The football starts on Saturday. Some may say it starts on Friday, tomorrow night, when France play Romania. But they’re wrong. It starts when I say it starts, and that’s Saturday when we play Russia. And we better fucking win.

You look at the endless hype, mainly because it is simply everywhere, and you look at England’s ‘Euro glory’, losing a semi-final in 1984, and you realise that as a nation, we haven’t really done very much in European championships. And the pundits (10 of them in today’s Times) all go for a win for either France, Spain or Germany. The perennials. Well, the perennials and Spain. Spain only started winning things a few years ago but they haven’t stopped winning since. Until the World Cup.

But the battle is not one between Harry Kane and Christiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Antoine Griezmann, its the battle within teams. Its about sanity and cohesiveness.

Holland regularly get fancied for big tournaments, though they didn’t even make it to this one, but never do as expected because they always seen to hate each other in the dressing room. Too many strong opinions, too many ‘generals’, too many opinions, a touch of racism. Fortunately for us, our players are all too thick and uneducated for that to be a problem.

France have a fantastic squad. Possibly the best. Though not as good as it could be because their best striker, Karim Benzema of Real Madrid, is kind’a ‘banned’. He’s banned because he tried to blackmail a France team-mate over a sex tape. I know, odd to blackmail someone when you earn about 15 million a year, but there ya go. Yet many think Benzema’s ban is actually because he refuses to sing the French national anthem at matches. I’m not sure of the specifics of ‘why’, not sure Benzema is either, but he won’t sing it. Being of Algerian descent, he finds the La Marsaillaises a touch nationalist or racist. Even though it was his choice to represent France, and not Algeria. Go figure.

One pundit reckons that Iceland could be ‘the surprise’. But it was a girl pundit and I think she fancies Eidur Gudjohnsson. I did when he played for Spurs.

It will indeed be very interesting to see what happens, at the European finals, if England decides to pull out of Europe on the 23rd. Just before the quarter-finals.

Luckily for England, we don’t have to worry about injuries. We’re taking Wishire (hasn’t played a full game all season) and Sturridge (never ever started 2 in a row, almost) who are pretty much already injured. So that shouldn’t be a problem.

Happy tournaments

A xxxx