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Well, hopefully not Uruguay or France after that terrible, but predictable bore-draw last night.

I think the bookies have got it about right by making Spain the favourites- they are the most likely winners, but I also think that Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Serbia and Honduras could spring a few surprises along the way and that Holland should be in for a very good tournament. As for England: well, they have a great manager, but I’m not sure that they have enough genuinely world-class players in the squad to win it. Argentina are the complete opposite- they do have enough quality players to win the tournament, (including probably the best player in the world- Lionel Messi), but the doubts are about their manager, who prior to the World Cup hadn’t impressed with his selections or tactics.

Anyway, what do you reckon?

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As in 2009, so in 2010.

Yet another FA Cup Final won by one of the 'Big Four'. Today's 1-0 victory over Portsmouth was Chelsea's third F.A. Cup Final success in four years, and the sixth time the once so elusive League and FA Cup 'Double' has been achieved since the inception of the Premier League in 1992/3.

As I wrote after last year's Final:

Money Power doesn’t make life more exciting-it does exactly the opposite. It means that all our towns and cities look the same: a Starbucks, Pizza Express or Macdonalds on every corner. It means our leading political parties all have the same pro-capital policies. And the same teams win all the football trophies.

If only Kevin-Prince Boateng had scored for Pompey from the penalty spot. Then we might have had a different ending. But once again in the neoliberal era, the underdog has lost the Cup Final.

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Well, I think we saw the man who would make an ideal Prime Minister on our tv screens last night.

No, I don’t mean Dave, Nick or Gordon, but the wonderful Roy Hodgson, who has taken Fulham to a European final for the first time in their history.

Hodgson is calm, intelligent, modest and very well-travelled. What a great job he’d do as PM.

Failing that, what a great job he’d do as the next England manager.

As I mentioned here, I’ve been a big fan of Hodgson since the early/mid 1990s when I was living in Switzerland and Hodgson was the manager of the national team. He got the Swiss to the World Cup finals of 1994, where they reached the round of 16, their best showing for forty years.

At almost every club he’s been with, Hodgson has been a success. It’s great to see this most unassuming of men finally get the recognition he so richly deserves.

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He was the best manager Hull City had ever had. He saved them from relegation to League One (the old Third Division) and then, incredibly, took them to the top flight of English football for the first time in their history- where even more incredibly they reached the top three in the first half of the season. This season, despite a tough run of fixtures at the turn of the year, Phil Brown’s Hull had still managed to beat Man City and hold Chelsea. But after a last gasp defeat at home to Arsenal in March, Brown was sacked. At the time, Hull were by no means relegation certainties. His successor, Iain Dowie, a man who has flopped at most clubs he’s been with, won just one game out of nine (against a Fulham team going through the motions) and on Saturday- after their third successive home defeat, Hull were relegated.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a worse decision in English football this year than the sacking of Phil Brown and his replacement by Iain Dowie.

And guess what, Brown may return as Hull manager. It’s a bit late now, Mr Pearson.

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……Foot was not in any sense an elitist. A story is sometimes told of that austere socialist theoretician, GDH Cole. Informed in the 1930s by the future socialist chancellor Hugh Dalton that Labour could only hope to win power "with the support of the football crowds", Cole was reported simply to have "shuddered and turned away". Foot, a vocal supporter of Plymouth Argyle, with a corner of his heart reserved for Everton as well, was never near sharing Cole's fastidiousness. He passionately enjoyed going to football matches and, though he never aspired to rival Harold Wilson's facility for recalling match statistics, had a far greater knowledge of the game than the Prime Minister, whose invitations to join his government he held out against for nearly five years.

Here you can read the whole of Anthony Howard’s wonderful essay on the late Michael Foot- and why we won‘t see his likes in British politics again.

And you can read more about Foot's love of football, and how supporters of his beloved Plymouth Argyle paid tribute to him at yesterday's match with Preston, here and here.

What a pity Plymouth Argyle never made it to the top flight of English football or won the FA Cup during Foot's lifetime.

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Here we go, here we go.. Again.

Underdog team takes early lead in Cup final. The favourites equalise before half-time. They then win the match with a moment of star quality, from a very expensively bought player with around 15/20mins remaining.

That’s what occurred in yesterday’s League Cup final, and its also what occurred in last year’s FA Cup final.

Despite the fact that both Aston Villa and Everton gave it everything they had, once again a team from the Big Four has won one of English football’s three main trophies. And once again the underdog has lost in a final. There used to be a time when any old Wimbledon, Coventry, Ipswich or QPR could win a Wembley Cup final. Not any more it seems.

The facts speak for themselves: in the last five years only two teams from outside the top four have won a major trophy (Spurs, 2008 League Cup and Portsmouth, 2008 FA Cup).

How long is this boring monopolisation of the domestic game by a tiny handful of clubs going to continue?

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Both pretty good choices I reckon. How about you?

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Here is an extract from my article from today's The First Post.

It was perhaps the most blatant act of cheating in an important international football match since Diego Maradona's infamous 'Hand of God' knocked England out of the World Cup in 1986.

French striker Thierry Henry openly admits that he handled the ball in the move which led to his country's decisive goal in last night's World Cup qualifier with the Republic of Ireland.

But his attempt to pass responsibility on to the referee - who was unsighted - is unlikely to assuage the anger and sense of outrage felt by Republic of Ireland players and supporters, whose team misses out on next year's World Cup finals in South Africa as a result.

A 'We Irish Hate Thierry Henry the Cheat' Facebook page has already been set up: by 9am this morning, it had over 22,000 fans. "We got robbed. It's cost a lot of us our dreams - as a boy I used to dream of playing in the World Cup, and now I'm not," bemoaned Irish defender Sean St Ledger.

It's not the first time that Henry, once the pride of Arsenal, now with Barcelona, has attempted to gain an unfair advantage at a vital stage of an international match.

You can read the whole of the article - and what we can do to make sure that cheats like Henry don’t prosper-here.

UPDATE: Gavin McDonald has written in asking me to publicise a petition he has organised calling for Thierry Henry to be banned from playing in next year's World Cup.
Here's the link, please consider giving it your support.

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video: BuffONgigi.

So the long wait continues. Last night's 3-0 defeat in Portugal means that once again Hungary have missed out on playing in the finals of a major football tournament. It's now 23 years since Hungary competed in the finals of a World Cup or European Championships. And all this from a country that used to be one of the greatest footballing nations in the world. What's gone wrong?

Below you can read my Observer piece from 2003 enitled 'Do you remember when Hungary ruled the world?'- looking back on the golden age of Hungarian football and attempting to find the reasons for the sad decline. And above you can watch 'The Magnificent Magyars' (Ferenc Puskas and co) in their heyday-beating England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953. All football romantics must hope that Hungary will once again be a force in world football. But at least there's one piece of good news from last night's World Cup qualifiers: Serbia will be going to South Africa to compete in their first ever World Cup finals (Serbia and Montenegro competed in 2006), after their stunning 5-0 win over Romania.

Do you remember when Hungary ruled the world?
Neil Clark.
The Observer, November 2003.

While England's heroics in Turkey grabbed the headlines after the final round of Euro 2004 qualifiers, little attention was given to the significance of a match played the same night, 700 miles away in Budapest. A 2-1 home defeat by Poland meant that Hungary had failed to qualify for the latter stages of a major international tournament for the ninth consecutive occasion.

To anyone under 35, it must be hard to believe that there was a time when Hungary had the best football team in the world. Yet 50 years ago they unquestionably did. In fact, three great judges - Sir Bobby Robson, the late Billy Wright and my dad - have rated the Hungarian Arany csapat (Golden Team) as the greatest football team ever. 'The Magnificent Magyars' were so sexy that they made Johan Cruyff's Dutch side of 1974 look positively frigid.

Hungary walked away with the 1952 Olympic title in the middle of a three-and-a-half-year unbeaten run. Between June 1950 and November 1955 they scored 220 goals in 51 matches, an astonishing average of more than four goals a game. The side's greatest moment came in 1953, when England's Wembley invincibility was finally breached in a thrilling 6-3 victory. It is difficult to exaggerate the impact that result had on world football. The revolutionary use of a deep-lying centre-forward, Nandor Hidegkuti, with inside-forwards Sandor Kocsis and Ferenc Puskas acting as spearheads, had England's defence in tatters and coaches all over the world rewriting their manuals. There seemed no doubt that the Hungarians - who repeated the mauling of England in a 7-1 win in Budapest the following spring - would be crowned world champions in 1954. But everyone had overlooked the Germans, about to embark on what became their habit of denying sexy football its rightful reward. The Hungarians swept their way to the final, racking up an 8-3 victory against the Germans in the group stage. But Germany, with the aid of a visually impaired British linesman, triumphed at the last. Hungarian football never reached the same heights again. Two years later, the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and Puskas and co (taking with them half the youth team, too) jumped ship, preferring the lure of Spain to the challenge of building a socialist utopia at home.

Even after the exodus, Hungary continued to produce decent enough international teams (the 1966 World Cup side defeated Pelé's Brazil, 3-1), but from the mid-1980s the decline went from relative to absolute. In 1997,, there was a glimmer of hope - a play-off against Yugoslavia for a place in the 1998 World Cup. But after just nine minutes of the first leg, at home, Hungary were three goals down; the Yugoslavs won 7-1 (12-1 overall).

Speak to most people over 50 and they will blame the new democracy for the decline. Under communism, football in Hungary was collectivised and most of the Golden Team played week in, week out for the same club, the army team Honved. The fall of communism cannot wholly explain the demise: countries such as the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria have continued to produce good international sides since the Iron Curtain came down. Whatever the source of the malaise, the once football-mad Hungarians now seem to be past caring; they've been through the pain barrier too many times.

The national team has become a taboo subject. Football is as unfashionable in Hungary today as it was in England back in the mid-1980s. For traditionalists the world over, brought up from childhood on tales of 'The Magnificent Magyars', that surely is the saddest thing of all.

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A sad day for football- Sir Bobby Robson, the hugely respected former England manager, has died at the age of 76 after a long battle with cancer.

Robson's death, coming as it does just two weeks before the start of the new Premier League season, should make us pause for thought as to how the magic and romance our sport once possessed has been destroyed by money power.

In the 1960s and 70s, it was perfectly possible for a talented ambitious manager, like Bobby Robson or Brian Clough, to take a relatively small, provincial club such as Ipswich Town or Nottingham Forest, up into the top flight of English football and win the game's top trophies, in England and in Europe too.

Today, due to the influence of money power, such a feat is impossible.

And we are all the poorer for it.

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So, what a surprise. Another major trophy won by a member of the Big Four. All the tv experts tried to put forward explanations as to why Chelsea beat Everton in yesterday’s FA Cup Final. But the reason could be put down to one word: Money.

Chelsea’s vastly superior wealth means they can buy the best players-like Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Michael Ballack. Chelsea's side was assembled at a cost of £330m. Everton's cost £90m.

Money Power doesn’t make life more exciting-it does exactly the opposite. It means that all our towns and cities look the same: a Starbucks, Pizza Express or Macdonalds on every corner. It means our leading political parties all have the same pro-capital policies. And the same teams win all the football trophies.

The facts speak for themselves: all but two of the last 18 FA Cup finals have been won by one of the ‘Big Four’. The last five Carling Cup finals have been won by the Big Four and since Middlesbrough won the 2003/4 Carling Cup, only one side from outside the Big Four (Portsmouth) has won a major trophy in England. (correction: two sides from outside the Big Four have won trophies since '04, as Robin Carmody reminds me in the comments section, Tottenham won the '08 Carling Cup).

On the same theme- there’s a great piece by Rod Liddle in today’s Sunday Times, which says it all:

For the first 11 years that I watched the FA Cup final, 11 different teams won the trophy, beginning and ending with those likeable, stalwart also-rans, West Bromwich Albion and Ipswich Town. In the past 14 years a grand total of five different clubs have won the tournament; the interlopers being Portsmouth.

When are football fans- regardless of the teams they support- going to come together and say ‘enough is enough’ of this boring, predictable nonsense?

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Video: thekeogh

I’ve written before of the way neoliberals love to trash 1970s Britain. The reason why of course, is that the decade saw the zenith of progressive politics, not just in Britain but around the world too.

The neoliberals don’t only tell lies about the state of the economy in the 1970s, they trash every aspect of 70s life. Including football. Football back then was nowhere near as good as it is today, according to the manic Thatcherites. It was far too working class (not an executive box in sight)- and it really was quite appalling how little clubs like Notts Forest and QPR and Ipswich could compete for honours with the bigger clubs. That would never do would it? Let‘s change the structure of football so only the very richest clubs can win things. And we’ll change the structure of our economy and society too, to benefit the super-rich.

And that's exactly what the neoliberals did.

I just hope those who trash the 1970s watched ITV’s recent showing of the ’Big Match’ programme of the highlights of the FA Cup final of thirty years ago.

May 1979- a highly significant date as it was then that Mrs Thatcher came to power and British society and economy underwent radical changes. We saw the impact of those changes by watching the match.

First, neither team's shirts carried advertising (or even the players names on the back). There were no players from outside Britain and Ireland on the pitch: football had yet to be globalised. There was the great sportmanship- illustrated by the generous tributes the two managers, Terry Neill and Dave Sexton, paid to each other when interviewed side by side after the game. There was the dress of those in the crowd-while a few supporters wore their teams scarves- none were dressed in replica football jerseys- as most supporters are today.

The programme provided a snapshot of Britain at the end of one era, and at the start of another.

That summer, Liverpool became the first team to have advertising on its shirts.
A couple of years later, the rules were changed so that the home team kept all the gate receipts: the spirit of greed, unleashed by Thatcherism, was entering the sport.

British football, society and economy was never the same after May 1979.

And watching the Big Match video reminds us of the less commercialised, less money-obsessed world we have lost.

Oh, and it was also a classic game of football, with three goals in the last four minutes.

So much for those who say that good football only came to Britain with the advent of the big-bucks Premier League.

Watch and enjoy the incredible climax to the 1979 FA final above, and reflect on the world we lost when ‘Money Power’ and ‘Market Forces’ started to dictate every aspect of our lives.

And another thought: for those who believe that the Premier League has raised standards and improved English clubs chances of winning trophies in Europe, I give you this simple fact:

Number of times English clubs won the European Cup between 1977-84: 7
Number of times English clubs won the European Cup/Champions League since the advent of the Premier League in 1992/3 : er, 2. (er,3- as PJD reminds me in the comments, I forgot Liverpool's win in Istanbul in 2005). But it's still a very poor 17-year haul compared to the period 1977-84.

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Here’s my compilation of some of ‘Old Big ‘Ead’s greatest quotes, from the First Post.

I hope they raise a smile or two.


He was the most controversial, the most opinionated - and the most entertaining football manager of all time. Now Brian Clough's colourful career is being immortalised in a big screen adaptation of David Peace's book The Damned United, released on March 27.

It deals with Clough's 44-day reign as manager of Leeds United, and comes out just as ITV prepares to screen a major documentary about him, made with the help of his family.

This year also marks the fifth anniversary of his death and the 30th anniversary of perhaps his greatest achievement - the first of two consecutive European Cup triumphs with Nottingham Forest.

As a player, Clough was a promising and prolific striker with Sunderland who made two England appearances before his career was cut short by injury. But it was as a manager that he made his name, teaming up with Peter Taylor to form one of the greatest managerial partnerships in football history.

BRIAN CLOUGH…..

ON DAVID BECKHAM:
"Beckham? His wife can't sing and his barber can't cut hair."

ON HIS REPUTATION:
"I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one."

ON GETTING THINGS DONE:
"They say Rome wasn't built in a day, but I wasn't on that particular job."

ON HIS DRINKING:
"Walk on water? I know most people out there will be saying that instead of walking on it, I should have taken more of it with my drinks. They are absolutely right."

ON ITALIANS:
"I can't even spell spaghetti never mind talk Italian. How could I tell an Italian to get the ball - he might grab mine."

ON TREVOR BROOKING:
"Trevor Brooking floats like a butterfly... And stings like one."

ON HOOLIGANS:
"Football hooligans? Well, there are the 92 club chairmen for a start."

ON THE LONG BALL GAME:
"If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there."

ON AMERICA:
"Academically, I was thick. I'm not sure school taught me that Columbus discovered America, I learned that in later life. Some people might wish he never had, because if they are the leading lights in this world, my God, they leave a lot to be desired."

ON POLITICIANS:
"There are more hooligans in the House of Commons than at a football match."

ON LOSING:
"Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes."

ON THE ENGLAND JOB:
"I'm sure the England selectors thought if they took me on and gave me the job, I'd want to run the show. They were shrewd, because that's exactly what I would have done."

ON ONE OF HIS PLAYERS:
"I'm not saying Brian Rice is pale and thin, but I'm telling you, the maid in the hotel re-made his bed without realising he was still in it."

ON MARRIED LIFE:
"My wife said to me in bed 'God, your feet are cold'. I said 'You can call me Brian in bed, dear'."

ON THE ENGLAND JOB, AGAIN:
"People wonder what kind of England manager Cloughie would have turned out to be. There’s only one answer - a bloody good one."

ON LEARNING THAT ELTON JOHN WAS WAITING TO MEET HIM:
"Tell the fat poof I'll be out in a minute."

ON WINNING:
"If it meant getting three points on a Saturday I would shoot my grandmother. Not nastily, I would just hurt her."

ON DEATH:
"I don't believe in an afterlife. I am an avid reader of newspapers but I've yet to see proof of anyone dying and coming back after the funeral."

ON POLITICS:
"I have no problem in having money in the bank, a large house and a Mercedes, and still being a socialist."

ON AGENTS:
"If a player had said to Bill Shankly 'I've got to speak to my agent', Bill would have hit him. And I would have held him while he hit him."

ON HIS LEGACY:
"I want no epitaphs of profound history and all that type of thing. I contributed. I would hope they would say that, and I would hope somebody liked me."

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Well, can anyone remember a weekend when not only did none of the Big Four win, but none of them even scored a goal? I certainly can't.

Long-standing readers will know my views on the Premiership, and how top flight football has become mind-numbingly predictable since its introduction. But the2008-9 season is shaping up to be rather interesting. We've had the incredible rise of Hull City (whose manager Phil Brown is pictured above) and the surprisingly good showing of Stoke City. The demise of Arsenal. The fall- and rise- of Tottenham. Robinho working his magic at Man City. And a league table where only a handful of points separate half the division.

Of course, its odds on that 'normal service' will soon be resumed. But in the meantime lets enjoy the unpredictability while it lasts!

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This piece of mine on the remarkable Hull City manmager Phil Brown (pictured above), appears in the First Post. With his intelligence and tactical prowess Brown is raising the reputation of English football coaches and is as unlike the manager 'Alan Latchley' the late Peter Cook's hilarious comedy creation, as one can imagine. If you've never seen 'Alan Latchley' impart his 'wisdom' on the Clive Anderson Show, you can watch it below- it's quite simply one of the funniest interviews you'll ever see in your life.

What is it about Hull and its men in dark suits? Philip Larkin, the poet never seen without a collar and tie; John Prescott MP, who asked "What are chinos?" when Tony Blair requested that he dress down for dinner; and now Phil Brown, manager of Hull City, always patrolling the touchline in his nifty black suit, urging his team on to greater triumph.

Before this season, Hull City had never played in the top flight of English football. They now sit proudly in third place in the Premier League, just three points behind leaders Chelsea and ahead of both Manchester United and Arsenal.

Hull's incredible metamorphosis dates from December 2006, when Brown took over. Hull were then facing relegation to the third tier. Not only did Brown save 'The Tigers' from the drop, he also led them to promotion to the Premiership in his first full season.

A journeyman footballer, who plied his trade at lower-division clubs such as Hartlepool and Halifax, Brown later worked for six years as the right-hand man to Sam Allardyce at Bolton, during which time the Lancashire side became established as a force to be reckoned with in the Premier League.

Under Allardyce and Brown, Bolton became renowned for their intelligent tactics, frequently getting the better of the Premiership's more illustrious clubs, and Brown has clearly put the experience to good use. This season, he has out-witted internationally respected football managers such as Arsene Wenger and Juande Ramos in Europe's top league.

Wenger was taken completely by surprise last month by Hull's positive, attacking approach. Eschewing the overly-defensive approach most teams adopt at Arsenal, Brown played with two strikers and put talented Brazilian Geovanni on the left-wing, from where he scored a brilliant equaliser. Wenger was so stunned by the subsequent defeat he referred to Hull as "West Brom" in the post-match press conference.

A week later, 49-year-old Brown took his side to Tottenham, where his tactics once more flummoxed the opposition, with Hull winning 1-0. On Sunday, in the match against West Ham, Brown again showed his tactical prowess, making half-time changes to his team's formation which changed the course of the game and led to another Hull victory.

In England, we tend to think that our managers, while being good motivators, are tactically inferior to European coaches. The late Peter Cook's hilarious comedy creation, manager 'Alan Latchley', who thinks football is only about "the three Ms: motivation, motivation, motivation and motivation" springs readily to mind. Brown has already done much to destroy the stereotype.

Will he last the course, and grow into a truly great British manager – a Brian Clough or Bill Shankly? Maybe. The fate of his mentor Sam Allardyce, who left Bolton for Newcastle only to lose his job eight months later, should help keep his feet firmly on the ground.

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AN UPDATE TO THIS EARLIER POST (BELOW):
Contrary to press reports throughout this afternoon, it appears that Kevin Keegan has not been sacked as Newcastle manager.

A statement from Newcastle released shortly before 7pm included a denial that the board had axed Keegan:

"Newcastle United can confirm that meetings between members of the board and manager Kevin Keegan were held both yesterday and today.
"Kevin has raised a number of issues and those have been discussed with him.
"The club wants to keep progressing with its long-term strategy and would like to stress that Kevin is extremely important, both now and in the future.
"Newcastle United values the effort and commitment shown by Kevin since his return to St James' Park and wants him to continue to play an instrumental role as manager of the club.
"For the avoidance of doubt, the club has not sacked Kevin Keegan as manager."

So, the award of Wally of the Week to Newcastle chairman Mike Ashley is hereby withdrawn! That can only be bad news for David Miliband........

EARLIER POST

Back in January, I wrote in The Guardian:

Sometimes you hear news that makes you want to jump for joy. The release from jail of Nelson Mandela. The news that Tony Blair, after the longest farewell tour since Frank Sinatra, had finally vacated Downing Street. England regaining the Ashes.
Yesterday's announcement that Kevin Keegan was returning to English football to manage Newcastle United was another such occasion.

Today, just eight months on, Kevin Keegan was sacked by Newcastle chairman Mike Ashley (above). Instead of giving Keegan, a man with a proven track record, 100% backing, Ashley undermined him- appointing Dennis Not-So-Wise as Director of Football with responsibility for transfers. Ashley also allowed James Milner to go to Villa, despite Keegan's opposition. Kevin Keegan can leave Newcastle with his head held high, having done the best he possible could in such a short period of time. But one thing is for sure after today's news: the club will never make a challenge for honours so long as they have a wally like Mike Ashley at the helm.

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Tonight Standard Liege of Belgium play Liverpool in a Champions League Qualifying Tie. It's a match that should not be played. Standard defender Oguchi Onyewu explains why:

"I'm sure a lot of Belgians feel it is unfair that the Champions of a country have to play a qualifying round to get into the Champions League".

I'm sure a lot of people outside Belgium, and in Britain too, agree with him. Liverpool finished fourth in last season's Premier League. They should be playing in the UEFA Cup, not the Champions League. I'm not anti-Liverpool- I've long admired the club- but I am totally against the current Champions League format which is ridiculously biased towards the teams of Europe's richest leagues. I'm old enough to remember when teams from smaller European countries like Belgium got to European Cup finals. But that won't happen again until we scrap the current Champions League format.

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Well, we've just reached the end of one of the greatest European Championships of all time. And what have UEFA's member countries voted to do: you've guessed it- radically change the format. The Mail on Sunday reports:

"England will have no excuse in future if they repeat their failure to qualify for Euro 2008 after a proposal to extend the European Championship from 16 to 24 teams by 2016 won unanimous approval from UEFA's 53 member countries yesterday. SFA chief executive Gordon Smith said: "We just missed this tournament behind Italy and France but under the proposed new regulations we would have qualified". UEFA president Michel Platini said: "I'm not worried about increasing the number of teams. Countries like England have the quality to take part."

Well, extending the number of teams playing in the European Championship finals may well give England and Scotland a greater chance of qualification, but it's still a lousy idea. A 24-team tournament would mean six groups of four teams, with presumably the last sixteen being made up of the twelve first and second placed teams, together with the four third placed teams with the best record. In other words we'd play two weeks of group matches just to eliminate eight teams. Such a system would encourage negative, defensive football, as teams would probably be able to qualify for the knockout stages with three draws.
Much of the excitement of the final games in the group matches (just think Czech Republic v Turkey) would be lost.

A 24-team tournament would undoubtedly mean a lowering of quality- as well as devaluing the European Championship qualifiers.

It's quite clear that once again, financial -and not sporting considerations are being put first. The more teams in the tournament, the more matches, the more advertising revenue- and the richer everyone gets- so the argument goes. But a 24-team tournament, involving several mediocre teams, is much more likely to be a bore for viewers than a 16-team one, restricted to Europe's best.

The truth is that there is nothing wrong with the current European Championship format, as the last four weeks have shown. To quote a very old adage, which is ignored far too often in these money obsessed times: If it ain't broke, why fix it?

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Well, with only 30 hours or so to go before the last match of what has been the most fabulously entertaining football tournament for decades, it's time to compile our Euro 2008 dream teams. Here's mine:

1. Casillas (Spain)
2. Hamit (Turkey)
3. Lahm (Germany)
4. Simunic (Croatia)
5. Kovac (Croatia)
6. Schweinsteiger (Germany)
7. Deco (Portugal)
8. Ballack (Germany)
9. Nihat (Turkey)
10. Fabregas (Spain)
11. Villa (Spain)

Subs: Volkan (Turkey) Corluka (Croatia)Von Bronkhorst (Holland) Sneijder (Holland) Modric (Croatia) Semih (Turkey) Van Nistelrooy (Holland) Torres (Spain).

My team is rather biased towards attacking players- I'm sure it would be involved in some high scoring games, and with the number of Turks and Germans in it, I'm equally sure it would keep playing right until the final whistle! The manager would be the inspirational Fatih Terim of Turkey, above.

Who would make your Dream Euro 2008 XI -and who would you have on the sub's bench?

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Well, they may have eventually lost to Germany, but there's no doubting who were the moral victors of last night's epic Euro 2008 semi-final.

Turkey, with five of their first team players missing due to injuries and suspension, were quite simply amazing. They took the game to their alleged superiors, and could - and should- have been two or three goals up at the interval. They dominated the second half too- but when Germany grabbed a goal, against the run of play with 12 minutes to go, due to a goalkeeping error by second-choice keeper Rustu, it looked like 'normal service' was to be resumed. But Turkey don't only have great technique- they have tremendous spirit, and with just four minutes remaining grabbed a dramatic equaliser- the fourth time in succession they have come from behind and equalised with a late goal. Sadly, there was still more drama to come, as Germany broke forward and scored in the final minute to record a thoroughly undeserved victory.

So Turkey are out of Euro 2008. But I'm sure football fans the world over will never forget this remarkable team.

UPDATE: Some great news: it's just been announced that Fatih Terim, Turkey's brilliantly inspirational coach, is to stay in his position until at least 2010. That's great news not just for Turkey, but for everyone who likes attacking football.

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