EURO 2008 DIARY DAY 15: ARSHAVIN A LARF!! (ROOSKIES … 3 Oranje … 1)

After an entire tournament spent slagging the incredible and contrived ways in which English commentators keep bringing EURO 2008 round to explaning the greatness of English football (!!), I’m now gonnae display a brass neck as thick as the wedge of Rubles Guus Hiddink’s just been handed by Roman Abramovich by way of a bonus: Andrei Arshavin, in taking Russia to their first ever major semi-final, is clearly demonstrating how great RANGERS are!! Or were. Come one - the wee man has (stunningly cheesey pun alert) caused a RUSSIAN REVOLUTION in football terms. His return from suspension has transformed the Red Army from potentially handy to actually explosive. And so does that not mean, as Lineker and Lawrenson would say if they were Bluenoses, does that not mean Rangers’ feat in taking the UEFA Cup final to the last quarter of an hour is even greater than we’d first realised?

Andy Townsend was first, last night, to guarantee his pundit’s job for another decade in the wake of Russia’s momentous victory: He quickly realised that a new force emerging in world football had to be linked to Manchester United AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, lest the ITV and BBC target audience of little Engerlander estate agents called “Steve” all forgot that Tim “Spell FOOTBALL ,ya cunt!” Lovejoy was their sartorial and philosophical hero, put away the cans of Budweiser, stopped ordering pizza and FHM, sold all their teenage-wannabe sports clothes, chucked out their Guy Ritchie cockney geezer DVDs and realised “lad culture” was one of the biggest insults the middle classes had ever perpetrated on working class culture and began to spend the rest of their lives studying to be that Wagner-loving, sex-avoiding vegetarian accountant they’d always known they should be. Nah, Andy. No way. Can’t ‘ave that, mate. You get in there me ole china and you get it sorted. Make colossal international football machinations relevant to the willfully stupid: How do you gonna do that, Andy? Ermmmm - GOT IT:

“Tell you wot, strike a light, stone the crows, would you Adam and Eve it - Sir Alex wants to take some of the £60 MILLION laaaarge sponduliks, eeze gonna get for Ronaldo and slap £20Million poney, monkey, donkey Woodjas on buying this little fellah ARSHAVIN. Do one! Wot? Jellied eels me ole cock sparra - coz THIS little fellah will make them Man U fans forget AAAALLL ABOUT RONALDO, quick-style, shaprish, apples and pears, my old Man’s a dustman, you slaaaag, ponce, nonce, you GITaaaaah!”

Briliant, Andy. Absolutely stunning. Smoother than any midfield string you ever pulled for the Villa and sweeter than any strike you ever struck for the ole Eire, my son. You’ve scored two in one there, mate: You’ve slipped in the first ever admission of what you and we in the real world have all known for six months - RONALDO IS LEAVING MANCHESTER UNITED - and it’s safe to do so now because Protugal are OUT of EURO 2008 so he can’t be used as an enticement for viewing figures, AND, you’ve simultaneously given those same fly-by-night fuckwits who these programmes cater to (because they know they have anoraks like me in the bag from Day One) a Premiership bone to cling to for the rest of this tournament: Arshavin is the best player here and he MIGHT be going to MANCHESTER UNITED!!”

Fantastic - class. Well, fuck it - I’ll do likewsie for the Bears: In May 1972 we played Dynamo Moscow in a European final - a month or so later some of those players featured for the USSR in the European championship final. We played Zenit St Petersburg in the 2008 UEFA cup final and, this coming Thursday, we’ll discover if a few of their players will feature in the 2008 European championship final. Arshavin IS a genius. He is brilliant. He layed off the pass before the cross for the first Russia goal, taken first-time, as always with the Russkies, by Pavlyuchenko, but it was in extra time that he proved he had more stamina and belief as well as more class than even this brilliant Dutch side: He pulled back an incredible chip to tee up an idiosyncratically converted second Russian goal - we’ll all remeber Torbinky’s wee cheeky side-foot in at the far post for years to come - and he himself slapped home the third, through the legs of the goalie who’d made Manchester United club chamnpions of Europe just last month.

This is the guy who made the difference in the City of Manchster Stadium - if he can overturn Russia’s poor start to their group stage this summer and if he can single-handedly destroy one of the most exhilirating Dutch teams we’ve ever seen then PERHAPS, just perhaps, Rangers were EVEN BETTER last season than we realised.

I thought this Dutch team were AMAZING when they destroyed France and Italy - the two World Cup finalists - in the group stage. They WERE amazing. If they could have kept it going they would have been arguably the greatest Dutch side of all time - and that’s saying something. But they couldn’t. I don’t how much of that was down to Russia simply movng into hyper-drive and Guus Hiddink sinmply unable to stop himself getting the VERY MOST out of any team in his charge. Perhaps the affaetcion and compassion shown for Khalid Boularhrouz - the death of his prematurely born daughter this week seeing the Dutch team all wearing black armbands - put football in its rightful place in life’s hierarchy of important stuff. This was a close Dutch team, all friends and, how ironic it will be if, after all those years of fractious internecine Holland squads, that’s what did for them last night: Being good friends, they couldn’t really focus on the game coz one of their team-mnates was suffering. He played, did Boulahrouz - brave guy - but he went off at half-time. So did Dirk Kuyt. Lots of disruption to an already patchy performance. Van Nistelrooy scored an excitingly late equaliser and we wondered if Russia were gonane rue all their missed chances in the 90 minutes and again during the first half of extra time.

But no.

Holland were always second best in this match and Russia provided another shock in this rollercoaster tournament and, for the second night in a row, two goals in the second half of extra-time, in this boredom-phobic tournament.

It wasn’t the greatest game of all time, as I suspected it might be having watched both teams in the group stages, but it simmered nicely to the boil. And the whole night - everything about it - was envigorating, even to view from my hollowed-out sofa in Glesgie. What a thril to see the St Jakob’s Park looking SO orange. It was difficult to believe this was the same stadium from which we’d watched the Germany - Portugal game just two nights earlier. There really is something amazing about the orange shirst en masse and I was loving the little pocket of about a dozen white Russian shirts in amongst the main corner of Dutch fans. Wonder what happened in there when the goals went in!

Just when we thought it was gonane get boring, after about half an hour of chess match tactics, the Russians and the Dutch began having pot-shots at each other. Long-range efforts and narrowly-missed in-swingers from the cultured feet of the artistically named Rafael van der Vaart. On the stadium’s big screens the crowd obviously sees the same replays we do, at the same time. Every time a narrow miss was shown from a different replayed angle you could hear the Ducth and Russkies emitting their oohs and aaahs in unison with yerself.

I loved the fact that, during the national anthems, both teams seemed to have arranged their first five players in ascending height order. As the cameras panned along the faces in traditional style you wondered if, by the time they reached the goalie, we’d be seeing the world’s first 10 foot tall players.

Did Hiddink sing both anthems? Would you? Tricky one.

I was sure I spotted a swathe of empty seats up in the third tier of St Jakob’s main stand? Perhaps this was the hospitality crowd leaving it til the last possible moment before taking their places but the hospitality crowd are rarely so high up. I’ve done the entire European Championships before - six group games, two quarters, a semi and the final - and yet I still got that pang of “Shit! Empty seats - I coudl have been there!”

The host broadcasters seem determined to spend as much time filming beautiful burds - or fat blokes dressed up as burds - in the crowd. last night we again had several instances where the coverage nearly missed a fucking goal becuase of this puerile directorial penchant. If I want to look at beautiful women I only have to borrow Big Gunther’s copy of Cosmo or switch on my PC or walk down Sauchiehall Street (What??!!) or get my high-heels out and stand in front of the mirror. When I’m watching the fitbaw I want to see the fitbaw. Shots of the managers on the benches is okay but even then there’s far too many irrelevant close-ups of the technical areas. A European championship quarter-final is thrilling enough in its own right - no need to try and dress it up as a soap opera. The host broadcasters must honestly have one cameraman dedictaed to scanning the crowd for totty and the benches for a silly expression - the director cuts away to that kind of shit far too often for it not to be a sad but deliberate tactic.

If you want to be trivial then be like me and decide that, now that the Swiss and Tranquillo Barnetta are out of the tournament, you have to find a new favourite name of the knock-out stages. Easy. It has to be last night’s “Russian sub”, Diniyar Bilyaletdinov. Say it to yourself. Go on. “Bilyaletdinov”. Great innit! It sounds like a magic word to be uttered by Ali Bongo. “Close your eyes and - One, two - BILYALETDINOV! - there’s a rabbit in the hat!!”.

Yes. You know it. You know what I’m gonnae say now. Andrei Arshavin was the rabbit in the hat last night. Ooooooh, yeah - it’s just as well Norman Mailer’s dead.

But it was a beautiful occassion in Basle/Basel even before the wee man took it by the scruff of the neck. Even Jim Beglin and Peter Drury scored a best-of-the-tournament 8/10 and move up a place in the Pundits’ league table. They were both being extremeley generous about both teams. Drury almost out-did Jon Champion’s pre-match eulogising of Thursday night. ITV, on the whole, are so much more FRIENDLY to this tournament and Drury was hitting me with stat after stat which I didn’t even know beforehand. Holland had seven different scorers before last night - the record for a European championhips is eight scorers for one country! Stuff like that. Brilliant! AND they were both being self-deprecating and jovial. It was as Beglin and Drury WERE ENJOYING A GREAT OCCASSION. No-one was unkind to anyone. No one was England-fixated. It was bloody great. It was how it should be.

In fact, even Lubos Michel had a good game as ref. And even THE ENGLISH COMMENTARY TEAM were overwhelmigly praiseful of him - him NOT BEING HOWARD WEBB! - when he reversed his decision to dismiss big Denis Kolodin. Okay, it seems as if the linesman kinda helped Lubos kopp out by saying the ball had gone out of play before the incident, which it clearly had not. The true reason Kolodin shouldn’t have received a second booking was because he HAD NOT FOULDED THE GUY. But, nevertheless, Michel reversed his decison - brave - and Drury unreservedly praised him for it rather than using it as an excuse to harp on again about the standard of officiating being nowhere near as good as in England - refreshing and also brave!

I thought Holland would finish bottom of their group - they walked it. I thought Holland would then go on to be explosive throughout the tournament - they were muted last night. So I won’t even begin saying what I think Russia will or won’t go on to do. Coz I honestly don’t know anymore - and I love it. I spent enough time on Wednesday, after their win over Sweden, explaining what it all means to the Russians. All I’ll say now is that Russia won the UEFA Cup and the Eurovision song contest in recent weeks, as well as hosting the Champions League final. It’s a Russian kinda year but I have genuinely NO IDEA who will win this tourament or who will even make thw semi-finals from Italy and Spain. The only guarantee about EURO 2008 is that it’s pyoor kwality by the way - and that Andrei Arshavin’s already exorbitant wages will be doubled by August.

Now - let’s pan the crowd for a sun-tanned busty blonde befor eanyone starts enjoying the fitbaw.

EURO 2008 Microphone League standings after Day 15:

Whatshisface Wilson&Lawrenson 0/10