventus.
So who are the great players now? Which young stars can stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood and do the business in this tournament ?
This is a tournament without the South Americans and Africans, without Kaka or Messi, without Drogba and Eto’o.
Will it be a striker who excites us? Or a winger?
Will June 2008 be the month when Franck Ribery fires Les Bleus towards the trophy they last won in 2000 ? Could two-footed Wesley Sneijder blast in five goals in six games? Is six foot four inch Luca Toni the top centre forward now? Could Fernando Torres and Cesc Fabregas win a tournament for Spain?
Will Holland still be neurotic oranjes and fail again ?
They won it in 1988 with Ruud Gullit & Marco van Basten but are these guys in that class? And do they need to be? Seedorf is back in the side and winning the European Championship ten years on from ’88 would crown an amazing career for him.
Could an English player grab the headlines and write a chapter in European football history ? You think not? You reckon he’ll score two great goals, then snap a metatarsal?
Who is the most exciting European footballer right now ?
Cristiano, of course. Cristiano Ronaldo is the best player in the finest club team, Manchester United. Who won the 2002 World Cup? Big Phil Scolari’s Brazil. Big Phil can handle the pressure because he’s been there and done it, and coaching Brazil is ten times more pressure than coaching Portugal. The Portuguese players have the talent to win Euro 2008, but do they have the temperament?
The French and Italians also have the talent, maybe the Croatians, Romanians and Spanish too. But a great coach can make a big difference and Big Phil is a great coach.
Could Slaven Bilic become a great coach? He is one to watch. Will he stay on for the World Cup? Or does he want a club job in the Premiership?
Bottom line, who will feel most at home in Austria/Switzerland? Who will feel most at home with that climate, that ambience, that architecture, that language ?
Podolski, Klose, Schweinsteiger and Lahm, that’s who.
Germany, a young side rebuilt by Jurgen Klinsmann in 2005-2006, are still vibrant. They’re certainly better than they were in Euro 96, when they won it without one great player. Their best player in that tournament, as I’m sure you recall, was Dieter Eilts, a defensive midfielder who now coaches their Under-21s.
In 1996 we had Gazza, Shearer and a good song but it ended in tears when we lost to the Germans in the semi. I was there but not in the press box. For the final I was in the press box and there were two sights I will never forget.
The first was the freeze-frame after Oliver Bierhoff scored the only golden goal I had ever seen, ending the final in extra time. The bodies of Czech and German players lay still on the ground, like a battlefield, like a scene from a film. I had never seen a match end like that and it was strange, shocking and surreal – there was no coming back, no kick-off, no attempt to save the game because the game had ended in a way I had never seen before. It was startling and weird.
Some moments later I turned to one side, to chat somebody, and when I looked back I saw a little man in a black or charcoal suit alone on the wide green pitch and for a nanosecond I wondered who he was and what he was doing there. Then I realised it was coach Bertie Vogts walking slowly towards the ecstatic German supporters.
I knew Euro 96 would end in tears, knew Venables would not win it.But I loved the thrilling 4-1 win over Holland because it was the best game England had played since 1970.
What I didn’t know, but should have guessed, was that it would end in a town square in Stuttgart with Klinsmann holding up the trophy on a balcony and thousands of Germans singing, “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, football’s coming home !”
To the Germans, it was logical. Football had come home. You don’t need to be good to win tournaments, you just need to be German.
Euro 2008 could be about : Who can beat Germany ?