Euro-ver 2008

The final job of the trip arrived yesterday with France v Italy. Never having seen Italy play before and only having heard the old stories of their “interesting” techniques, I was stunned at how ridiculous their diving is. The game looked more like an am-dram performance. Every few seconds, a player in white would collapse to the floor, writhing in agony while his teammates battled to save his life until either a) the referee stopped play and a freekick was awarded or b) another Italian player would make a decent break down the pitch.

At which point, in some kind of religious miracle, the wounds would be healed. It got to the point that you could see the French players leaping away whenever an Italian came near them for fear of losing a second penalty.

France were struggling from the off with one guy sent off plus one of their stars going down in a crumpled heap and being eventually buggied off the pitch. I never thought I’d be saying these words but it was quite heartening to see how concerned Henry was with his team-mates welfare. Bravo, that vavavoom-saying chap..

Following their eventual 2-0 win over France, Italian forward Antonio Cassano decided to strip off and do a victory lap as he waved at supporters. I just love the ball-boy’s face to the right of the frame. In days gone by, you can imagine young kids looking at their footballing heroes and being flooded with inspiration. This child will probably require counselling.

So there it is. EURO 2008 over for me. With the delights of Glastonbury on the horizon, I can’t say I’m THAT sad it’s over for me..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 10:51 pm. It is filed under The working day and tagged with EURO, EURO2008, euros, football, france, italy, journalism, leon neal, photograph, photography, soccer, Switzerland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.