Finally!

The Euro 2016 finals kick off later today. I’ve been waiting weeks to write that. I said yesterday that the waiting is the worst bit but having seen England in tournaments before, there’s something to be said for enjoying every minute of the build up. Because tomorrow night, England will step onto the pitch against Russia and the agony will begin. In other news, I’ve drawn France in the office sweepstake. I didn’t get them the first time but since I’m the only one who works in my office, I just kept doing it until I drew the favourites.
I’ve been reading today that the tournament organisers have been slightly red faced to discover that the mascot, called Super Victor, shares its name with a popular sex toy. I would love to have been in the meeting where that bit of information came out. I guess there’s nothing to be done at this point but if I was going to provide a name for anything, I’d probably do a quick google search first. And if that name also happened to be the name of a popular sex toy, I might consider an alternative.
Meanwhile, all is calm around the England camp before their first game tomorrow. When I say all is calm, what I mean is that absolutely anything could’ve happened but I haven’t heard about it. There could have been a knife fight between Roy Hodgson and Gary Neville but we’ll only learn about it after they’ve come back home. The news is tightly controlled. All that happens is once a day, they wheel out a player to trot out a few cliches and platitudes before the hacks. Yesterday, it was Joe Harts turn and it’s without doubt one of the more boring interviews I’ve read thus far. I don’t even need to tell you what he said. It contained amongst other things the words disappointment, determination and togetherness. You can piece the rest together yourselves. 
The fans have been arriving in large numbers and there’s been a bit of trouble in Marseilles. I’ve travelled to England away games in the past and whilst some of our lot have been known to drink too much beer and sing offensive songs (”Isis where are you” apparently), it’s also the case that police overseas can be a bit trigger happy when it comes to English football fans. I understand that if you’ve recently been the subject of large scale terrorist attacks, you may well be more than a tad jumpy but I’d like to think that everyone will calm down once the football starts. This might be over optimistic.
While we’re on the subject of misplaced optimism, there’s been a survey taken of fans across all twenty-four competing countries asking about their teams prospects in the tournament. Amazingly, a whopping 34% of England fans surveyed said that their team can triumph in France. I’d love to know who these people are. Not a single one of the England fans I know thinks we’ll get anywhere near to winning the tournament. What this means is that somewhere on this island, there are large groups of England supporters where the majority think that we’ll win the thing. I’d love to live my life like them. Floating about in a state I think they call it happiness but I’d say it’s more delusion. France to win it for me and England to make a decent fist of it and go out in the quarter finals. Probably on penalties.