Come on England!

It’s always brilliant to wake up on the morning that England play their first game at a major tournament. To see the familiar “Time for the talking to stop - The Guardian” and “England must deliver - The Times” and “If you Fuck Up, you can stay out there - The Sun” headlines and to know that soon the nation will gather round TV sets and once again hand over our dreams to twenty-three young rich fellas who, we hope have the same dreams we do. Because surely, this time, it might actually go the way we want it to go.
Opening games are in some ways the best of the lot. Sure, I’d like to be waking up in four weeks time looking forward to a final against one of the footballing superpowers having already beaten a couple on the way. By which time of course the entire nation will be at a virtual standstill, supermarkets may well be running low on alcohol and although we’d still be in the Euros, we might well be out of the EU. But for an opening game, everyone is in the same boat. England are currently unbeaten at the top of our group on alphabetical order. It may not get any better than this.
Today, it’s Russia, a team myself and most armchair fans know very little about. I’d assume they’re well drilled and indifferent to cold weather but other than that I’m in the dark. I know they used to have the same manager that we did and I know he almost bankrupted the Russian FA. I also know that the combined age of their centre half pairing is approximately one hundred and fifteen which is roughly the same as our entire team. Surely we can’t balls this up.
I do wish some of our fans weren’t so stupid. For the second night running, police fired tear gas at drunken England fans and the wounded victim status is starting to grate. Spend the whole day drinking, sing disgusting songs about not surrendering to the IRA, taunt the hosts, cheer when Romania score a goal, start throwing chairs about and then get all irate when the police pile in. I’m sure some innocent fans were caught up in the violence and I feel sorry for them. But there is a dark side to supporting England and it pisses me right off.
Wales are playing today as well and I’d imagine the mood there is even more excited than here. They last played in a major tournament in 1958 (around the time the Russian centre backs were born) so it’s possible that of the thirty-thousand Welsh people who’ve travelled to France, not one has been to a major finals beforehand. I want them to win today so that (assuming we do as well) a draw will be enough for both of us to virtually qualify for the last sixteen.
At least the whole thing kicked off without a hitch. The opening ceremony was as bonkers as most opening ceremonies are but that’s sort of the point. If you can’t have ballerinas licking giant lollipops at your own party, when can you have them? The game resulted in a win for the hosts which I think every tournament needs. There were a lot of nerves inside the Stade De France but they did what they had to do. I sort of felt sorry for the Romanians because they deserved something from the game but then Dimitri Payet hit one of the sweetest shots I’ve ever seen and that was that.
It’s hard to come up with many events in life than can match a last minute winner. And when it’s possibly the goal of the tournament and it happens in your national stadium on the opening day, well no wonder he was in tears when he came off. We’ve all seen what he can do in the Premier League so we knew he was a class act but this was special. Now it’s our turn. Come on England!