Looking forward to a bloated feast of soccer at Euro 2016
An icy blast might be following hard on the deluge, and beneath gloomy skies you’d struggle to spot what my old man used to call ‘the cock step’ — the tiny, incremental lengthening of the days — but as I ticked the boxes in my media accreditation application for Euro 2016 this week, I half fancied I could already feel the warmth of sun on my face and detect the aroma of freshly baked croissants and café au lait.
Yes, for those of us of the footy persuasion there’s nothing quite like the prospect of a European Championship or World Cup finals in the summer to help keep the winter blues at bay, especially when you know your own country won’t be on the outside looking in — an unhappy experience with which we in Ireland are not unfamiliar but which, for Euro 2016, is the grim fate which has befallen some notable names, chief among them the Netherlands, of course, but also Serbia, Denmark, Bulgaria, Norway, Bosnia and our luckless old friends Scotland. (Doubly luckless on this occasion, you might say, bearing in mind that the SFA and the FAI were to the forefront in pushing for an expansion of this year’s finals to 24 teams).
