All five teams already in the Euro 2008 Semi Finals, or still battling to be there, have one key factor in common.
All five are utilising Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) continually or sporadically or, at the very least, they have the option of doing so.
As Mark Lawrenson said on the BBC, in the 103rd minute of the Quarter Final victory of the Turks over the Croats: "I think they've had a little sniff here".
This shocking statement by a talking head was followed by a pregnant silence before the illusion returned to normal.
And this is the crux of the matter.
The dichotomous realities inhabited by industry insiders and the general public share little common ground.
At no point in Euro 2008, apart from Lawro's slip, have we heard any talking head discuss gambling, PESs, the betting markets or the power hierarchies targeting the integrity of the tournament.
Yet, in parallel, we are in discussions with two entities regarding consultancy work for the new season. The conversations with these potential partners almost exclusively focus on the grey and black markets, and the negative externalised forces undermining the sport.
We each do this thing because it provides edge in the industry fracas and because it is the only thing of any interest remaining in the "sport".
Apart from Andrei Arshavin, that would be - much more than the sum of his parts...
"We can destroy anyone's dreams" was the proud boast of the Croatians before being undone by someone else's amphetamines.
And, we too feel that it is a necessary part of our role to achieve this self same thing.
We want to destroy your dreams, your belief in the illusion. This is for your own good. If you wish to spend your limited years of existence focusing on hyperreal irrelevancies, that is your choice.
But it does not represent a meaningful life.
There is not a lot left to believe in - Nietzsche killed god, Baudrillard killed political ideology - football is the last port of call for the serial believer. Belief mechanisms are life defining and it is not by accident that the old people used to warn us to keep off the subjects of politics and religion.
Football and, indeed, sport in general should now be added to this duo.
Whether it be god's non-existence, or the two-way mirror of production, the blinkered will cling to their delusion of the illusion.
This is an awful long way from Reality.
And this fully explains why a good percentage of "football fans" remain sceptical about our message. Fair dinkum. No problem.
Back to Reality...
The Russian national anthem refers to the "Mighty Will and Great Glory" of the country. It fails to mention the rather sophisticated recipe of PESs utilised to achieve such glory. Although the Russians are illegally using a different substance than the Turks are employing, the impacts are not only obvious to insiders and analysts.
Look at the holistics.
The Dutch looked unstoppable. The co-hosts were giddy with their spending power of the people from the lowlands.
To avoid Abramovich buying the game, UEFA put one of their top officials, Luboš Michĕl, on the match - kickbacks were never going to be an option here.
An aside...
We are able to picture Abramovich speaking with the voice of Dostoyevsky's anti-hero in 'Notes From The Underground': "Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I wanted, I wanted to ring out your tears, your humiliation, your hysteria - that is what I wanted then".
Its little wonder some referees prefer to say "yes".
Anyway.
It was Michĕl who had sent off Drogba in Moscow. Last night, he tried to send off Kolodin for an innocuous infringement, before his rouble-influenced assistant put him "right". He then denied the Russians a penalty when Zhirkov was assaulted by oranje masses in the area.
Of course, none of these factors had any relevance to the match outcome.
Guus Hiddinck knows how to make a team run. And run and run and run...
The Dutch First Team had eight days to recuperate from their last game, the Russians had just three days to recover from the Sweden encounter, which included a change in location from Switzerland to Austria.
It is not known whether the players used transport or their own energies for this journey.
Despite the various factors against the interests of the Putinocracy, for 120 minutes, it was the Dutch that looked listless. The Russian closing down of space was awesome.
Some of the Russian fitness advantage undoubtedly arises from freshness due to the summer domestic season, but the match data are suggestive of something more sinister.
A constructive argument might be to ask where the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is looking in Euro 2008. Are they, in fact, anywhere to be seen? What testing methods are being utilised? Do these tests include blood samples, urine samples, in-and-out of tournament testing, pre-match and post-match sampling, randomised and secret player selection, independent assessment, the use of cutting edge forensics etc?
Or is WADA just one of those institutional platitudes, like "No To Racism", which UEFA and FIFA like to present as some type of irrefutable proof of organisational and moral integrity?
The Germans are nothing if not meticulous - you would not catch the Germans betting against their own interests in Qualifying matches, well, not until they had safely booked their place at the Finals.
And this is what they did. But their deliberate underperformance had a more strategic element to it.
By losing 0-3 at home to the Czech Republic, and failing to beat the mighty Welsh, Germany ensured a suitable seeding, in particular avoiding the Group Of Death - no country has ever won a tournament after being placed in such a group. They also made an insider killing on the Asian markets, as we have previously posted.
Having established a template where they occupied, by some distance, the weaker side of the Draw, the Germans also had client states, Austria and Switzerland, on hand to create the desired qualification patterns.
We have a serious contact on the German staff and he has advised my colleagues that the Germans were in possession of not one but THREE different strategic plans for gaining success at Euro 2008.
McClaren couldn't manage even one in qualification.
UEFA were aware of the issue of German omnipotence via such strategies at the start of the competition and, for much of the intervening window, there has been an ongoing power battle between the most favoured nation and the UEFA machine.
UEFA has switched to a Franco-Italian vertical integration since Platini came to office, replacing the previous Germanic regime. In such matters as the selection of match officials, these things matter.
Despite these machinations, Germany stands on the verge of yet another tournament final - the Turks, rather conveniently, have their four best players banned for the Semi Final encounter.
This will teach them to score their equalising goal in illusory time - that window of hyperreality which follows normal time, injury time, illusory time following injury time, and extra time, and which is dependent on one man's largesse.
These Extravaganzas are played out to a largely pre-determined template.
There are variables.
There is uncertainty.
But the marketing dream must be visualised, augmented and occur at the prescribed real-time instance of its centrally planned fruition.
So Euro 2008 will eventually be decided by drug abuse, an oligarch's ability to buy match outcomes, the requirements of the European bookmaking industry, powerful nations buying match officials and UEFA's organisational priorities and marketing paradigm.
4-2-3-1 doesn't come into it.
Last night, ITV commentator, Peter Drury, stated that Basel, from the air, looked "like a piece of toast".
After a suitable delay, and with his producer questioning his sanity, he added "...covered in marmalade".
Euro 2008, despite some beautiful football, looks, in our estimation and from an holistic viewpoint, like "a boiler room scam covered in corruption".
Still, at least McDonalds are the "proud provider of the official player escorts"??
We assume that McDonalds make equally proud provision of mad cow disease in their exports of rotting left-over-bits-of-cow to South Korea.
47 million people eat this shit each day.
Its almost enough to make you a nihilist.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
