EURO 2008 DIARY DAY 2: SLAVS … 1 TEUTONS …1 (Lawrenson sent off after 5 minutes)

HRVATSKA v ÖSTERREICH and POLSKA v DEUTSCHLAND – the slavs v the Teutons. Oh yes, the tournament has arrived. With Sunday’s sun-soaked clash in the home of continental football, that McDonald’s advertising hoarding eventually had some resonance: It may have taken til the third match of the 13th European Championsip finals but, Jah, Jah, JAAAAAAAAAH - I’m now officially lovin’ it. Ich Liebe est!

Vienna, at last, got the game it deserved. The European Championships and UEFA itself finally paid proper homage to the city which hosted the first ever international on continental Europe. Even if the cameras did show a close-up of a local lad wearing a Burbery baseball cap, Vienna is all coffe shop intellectualism, art galleries, tram rides and Hapsburg Imperialist architecture - with the odd Danubian splash of Hunterwasser cookiness. Leave yer body behind and take yer brain for a trip round the Ringstrasse. Freud did, daily. Yet this is a football city like no other - even in those parts of the city which don’t like football. It’s a ground-hoppers dream, it’s at the very crux of the game’s historical development and some of the greatest figures in soccer lore hailed from and died in a toon made famous even before Midge Ure gave it a name-check.

But all the European club finals to be staged in the Prater Stadion - now called the Ernst Happel after an Austrian who could always get your club to one of those European finals - could never make up for the fact this country was never awarded a major tournament. Like Scotland, Austria deserves its place in the pantheon through more than just the odd showpiece European Cup or Uefa Cup final going to the national stadium. It deserves to host the very kind of finals tournament which would have been impossible without this nation’s seminal, pivotal role in the spreading of the game a century ago.

And so, all the sterility of the UEFA marketing couldn’t prevent the proper footie atmosphere descending on EURO 2008 today. I’ve been in the Ernst Happel stadium. I’ve walked through the wooded Prater park which surrounds it, I’ve shat myself and almost puked my load on the famous Riesenrad ferris wheel, and gawped at the beatiful trotter track and grandstands where the buggy racing allows the Vienese to throw their money away as readily as us Jocks. But the most vital part of the Prater is the fitbaw stadium. I’ve sat up the back of the top tier in this histroic football ground, sat next to the score-board picking a sticker off it which was placed there by AC Milan ultras during the 1990 European Cup final. I had the place to myself and I drunk it in, took some photos and marvelled at that roof which only went up in 1979ish - a feat of breathtaking engineering. Yet the fact I’ve been to this ground doesn’t make it nearly as memorable to me as the thousand times I’ve watched massive Eurpean games on telly being played here. You can always tell it’s the Prater, the Ernst Happel - because you cannae see any crowd unless the ball goes up into the air. There’s a seven-eight foot drop from the front row of the stands to the pitch - there’s wee office buildings, doors, windows and such-like between the first row of spectators and the tartan track which seperates the bums in this this eliptical colloseum from the arses on the pitch.

Or, at least, there used to be.

If ye looked closely into the crowd today ye could see the gangway steps changed colour when they hit the first few rows. The Austrians have taken the seats closer to the ground. They’ve added more intimacy. Unless it’s just a temporary measure for these finals, The Ernst Happel has lost its distinctive look. But - hey - that’s progress. What used to be an open-air rake of never-ending seats and terracing - the grand arena in which “the paper man”, Jewish football legend Matthias Sindelar is alleged to have signed his own death warrant by inspiring an unauthorised Austrian defeat of Nazi Germany’s football team just a few weeks after Hitler marched into their shared homeland - has had a roof put on and now new rows inserted. It used to hold 80,000 and looked colossal - it now holds 50,000 and looks cosy. Fuck it. That’s hopefully a progress which’ll help proud old Austria get back to winnning ways. UEFA even covered the tartan track in their corportae all-blue today. It looked like a sickening attempt to make this biggest of all eight stadiums seem as neutral and small as the efforts in Basle and Geneva we witnessed on Saturday.

But it also looked and sounded like the biggest crowd of the weekend was closer to the action, more involved in the drama and more inspiring to the home nation than would have happened in the old Ernst Happel. Fair dues.

I saw Croatia at Hampden in the recent friendly. We got a draw out them and that’s always a great honour because I also saw Croatia at Hillsborough and Old Trafford during Euro 96 and, as a footballing phenomenon, watching Croatia, playing against Croatia is the perfect combination of the beautiful and the scary.

The Torcida from Split and Bad Blue Boys from Zagreb were all in a gingham swathe of torid partriotism on one of the huge Hampden-esque curved ends of the Ernst Happel today – what a sight!!! There’s a brotherhood among all participants in Croatian national football which goes beyond the two Kovacs on the pitch. We all held our breaths when little, bald christian pundit Gavin Peacock described the massive, noisy, colourful Croats support as resembling “an army”. That’s too close to the truth behind their mystique, their appeal to a neutral TV audience. The red-chequered Sahovnica flag was everywhere but it’s the guys wearing no tops and the necklaces made of dead Serbians ears which you want to watch out for.

Why were both teams wearing away strips? Nike v Puma – I noticed the nice Puma lapel badge worn by Austrian gaffer Josef Hickersberger and I fancy one of them for myself except for the fact I’m an Adi Dasler rather than a Rudi Dasler man and I couldnae wait for the first appearance of the famous three-stripes at EURO 2008, later that night. Did you notice, as per Switzerland’s strip yesterday, that the numbers on the back of the Puma jerseys have a slightly hazy Lego-ish font, reminiscent of the White Stripes video for “fell in love with a girl”.

Proper badges though - both teams wore proper badges: Croatia’s is like that ugly communist version of modernism. It attempts to be dynamic and far-reaching while its ambition is actually strangled by its own cheapness. Austria’s, like the Poles, like the Germans, features eagles, shields and all sorts of medieval resonances. It was the first game with no bland, self-coloured strips and it was the first to have a goal in the first half. But we’ve yet to see both teams score after Austria’s second-half barrage failed to produce the equaliser everyone seemed to think it “deserved”. (WHY do educated people insist on using the notion of “deserve” in a football match, where ye get what ye earn and no more or less??!!)

The Beeb’s first Sunday commentary team may have deserved a bit more credit than yesterday’s two duos. But I’d give them a 4/10 and that’s enough to put them joint top of the pundits league with Tyldseley and Pleat after four games. They were solid in their commentastic flow and professional in their application and attention to the action. However: Peacock dissapointed in patches because he sooooo loved to let everyone know the Croats were divers. His judgemental tone reeked of born-again christian hypocrisy and prissiness. There was no acknowledgement of the fact these players would also gladly die for their country’s fitbaw team. What was the commentator’s name? No idea. But he’d have taken their score higher if it hadn’t been for a blatant admission of open xenophobia. “Jurgen Macho’s surname should be pronounced with a hard “k” instead of a “ch but - fuck it! - we’ll continue to pronounce it wrong because, well, we always have.”

That was nearly as bad but slightly less predicatbale than Hansen’s opening salvo at full time: “ye have to ask why didn’t England beat Croatia in the qualifiers?”. The inference, as always is that England really are the best team in the world. I don’t know Allan, maybe it’s something to do with the fact England could only draw 2-2 when they last played Austria in Vienna in a competitive match but Croatia have just won the game and kept a clean sheet?? Maybe? Mmmm? I dunno …

It wasn’t a classic but it had passion and bite, this game. I love seeing a team go 1-0 up early doors and then brave an onslaught for 80-odd minutes. Austria’s siege of the Croat goal didn’t really transpire but they did bed into their opponents half for the entire second 45 minutes. Talk of “luck” and “deserts” is ridiculous - Austria should have been down to ten men after ten minutes anyway - but the second of the hosts made more of a fight than the first did yesterday. Stil lost 1-0 though. Croatia will gain momentum. Austria will wish they had Germany next because - hey - Mathiass Sindelar would have wanted another go at those bastards in the stadium where his spirit runs free!

PS it was great to see a 38 year old on the pitch in the Austria-Croatia game. This means, as I’m not 39 til July, that I’m still allowed to view this tourney like a wee boy who wants to go out into the street between live broadcasts and kick the ball about like the glamorous, exciting “older” guys on the screen … even if the only guy in the whole tournament who is my age is a Croatian-born naturalised Austrian.

And that theme was repeated in Sunday’s second Slav-on-Teuton session. A Polish-born player scores twice, both his goals set up by another Polish-born player in a Poland-Germany match but Germany win 2-0 and there were no own goals. Give it a decade and a good bit of re-wording and that could be worked into a GREAT trivia question.

The Germans are here. The Germans have arrived, the Deutscher Fussball Bund Nationalmannschaft has made its Deutschemark on this summer’s tournament and, in terms of the history of the European championship Finals, GERMANY ARE BACK!! First win since The Czech keeper threw Oliver Bierhoff’s weak header into the back of the Wembley net, less than a hundred yards from where I was sat, and Germany’s first 90-minutes European Championship finals win since Mathias Sammer volleyed into the traditional away end at Old Trafford, while I sat in the Stretford End in the quarter-finals of the same tournament.

This was the best game yet of EURO 2008. Poland are NASA-trained in terms of fitness and the Germans are just the Germans so it was also the most ATHLETICALLY THRILLING spectacle weve yet seen this summer. These teams were giving it their all and the Germans had so much more. They looked great, did my main bet for the Cup.. Apart from Mario Gomez who, knowing I’d put a fiver on him to finish top scorer just as his odds dropped from tewnties to sixteens, had only two touches in the entire game and fluffed them both.

Ballack was imperious, Podolski was ruthless, Klose was the fulcrum of the attack but Torsten Frings was so electrifyingly dominant that the Italians must already be arranging to plant some cocaine on him or pay a hooker to say she did all sorts in his hotel room. Ye know, just in case Gli Azzurri have to face Germany in another big finals game. Cheating cunts.

What was the wee torch-style logo on the Poland shirt, BTW? On the right tit - embdy know? Anyway, it was Adidas v Puma. A brotherly squabble taken to international conglomerate levels but this was nothing compared to the various other backgrounds of hatred in this fixture:

It was Germany, in Austria, against the Poles, managed by a Dutchman. The Second World War just will not go away for The Germans but probably the worst thing the Poles could have done this week was apologise for the stupid tabloid front page asking for Beenhakker to bring back the heads of the German coach and captain. The Germans don’t do angry. They just do relentless effort and concentration. So apologising and defusing the situation was a bad move by the Poles. Coz what we saw in Klagenfurt tonight was a new model of a classic brand. JVC and Coca Cola are ALWAYS at World Cup and European Championship finals - so are Germany. While this summer Coke are pushing their “zero” edition and JVC their Slim LCD and their Everio, the German national team are still trying to hawk their Sweeper-Free model.

I would put a lot of money on Jens Lehmann becoming the first goalie to be sent off in these finals. Joachim Low - Germany’s manager and one-man Mid-Life crisis (although, in fairness he has let up on the hair dye if not the hair style) - likes a high defensive line and a condensed midfield and front-line. And Germans, by instinct, CANNOT GET USED to playing without a sweeper. Its like asking them to have a lazy morning in bed or just wait til the night before their holidays to book a late deal. Lehmann spentds the entire game ready to rush like a madman from his line to the edge of the box coz there’s no-one else to cover Metzelder and Mertersacker. Jens became the first man ever to be sent off in a European Cup final - I think he could repeat that feat this summer in the national team version. In many ways he’d deserve it for daring to wear the all-black goalie’s get-up patented by Lev Yashin.

Mind you, he looks right evil in the Johnny Cash gear doesn’t he? And, ala Oliver Kahn and Toni Schuimacher before him, a few German goalies have been every bit as satanic in their outlook as Sepp Maier was lovely, funny and self-deprecating. Watch Lehmann - it could get interesting. But not tonight. Easy tonight.

It sounded like there were more Poles in the stadium than Germans or locals. I saw them qualfiy for the 2002 World Cup finals with a win in Cardiff, old Polska, and it was already evident that day that the Polish diaspora - currently out-doing the Irish and the Italians - will make them heavily supported wherever they go. But there was someone else working against Germany tonight. England, in the form of the BBC’s Mark Lawrenson.

This man is scum. His only expression is mocking contempt and he has absolutely no self-awareness with which to check his tirade of sleazy venom. Why employ someone who does nothing but shit all over the product you’re presenting to the public? I suppose we have to surmise the BBC editorial stance is STILL to slate The Germans, be snidey aboute the Germans, hint that you HATE the Germans … because that’s what your public thinks. Well, BBC, that’s what the public will continue to think of the Germans is you keep peddling the idea. And no-one peddles it like Lawrenson.

Jensen goes down under a heavy tackle - screams as he’s stamped on and yet quickly sucks it up and gets on with the game. For the watching world this showed Marcel Jansen to be a brave, gentlemanly, humble guy. For Lawrenson it was evidence he had been THINKING about trying to get his opponent sent-off or booked.

Miroslav Klose goes through on Artur Boruc, on an angle, he squares it to Mario Gomez, who is facing an open goal. Gomez has a horror miss but Lawrenson has his excuse to start screaming his ignorant disgust at Klose: “Why didn’t he just stick it in himself??!!”, “What kind of striker doesn’t shoot from there??!!”. A few minutes later Miroslav Klose goes through on an angle against Artur Boruc, and squares it to the wide-open Lukas Podolski. He scores. Of course he scores. Of course Klose - one of the cleverest strikers in the world - knew that squaring the ball to a player in a much better position to score was the ONLY thing to do on both occassions. Not one word of apology or realisation from Lawrenson. He simply started on the referee. “What’s that all about??!, “What’s THAT all about??!!”. What is your ENGLISH all about, mate?! Yer a fucking professional pundit and yet all ye can do is sound like yer about to burst into “Is ‘e avin’ a larf??!!” Like Ricky Gervaise’s sit-com alter-ego in Extras.

Lawrenson then has the cheek to slag (a) Lukas Podolski for being a bit too keen to prove how German he is, having been born in Poland and (b) Leo Beenhaker for having a “well lived in face”.

I’ll take these in reverse order:

(b) Leo Beenhakker is 65-years-old - well older than Lawrenson, who looks like a Chuckle Brother and wears Harry Hill-sized collars on his shirst so as to cover his turkey-neck on Football Focus.

(a) Mark Lawrenson was born and raised and ALWAYS lived in England yet played for the Republic of Ireland, something he never mentions as he’s too busy appealing to the St George’s cross-waving mentality when on air. Lukas Podolski moved to Germany when he was TWO YEARS OLD - since then he has always lived and worked there and spoke the language and had the decency tonight to mute his celebrations as an acknowledgement of his roots and his family.

Germany are easily the best thing yet about EURO 2008 - Mark Lawrenson is easily the worst.

EURO 2008 Microphone League standings after Day 2:
Tylsdeley&Pleat - 4/10

Whatshisface & Peacok - 4/10

Motson&Bright - 3/10

Pearce & Lawrenson - 0/10