The Group of Death became the Group of Love.
Only football is able to achieve this as the Euro 2008 tournament refreshes the hearts other competitions cannot reach.
When asked about his future on French television, following France's exit from Euro 2008, Raymond Domenech went into Mystic Meg Mode: "I have only one plan at the moment, it is to marry Estelle, and it is only this evening that I ask for her hand in marriage".
Strewth!
Was the offer of marriage for one night only?
Take it or leave it?
Are the astrological signs so restrictive in their benevolence?
Why didn't McClaren develop a similar strategy after the Croatia debacle? Dancing around the touchline puddles, he could have swung around the halfway flag, thrown away the umbrella and launched into a touching rendition (not of extraordinary proportions) of 'Singing in the Rain', dedicated, perhaps, to a secretarial dalliance while he was at Middlesbrough.
Why are the French always more romantic?
Equally importantly, was Domenech thinking of Estelle when he decided to move Abidal to a position in which he has never played before? And Boumsong? You're having un joke...
Still, Domenech's slide from prominence is ample proof of the idiocy of basing key life decisions on such hocus pocus - a thought that he should take with him to the job exchange is this: a bus passing the end of the road has a greater gravitational impact on your life than any planet in our solar system. Comprendez?
And, anyway. Have they rewritten the rules of astrology to accommodate the deplanetisation of Pluto?
Domenech completed his unusual pre-resignation speech with: "I need her".
But does Estelle Denis need him?
And, why does Domenech look like a cross-clone between Martin O'Neill and Arsène Wenger?
Mr I-Ching does the self-destructive thing...
The decision was a tough one.
Do we monitor the Dutch/Romanian entity, the Franco/Italian one or trade in-running on Metallurg-Kuzbass Novokuznetsk against Sportakademklub Moscow?
We opted for the match in Berne that demonstrated, once and for all, that Marco van Basten does not have what it takes to be a great manager.
Or even a competent one...
The Dutch effectively eroded their chances of reaching the Euro 2008 Final by their lack of a strategy last night.
Now, it is always critical for analysts to assume the omnipresence of truncated thinking when dealing with the majority of individuals in the football industry - planning ahead is not a core competency. But, it is not too taxing to think two matches into the future. Surely?
Victor Piţurcă and van Basten should have had a little pre-match discussion.
Romania were exhausted having played France and Italy in the previous week. If the Dutch rested their first team (8 players were eventually allowed a night off), the fitness advantage would more than offset the motivational needs of the Romanians, as, indeed, was the case. The two coaches should have reached an arrangement whereby both teams put out their reserve squads and the Romanians scrape a one goal victory.
Both teams would qualify.
And why would this have been in van Basten's interests? Because, the option of playing either Spain or Romania in the Semi Final is markedly preferable to playing Spain or Italy.
The new Draw structure used for the first time in Euro 2008 allows great power to a team which qualifies from its group AND has control over who finishes in second place.
By allowing the Italians to qualify, the Dutch have sown the seeds of their own demise, in a self-harming strategy of some magnitude.
Van Basten is also several sandwiches short of a picnic for antagonising Clarence Seedorf to the extent that the great man left the squad. He might have been just a touch useful in the Semi Final.
Pre-match, the Italian press had been full of conspiracy theories - dietrologia was present at every dinner table. Dietrologia - the study of what is behind something - is instinctive in Italian society and a trump suit for all Italian governments. While van Basten concentrates on his haircut, Berlusconi will be making strategies and enforcing/implementing them.
Romania are not powerful.
Neither, at international levels, are Spain - where are the Spanish officials in FIFA and UEFA?
Italy, however, are very powerful.
And very creative in the depths to which they are willing to regress to in order to achieve suitable outcomes to hyperrealities.
Powerful, corrupt and with a major grudge following the 3-0 defeat last week.
Good thinking, Marco...
He should check out what is happening in Italy in the two months since the far-right regime of Berlusconi regained power.
Fausto Bertinotti's view is that Italian society has been "de-ideologised" by modernisation, resulting in "a new kind of crisis" for the Italian institutions. Ably exploiting this crisis, the New Right is "not fascist, even as it uses elements of that culture and its vestiges, while exploiting an aggressive aversion to every kind of diversity when insecurity is transformed into fear - and then the figure of the scapegoat re-emerges from the shadows as a shield from fear".
See Judy Harris's 'Is Italy Going Fascist? A Letter From Rome' (http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17913) for a full analysis.
This developing fascism of the deep state spills over into other areas that Berlusconi might wish to identify himself with. As calciocaos and numerous court cases timed-out through statute of limitations regulations clearly demonstrate, Berlusconi likes to pull levers.
Particularly populist levers.
Italy is economically well fucked at the moment - Poland, Romania, Czech Republic and Croatia all 'scored' higher on our pre-Euro 2008 assessment of the participant's economic well-being. Berlusconi is using nationalist agendas across the board in an attempt to tap into a reactionary xenophobic feelgood factor, in order to disguise these economic ills. So, even if it costs a small offshore fortune, Alitalia must be preserved as an Italian institution, for example.
We think that Berlusconi might be quite partial to Euro 2008 - the perfect pick-me-up for a country on its knees.
Fascism is one of those words that, in the shareholder capitalist lexicon, may not be uttered in the media.
If the masses were to look up fascism in their dictionaries, more than a few of them might put two and two together, and realise, begorra, that we are actually already living in a system that is, effectively, fascist.
As Italy slides towards fascism, it is important to maintain an overview of the New Right.
The Netherlands, once a land of multiculturalism, if not ethnic mixing, has become a reactionary right wing territory, where it is regarded as politically valid and mainstream to hold fascist and racist opinions. Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Britain... We could go on.
The only reason Le Pen has been sidelined in France is that all his supporters are now safely housed in Sarkozy's nasty little enterprise.
Yesterday, Steven Wells, on the Guardian blog, wrote a scathing piece on the media apologists for fascism. Unfortunately, Steven decided to name Russell Brand and James Richardson, two Grauniad luvvies, as two such apologists.
Brand chose to overlook Paolo di Canio's fascism in a fawning piece of irrelevant journalism while the increasingly-smarmy-slaphead described Slaven Bilic as "a lovely chap" despite his defence of the human swastika forming, Nazi flag waving and racist chant yellers among his country's support at Euro 2008.
Revealingly, this journalistic friendly fire incident had been removed from the Guardian Football online page by this morning.
The inability to take criticism is a primary foundation of a fascist state of mind.
When UEFA are not busy marketing their Extravaganza as being "for the fans by the fans", they are advertorially appealing to us to "expect emotions".
Well, we have to thank them for their marketing prescience.
Domenech is nothing if not emotional.
But, there are a few questions relating to the fans.
Firstly, is it to be a feature of all future competitions that a determinant in achieving a degree of success in such tournaments will be the size of the fanbase following the nation around?
Both at World Cup 2006 and Euro 2008, this has become a major factor - if there are 3.7 million Dutch people trawling around the Alps, dressed up like idiots, but spending raucously, the organisers are hardly likely to wish for them an early elimination.
For the fans.
Buy the fans.
Secondly, why are certain north and west European countries allowed personalised tannoy musical motifs after scoring goals while the paupers from the south and east have to manufacture their own atmosphere? The stadium presenters are not cheerleaders and all this "Danke, Bitte" type of pseudo-conversation between a faceless manipulator and a nationalistic mass is nothing if not crypto-fascist.
Thirdly, why are the few really Social developments ignored in favour of the Spectacular? Poland's fans applauded the Austrian national anthem, and the Romanians acted likewise with the Dutch. Listen and learn...
Fourthly, which is more amazing? 3.7 million Dutch fans in mobile homes or the 15% of the supporters in the stadium in Berne who were Romanian, who were outsinging the oranje hordes even when it became obvious that their tournament was over?
Still, the failure to qualify for Euro 2008 has not stopped one league table being topped by the English.
This morning, the Financial Times has announced that Britain is now the biggest weapons exporter in the world, surpassing even America.
When England takes the 3/10ths of its population to South Africa, as such a migration will be necessary to ensure progress to the latter stages of World Cup in 2010, they will have a choice.
To either applaud the jingoistic songs of other lands, while spending effervescently but with good humour, and demonstrating a deep desire to share cultural differences.
Or, to ensure an early demise despite the spending power, do the usual bulldog-abroad type of social interaction together with a few adjusted chants to clearly demonstrate that the missing link might have been here, right under our noses, all the time.
"Top of the league for cluster bombs. England, top of the league".
"We make all the wars, say we make all the wars".
"Land of napalm and shrapnel".
"Darfur. We've gone and caused Darfur...".
"Cruel Britannia".
"God save our war machine".
"No surrender to the mercenary".
We could go on...
Oh, come on. We're working 16 hour days.
And you expect humour?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
