Windows like this are liable to demolish prime ministerial careers - not only has Gordon Brown lacked the midas-touch thing relating to England's Rugby Union World Cup Final and their abominable failure to qualify for Euro 2008 but now, after yesterday's draw for the Finals, the treble whammy is completed by the significantly increased probability of a German victory in the tournament. In these spectacular times, such matters take on levels of importance with regard to the national feelgood factor that are simply not parallelled by peripheral issues like the idiocy of giving the Bank Of England control of interest rates, presiding over the first bank run in 150 years, the financial short-sightedness of the private finance initiative or any of the many other examples of endemic corruption in Brown's world.
The German strategic planning for next summer's tournament has been exemplary. As we have previously posted, the Germans maintained their options regarding their positioning within the seedings until as late as possible thereby considerably tilting the tournament in their favour. Yesterday's draw could not have gone better for Germany. Pitched with the hardly daunting Croatia, Austria and Poland, by some distance the easiest group based on FIFA rankings, the Germans not only avoided the Group Of Death but got the optimised draw as they preferred the Croats to Sweden for strategic reasons. UEFA followed the stupidity of a non-Game-Theorised seeding system which significantly devalued many matches in the latter qualifying stages with an equally baffling seeding template for the finals. Groups A and B are kept apart from Groups C and D until the Final itself in a massive extra bonus for Germany - the former groups feature Austria, Switzerland, Turkey and Poland alongside Deutschland while the latter encompass Spain, Italy, France and Netherlands. The nonsensical nature of this structure is further demonstrated by the fact that teams may well end up playing nations in the semi finals that they have previously met in the group stages. A shuffled seeding template is always preferable in 16 team tournaments as it guarantees a more meritocratic competition. By structuring the finals in the manner selected, UEFA (presumably under the influence of the previous German-dominated regime) markedly increased the probability for a skewed top-half and bottom-half of the draw. With the template in place and the seedings fine-tuned, all the Germans required was the mythical "heated ball" bearing their name to be produced at the necessary moment. And voila! The vast majority of the strategic planning has been achieved without setting foot on a football pitch.
Now why can't England do that thing? The authorities and bookmakers in England are able to meticulously plan the corruption of Premiership and England international events utilising quite creative but destructive templates and yet they take on the persona of the statistically inept when a more constructive strategy is required. In comparison to the German guardians of the game, all we may anticipate from our bunch of corrupt incompetents is a flood of deceit and distortion in order to establish the proper spectacular society framework. And this is not just an English disease - the other leading UEFA nations have been similarly myopic towards the tournament realities of Euro 2008.
The advantages bestowed by the tournament draw are only part of the reason that Germany are the stand out ante-post bet. All of the German matches throughout the tournament will be in Vienna or Klagenfurt (in far-right dominated Carinthia) apart from their projected semi final meeting with Portugal, the Czechs or Croatia which is in Basle. The stability of base together with familiarity of stadia add a couple of extra notches to the German price. The domestic game is adapting itself to the cause of German supremacy too. Bayern Munchen have conveniently avoided qualification for this season's Champions League and, of the other representatives, Stuttgart are out while Bremen and Schalke need victories in the final matches to maintain interest into the new year. Another seeding template advantage graciously provided to the real hosts of next summer's Euro 2008 is that they will have an extra day to prepare for the Final. It is a point of some interest that the German power within UEFA that has been severely clipped by the election of Platini is still able, via strategic planning and infrastructural control, to establish the high ground available due to the tournament's lack of a level playing field. Some fringe firms are still offering 6.50 (11/2) on a German victory next summer and there has to be value in that price...
So what is a xenophobe to do? No foreigners to rant at, no targets for the vitriol. A more enlightened nation might choose another country to support based on geographical proximity or some shared aspect of history. Unfortunately, the English despise everyone and so a better option for maintaining interest (and betting turnover) is to unsupport a few of the teams. The psychology of this is entertaining. If one accepts that the Germans will win, a carefully created unsupport portfolio of, say, France, Italy and Russia will allow periodic days of rejoicing as your selected teams fall by the wayside one by one. Other possible choices for the disenfranchised engerlander fan might include a similar unsupport strategy for the Tour de France or the Olympics. The deconstructive negativity of such behaviour seems suitably apt for this island nation.
The bookmakers had developed financial strategies linking Euro 2008 and the Chinese Olympics but such combinations have had to be readdressed following their superb example of preemptively counting chickens. More focus is now being given to the betting opportunities offered by Beijing in a trial run of the potential bonanza for the English establishment in 2012. The randomising impact of the climate and the pollution will be a factor in the bookies favour and the layers always enjoy a randomiser in legitimate events. The only other glimmer on a rather cloudy footballing horizon for the bookies in the summer is that at least Mike Riley will get a couple of matches to officiate prior to being discarded for underperformance. And such underperformance déjà vu'd its way back into our lives when it was discovered that one Graham Poll was to referee Sky's irrelevance of a game between English-fat-bastards-in-the-pay-of-bookmakers XI and Foreigners-who-we-have-learned-to-accept XI yesterday. A book, frequent newspaper columns, appearances on BBC, being selected for Sky party events... He's going to return, I can feel it in my blood.
So who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hackett?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
