Gotta love a bandwagon

So how empty or full is that glass at the moment folks? Scan through the dailies and you’d swear that the only people enjoying Euro 2008 are James Richardson and Barry Glendenning; along with a couple of Dutch folk and even the normally surly Spanish. Well, head on the block time here but Euro 2008 is entertaining the bejaysus out of me (and I’ve never used that phrase before, possibly with good reason, but I’ll stick by it for now). Anyway, like a roma family on a roundabout, let’s move on.

Maybe it’s the fact that as an RTE-watcher I’m accustomed to seeing pundits who are used to their national side not being there. From the uniformly average reviews of the coverage on ITV and BBC, it sounds like the Brits are somewhat struggling without the daily reports from Baden-Baden.

So much so that some papers are giving more coverage to Wayne Rooney’s wedding than they are to the tournament. The long held suspicion by us at OkeyDokeFootball that so much time reporting on the game has left some tabloid journalists actually hating it, seems to have a grain of truth in it after all. Come on, get in the spirit of things people.

Some of the top reasons to watch so far include…

Zlatan Ibrahimovic: The man who makes Ronaldo look like he’s got confidence issues. What a goal last night and now that he’s kicked into form, he could be that player we love to hate but hate to miss throughout this tournament. Although…

The Rooskies: Zlatan’s time in the tournament may be cut short by a first round exit should the Russians get their act together. They showed signs of promise in that demolition by the Spanish and could come back strong yet; bizarrely this group (excluding everything involving Greek players) could be more entertaining than Group C and its deathly hallows.

Billo: Extracting the urine from the BBC and ITV put together by spinning a ridiculous amount of airtime out of teams both he and the panel have little knowledge of. The other stations are barely on five minutes before kick off, lest we all find out what we knew already – Alan Shearer has nothing to say. Nothing. My favourite Billo moment so far? Throwing in what I suspect was a made up comment to gain a reaction and it worked to a tee:
Bill: “Well I read somewhere that this is in fact the greatest German side ever. What do you think of that?”
Dunphy: “That’s… that’s just rubbish…”
John: “Never Bill…”
Brady: “Not a hope Bill…”
Cue ten minutes of TV gold. We didn’t name our site after this man’s catchphrase for nothing!

Trevor Stevens’ white jacket: A horrible garment but the reaction it provoked was hilarious.

The hosts: I know this might not be the popular opinion but I actually enjoyed the Austria v Croatia match because of how much effort the co-hosts put in. The same can be said for large portions of the Swiss match. Thankfully, I missed the France v Romania game so I haven’t seen an out and our borefest yet (though yes the Swedish game was close until that goal).

The return of Apres Match: Words can’t do it justice. So just watch this. Or follow the link here.

The promise of what is to come: Portugal v the Czechs in three minutes, Holland v France; Croatia v Germany; Sweden v Spain… and that’s before we even get to the final matches of the first round. Anybody still missing $tevie Me hitting 70-yard Hollywood balls to the corner flag? Thought not.

Til the next update, later folks, JJ