Please … I just need to sleep … let me sleep … not the jack hammer again … no, no … I can’t take it anymore.
Life as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay?
No, it’s your average fan of the beautiful game watching Euro 2012 in Taiwan.
Photo: AFP
Yes, it may not be on a single TV channel (so what’s the point of having hundreds of them, I hear you ask, with some justification), but we shall not be put off. Euro 2012 is here and even for us tired old hacks, used to long drinking sessions into the late hours of the morning, the Euro 2012 shift is a toughy, oh yes. Somebody needs to keep us up to date on all things Euro footie, though, and Johnny’s your man.
Yes, I’m back.
So whether you’re at home swearing about that Internet connection that keeps failing when you most need it, or you’re in a taxi on the way home at 5am, still attempting to make yourself understood as you try to remember where you live, this is the place for all things Euro 2012.
So what a start it’s been, we’ve seen all 16 teams after the first round of matches and, let’s be honest, frankly we’re none the wiser as to where the trophy may end up at the end of the month.
Johnny’s favorite moment of the opening round of matches was provided by Greece central defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos, surely the unluckiest man of the tournament so far, whose facial expression was worth its weight in gold when he realized he was being sent off by “chump of the tournament so far” Spanish whistle-blower-in-chief Carlos Velasco Carballo for the heinous crime of winning a header and then being in the vicinity of a Poland player who happened to slip over when he received the ball.
Look at his face, just look at his face...
So while poor old Sokratis sits out the next round of matches, Johnny reaches for the matchbox to prop open the eyes as sleep becomes a distant memory.
So what else of the opening four days of the tournament? Well, the big recurring story has been racist abuse in Poland and Ukraine. The Dutch have complained that some of their players were the subject of abuse at a training session, while a Polish-based anti-racism organization have also said that Russian fans subjected Ethiopian-Czech player Theo Gebre Selassie to racial abuse in Friday’s opening encounter.
So surely it’s time to crack down on this hard? No it’s time for UEFA and the organizers to put their fingers in their ears, close their eyes and go: “La, la, la ,la ,la, ...”
Coach of Euro 2012 co-hosts Ukraine, Oleg Blokhin, waded into the debate on Sunday by insisting that “there is no racism in Ukraine.”
Blokhin interrupted a reporter who asked him about the issue in English, removed his headphones and said: “I don’t want to talk about racism — there is no racism in Ukraine. These are political issues which have nothing to do with football.”
“If there are incidents, they won’t be in Ukraine,” the 1975 European Footballer of the Year insisted.
Really, Oleg?
Surely you’re not the same Oleg Blokhin who was quoted by the New York Times in 2006, on the subject of foreign players in the Ukrainian league, as saying: “The more Ukrainians that play in the national league, the more examples for the young generation — let them learn from Shevchenko or Blokhin, and not some Zumba-Bumba they took off a tree, gave him two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league.”
Nothing to worry about there, then.
Of course, your daily diet of footie comes at a price. Yes. The championships start and the loonies come out of the woodwork.
Two years after Paul the Octopus became a household name by correctly predicting eight matches at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, several pretenders to the throne have cropped up, as reported in this very newspaper.
With a pig in Kiev, an elephant in Krakow and a ferret in Kharkiv, sports prognosticating has truly gone wild.
However, they still have a lot to prove.
“As far as we are concerned, none have the form of Paul the Octopus,” said loony-in-chief Joe Crilly, a spokesman for British bookmaker William Hill. “And with so many to follow, there are undoubtedly going to be a few who get it wrong.”
Enough, already. I may be tired, but this nonsense is getting me down. Time for some real science.
So Johnny sought the opinion of the world’s great scientists and thinkers, and I came up with this amazing fact: Apparently, humans are, believe it or not, the most intelligent creatures on Earth.
Fancy that.
So it got me thinking, surely the most intelligent creatures should be able to outdo these furballs in the prediction stakes. What we need to do is set up a proper experiment to see where the trophy is destined to end up.
Thankfully, those good people at Master Football Academy came to my rescue. Yes, this Saturday Johnny Jr and other four and five-year-olds will be participating at a “Euro 2012” five-a-side tournament in Taipei, just the experiment we’re looking for.
Young enough so that their brains still work independently from a smartphone, these fine examples of the human race have been randomly assigned teams from Euro 2012 and they will play a tournament that will give us the answer we crave — who will win Euro 2012?
Fate, as often happens, has dealt poor, tired Johnny a blow, though.
Looking forward to Johnny Jr’s team being assigned Ireland, so that we could turn up roughly on time with no expectations and enjoy the craic, imagine my horror when Johnny Jr and his teammates were assigned Germany.
Yes, Saturday morning we’ll be there two hours early to go through a series of grueling training drills, making sure the team are tactically perfect, before proceeding to win the tournament with the utmost efficiency.
I’ll let you know the outcome of Johnny’s scientific experiment, weather permitting, in Sunday’s paper.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but