PARIS—“Viva España! Viva España!”

That was the chant echoing around the Place de la Contrescarpe after the Italians eliminated the French from Euro 2008 last night with a 2-0 victory in Zurich. The supporters of Les Bleus filed out of bars and choked the square, but there were still a few seams where packs of obnoxious Italians waved their own tricolore and hooted with joy.

That’s right—”obnoxious Italians.” There were enough of them sharing space in the bar, mixed between those of us that were for France, to cement my opinion that the Italians are the most smug, awful, annoying football fans in all the world. Give me the Portuguese, the Brazilians, the Spanish—hell, even the fucking British—any day over the Italians. I’m a pacifist, but it took every ounce of self-control for me not to hit the guy outside The Wall screaming his “PO po PO po po POOOO po” and climbing over my back to high-five another compatriot. I mean, did it have to be the Italians? Again?

OK, now that’s out of my system. I feel better already. And I, along with the thousand-strong crowd of drunk French youth chanting after the match, will feel even greater relief if Spain can throttle the Azzurri on Sunday in Vienna. Spain have looked strong to this point, but this being a quarterfinal, and Spain being, well, Spain, nothing’s guaranteed. One thing’s for sure: judging the pulse of Parisian football fans after last night’s elimination, the official adopted rooting interest has passed from Les Bleus to WPI: “whoever’s playing Italy.” Viva España, for now. Hopefully, that’s as far as the WPI train will have to go.

Historians, reflecting on this far-from-epic match centuries from now, will point to the penalty awarded to Luca Toni and the corresponding red card handed to Eric Abidal in the twenty-fifth minute as the end of France’s Euro run. But when Franck Ribéry, France’s best player, went down in obvious pain in the sixth minute and had to be carted off the field, the rest of the team—the entire country, really—knew that this was just one of those tournaments for France. The wind was out of the sails and the game was all but over at that point, and when Abidal brought down Toni with that clumsy challenge, France was down a goal and a man in a game it needed to win. The rest was pretty standard stuff, with the Italians falling all over themselves throughout the second half and groaning in pain à la Ribery, only to miraculously return to fitness after yet another yellow card had been handed out to the hopeless French. As Jean-Etienne told me when Ribéry was writhing in pain, “il n’est pas un mec pour faire simuler comme ça”—Ribéry’s not the sort of guy to fake it, so we knew he was really hurt. Later on, two Italians drew yellow cards on plays where slow-mo replay revealed a complete absence of physical contact. And the Italians in the crowd cheered and high-fived wildly each time.

So now I find myself out a bottle of Bordeaux to my editor (no personal affront intended in the above screed, Pat. You always stay on your feet!), and with no local team to support in the knockout phase. Other than WPI, I’ve yet to settle on a horse to pull for—Turkey are an exciting underdog, Croatia are again knocking on the door of the big leagues, and the Netherlands have played the most attractive football of the tournament so far. Plus, on a personal level, I sort of like the Dutch. I’ll try to come to an official decision on this after tonight’s Sweden-Russia game finalizes the quarterfinal participants. At that point, there will be seven candidates remaining in the battle for my adopted affections and loyalty. And I hear the Italians are in the last eight, too. Argh.

Yesterday’s recap

Results: Italy 2-0 France, Netherlands 2-0 Romania

Top player: Abstain.

Best goal: I only caught the highlights once, but I’m fairly certain that either of the goals that the Dutch scored were better than a penalty kick and a deflected free kick. Although Thierry Henry’s side-footer touch on De Rossi’s free kick that made it 2-0 was a sublime finish. A real goal-scorer’s goal.

In-game beverages: Three-euro pints of the house lager at The Wall. Apparently, many other young Parisians had the same beverage preference as me: when I went at halftime to sweet-talk the bouncer into letting a late-arriving Mlle. Trotter in, the “queue” outside was 100 people thick. Mind you, many of these people had no intention of coming inside, and were merely standing close, drinking tall bottles of Heineken from the grocery store and straining to see the projection screen that faces the street. Well played, penniless French students!

Wednesday games

Spain and Greece meet in a meaningless clash, the only drama being whether the current holders will go home without having scored a goal. Russia-Sweden, on the other hand, is for all the marbles. Equal on points, the Russians need a win to advance, while the Swedes, ahead on goal differential, need only a draw. Don’t forget, these two countries fought at least ten wars against each other in the last millennium. The Trotter residence will be serving a pre-game meal of perogies and conducting a blind taste-test between Absolut and Stoli vodkas to predict the result of the game. Personally, I’ve always been more of a Stoli man …

Predictions: Spain 2-0 Greece, Russia 1-0 Sweden

Tags: Euro 2008

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Posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 8:55 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.