ONE of the last conversations I had with my eldest brother was a week or so into this European Championship.
The group stage was at its frenetic height. Three games per day, wall-to-wall football.
The first fortnight of any major international tournament suspends truth.
It gifts escapism from routine, the sagging effect of everyday life that afflicts the majority of people from competing nations.
Why Slovakia versus Ukraine at 2 o’clock in the afternoon is suddenly unmissable is a mystery, and should remain so.
But it’s not really about the game. Who cares if it finishes goalless without a shot on target?
What’s great is that it’s now OK for work to be a thing you do between fixtures.
My brother called it ‘Christmas for blokes’. Let’s forgive him the terribly un-PC phraseology.
The festive season helps us forget what waits outside the front door, at the end of the commute to the office or on the building site when it’s comedown time. But it’s just 12 days.
This Sunday, when England discover whether or not they are European champions for the first time, it will be a month since hosts Germany kicked off Euro 2024 against Scotland.
Anyone missed real life? Four weeks of different flags, solemn national anthems, joyful ones, weird ones. Players nobody has heard of. Tiny nations standing next to giants.
Bore draws, beer showers.
International football tournaments whisk us away. And it’s where organisations like Uefa and Fifa still hold the trump card over the increasingly powerful clubs.
During our chat, John, formerly chief sports writer on one of Fleet Street’s grandest titles, noted how the depressing themes of Profitability and Sustainability Rules and Financial Fair Play have virtually disappeared from the news agenda.
When European Championships and World Cups hit town, it’s not about money... who has the most or where it came from.
Instead of shady owners, spending caps, points deductions and appeal processes, there is the simple enjoyment of pitting one country’s best footballers against another’s. The dying art of the level playing field.
There is still the bloody nuisance of VAR but you can’t have everything.
Of course, with England stumbling their way to the final, with overnight heroes like mums’ favourite Ollie Watkins and the unifying cause, it’s been good news of late.
But even if our national team had crashed out early, there would be plenty of football left to keep the fairytale alive.
Emerging stars like Spain’s young sensation Lamine Yamal, the demise of Cristiano Ronaldo, the remarkable achievement of debutants Georgia, the crazy Turks, the love for wartorn Ukraine.
Plus, in millions of households like mine, a meticulously-planned kitchen sweepstake keeping interest levels up, right to the finish line.
We lost my big brother John just days after the group stage concluded.
Snatched away at just 60, not long after he watched England labour to victory over Slovakia a week last Sunday.
The follow-on game of Spain versus Georgia would have been on the TV bolted to the wall above the fireplace, at his modest home when the moment came.
It’s tough. John’s death leaves behind a bewildered family, all of us too numb to be heartbroken yet. My parents are beyond grief.
Dad, 88 last week, doesn’t obsess about football like his eldest son did but in recent years has watched more and more games on mainstream channels, with subtitles. That means mainly internationals.
His interest blossomed hand-in-hand with England’s Lionesses progressing through Euro 2022.
And since the worst thing ever to happen to him occurred a week or so ago, he and my mum, Sylvie, have found some respite watching Euro 2024.
Quite a few games but mostly England.
On Wednesday, dad was in his dressing gown with ITV on by 7pm. He then got roughly three hours in which to feel vaguely human again while drinking his customary tin of John Smith’s.
Last Saturday, my folks brightened for a while sitting through the Switzerland game — an excruciating experience that in normal circumstances would see them switch over to watch The Chase within 20 minutes.
But these aren’t normal circumstances.
They never are when it’s tournament time and hopefully it stays that way forever.
A 24-team Euros or 48-country World Cup looks wildly overblown but maybe it’s a good thing if it keeps the bad stuff at bay for ordinary people.
It’s an idea we should keep firmly in mind as the money-mad clubs, increasingly dependent on the income stream from subscription TV and greedy for more, take football further out of reach.
YOU could almost hear Dick Van Dyke’s cartoon accent as West Ham launched their latest attempt to persuade fans to part with their cash with the new ‘Cockney’ away kit.
To most people it looks like a regular black shirt but, apparently, it’s inspired by East End tradition.
It includes woven-in images of the iconic St Mary-le-Bow Church. Folklore dictates only those born within earshot of the church’s bells can claim to be true Cock-er-nees.
Which is weird because North London’s Arsenal are a mile closer to Bow bells than West Ham.
Throw in most of the Hammers fanbase has now emigrated from East London to the A13 corridor and you can only assume that they must have bloody good hearing.
It retails at £75, by the way. That’s a ton take away a pony to you, Guv.
IN this column just a few weeks ago we highlighted fears for the future of Chelsea’s renowned academy.
There is an increasing flow of teenage talent coming into the club from outside sources, many from South America.
So it’s no surprise to us that youth football guru Neil Bath has decided to step down after roughly 30 years at Stamford Bridge.
Most recently, Bath oversaw the development of players such as Reece James, Mason Mount, Trevoh Chalobah and Fikayo Tomori.
His exit follows the departure of Under-21 coach Mark Robinson, who took a pay cut to manage League One Burton Albion.
Both men are lifelong Blues fans but feel their futures lie elsewhere. Many supporters are concerned that, under American co-controlling owner Behdad Eghbali, their club is losing the identity which coined the phrase ‘proper Chels’.
