The Archive

Greece did as badly at Euro 2008 as many had predicted they would four years earlier. But despite his champions' poor performance, the knives are not out for Otto Rehhagel, as Paul Pomonis explains

You can safely recognise a team in deep trouble, the moment their coach turns to the supernatural for assistance. “Boys, pray for us,” Otto Rehhagel asked the Greek press before the crucial match against Russia. Unfortunately, no amount of divine intervention could save the Greece team this summer. To the surprise of many, their defence of their 2004 European title ended in abject failure, one that brought back memories of the legendary fiasco at the USA 94 World Cup.

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With no home nation to cheer on, we could have been spared the usual jingoism. But to Taylor Parkes's fury, the BBC and especially ITV missed no opportunity to scrape a reference to good old Blighty

As the most promising international tournament for years got under way, the pundits tried to look on the bright side. “When your own teams are in it,” suggested Andy Townsend, “you don’t really watch the other teams.” Well, anyone who remembers the TV coverage of the last World Cup can vouch for that. So did this mean England’s absence from Euro 2008 would spare us that obsessive Anglocentricism which makes international football on British TV so uniquely aggravating, such an insult to the intelligence (not to mention the Scots, Irish and Welsh)? Hardly. It just meant our patriotic pundits had to try a little harder.

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Barney Ronay spent three weeks in foreign parts. Not Austria or Switzerland, but UEFA Town, a tightly policed, mascot-infested, first-class-all-the-way state dedicated not to football, but to money

According to a UEFA press release, the Euro 2008 mascots Trix and Flix embody competition, friendship, tolerance, teamwork, magic, style, ability and attitude. They also have distinct personalities. Flix is a cheeky scamp, but Trix “is more serious and self-controlled” – qualities not, it has to be said, usually associated with a jobbing actor in an eight-foot cartoon outfit doing the running man. At their unveiling, Swiss tournament director Christian Mutschler appeared completely serious when he said: “I am sure the mascots… will become a vital part of the understanding of the whole event.”

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Apparently, Portugal's campaign suffered from the odd distraction. Andy Brassell looks at how the Portuguese, Spanish and English media covered the saga of Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid

As soon as Cristiano Ronaldo arrived in Viseu in northern Portugal on May 23 for his national team’s pre-Euro 2008 training camp, he must have known he was in for a long summer. He’d been granted permission to arrive four days later than the rest of the squad, along with Nani, Ricardo Carvalho and Paulo Ferreira, after his participation in the Champions League final. His delayed entrance was only lacking him riding in on a white horse for the Portuguese media, although Real Madrid had already made very clear their intention to make him into the Bernabéu’s new superhero.

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A chart of the most played football songs in the past five years released by Performing Rights Society leaves David Stubbs wondering who on earth has been left in charge of the PA system

Whenever a list of 50 best-ever songs is released, be they selected by Q readers or Virgin Radio listeners, it tends to cast humanity in a harsh light. A list of the UK’s top football songs based on the commercial reality of which have been most frequently played, as recently unveiled by the UK Performing Rights Society, lowers your opinion of the general public all the more. Is this all we are, as a species?

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