Chilled? No, frozen

Were the northern lights of Amsterdam to blame for England's demoralising defeat against Portugal?

“Cannabis may soothe Euro 2000 hooligans -
Amsterdam's drug-selling coffee shops win right to stay open during football tournament after negotiations with the city authority” (courtesy the Guardian)

Ah, so that’s where Sol Campbell and Tony Adams went to go and relax before the opening of Euro 2000 and the 3-2 defeat to Portugal. You can just imagine it can’t you…

Sol “yeah we gotta close them down man….”
Donkey “what?”
Sol “er, I dunno… what was I talking about?”
Donkey “so who are we playing tomorrow?”
Sol “um, er oh….wait a minute its um…ha, I just realized who it is….you look just like Spender…you know, er Jimmy Nail….”

And so the subsequent rendition of “Crocodile Shoes” ensues as they polish off another few spliffs, go back to the hotel and fall asleep in their shared room to some hardcore Dutch porn.

The coffee shop flashback hits the deadly north London duo about a quarter of an hour into the Portugal match…from reasonable defenders holding the back line for our international team, they forget all aspects of how to defend. From marking, to keeping up with the play, anticipating crosses to even poor old Sol forgetting how to head the ball and splitting his head open. Our defence was so chilled it was often frozen.

It was no big surprise that Portugal beat England at all. Anyone who has seen any of the individual players in the European competitions would have to say that they are very talented and we’ve seen our own Portuguese imports take the mickey out of opponents defences. But what was so obvious was that England seemed to have reverted to a Graham Taylor (aaarghh!!!) style of hoofing the ball up to the two strikers again. I can’t remember one player running at the defence like a Gazza or dare I say it Joe Cole or Trevor Sinclair. Oh why isn’t Trevor there?

The Portuguese are my dark horses for this competition anyway. I’m not saying they’re going to win it, perhaps the defence is too shaky, but they’ll even give France a good run out. England were beaten by the better team. Beckham did have a good game but if the only talent in our team consists of one player who can cross a ball, well then it would seem we’re doomed. Perhaps the only consolation we may get from Euro 2000 will be that Germany may this year be marginally worse than us and could even finish up below us because I can’t see them beating Portugal either.

So I’m looking forward to the Germany match, we could beat them. However I suspect that if we do we will then be the “nearly men” once again and lose to Romania in the final match…typical England. As for Cannabis chilling out the fans…I think I’ll wait to see what the outcome of the Germany match is before deciding on that one! Although there were nice scenes of English and Portuguese fans shaking hands a lot and well done to them…Although I suspect that it was probably the English fans asking them where the nearest coffee shop was to anaesthetize the pain and get that short term memory loss as soon as possible!

Um , er ….cheers - Kit the Hammer.

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