Friends, my excitement levels are through the roof. I cannot believe that it’s nearly time.
Mere hours to go until the first kick of the tournament, when Scotland will ruthlessly put hosts Germany to the sword and puncture their Euro 2024 push with a cruel 0-0 draw.
Man, I love the Euros.
I love everything about them; booking to see friends not based on boring things like actual days of the week but on which game we’ll be watching. The Leather Bottle, Croatia 2 Albania 0 – done.
The three-game days, which mean you can not only get people to watch football with you at lunchtime on a weekday, but you can also choose to sit and watch it alone for eight straight hours, one game after another, pandemic-style, on your increasingly crumby sofa.
You may feel a little dirty at the end of it all but you can persuade yourself it’s okay because it’s a tournament. It’ll be over soon! You’ve got to soak it up.
I love the wallcharts and the pun-based drinks deals and the flag bunting. I love the ubiquitousness of it. Non-football fans can be heard to complain that they can’t escape football. Well that, my friends, is exactly the point. You can’t! You may as well submit.
Support whoever you like, pick a favourite player based on their hairstyle or their entertaining running gait, paint your face, make loud, ill-informed points about offside. It’s your month too.
But most of all, I love two things major tournaments deliver. First of all: the heroes. When Eric Dier stepped up to take the penalty against Colombia in 2018 and his big old head was framed perfectly in the shot, looking the picture of competent calm, I knew that moment would stay with me forever.
Even today, at work sometimes if I’m about to pre-record a line for telly and we’ve got only a few minutes to get it in the can and there’s hustle and bustle everywhere, I go back to that moment. The simple way Dier focused on one thing and delivered, despite all the noise around him that night, before and since.
You can tell me that World Cup was Luka Modric’s tournament, and you’re right. But for me, Dier’s the guy. And millions of other people will have different players who represent each tournament year for them. And they can tell you about why with wide-eyed commitment – unfailing belief.
And the second thing: the hope. Now this is challenged slightly this year by the fact that many say England genuinely are tournament favourites. Indeed, Opta tells me England’s chance of winning is 19.9%, higher than any other nation, including France. Now we all know what happens when people say this.
I am no supercomputer so I’m loath to get involved but it does feel like Italy and Spain being quite unknown quantities just now is leading English people into a dangerous place of overconfidence. Added to the fact that England getting to the latter stages of tournaments has, under Gareth Southgate, become the rule rather than the exception.
But for me, having suffered through so many years of hurt, everything this England side achieve is a bonus.
I would almost go so far as to say I prefer watching everyone else play, when I’ve got less on it (okay, apart from the 4-0 win in the quarters in 2021, my god).
I only took down my Euro 2020 wallchart ludicrously recently – filled in with diligent care until the final, where the 7-1 win England delivered against Italy is known only to the Mason residence.
Until I sat down to write this today, I hadn’t realised how much that final still hurt. The penalty shoot-out and what came next killed my hope in the most comprehensive way. But today on day one, anything is possible. So thank you Euro 2024 for giving me that, all over again.
Enjoy the month. I’ll see you at the Leather Bottle.
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