Springfield MO Soccer

That was for Rich

No England? No problem! Relax and enjoy Euro 2008

It boils down to a simple question, really. Do you like football, or not? And by football I do not mean the way we increasingly choose to interact with the sport in this country; by developing a parochial obsession with one team at the expense of all reason and combining a pathological hatred of a local rival with an intellect-sapping devotion to whichever group of mercenaries and ungrateful slouches happens to be passing through wearing the shirt.

I mean old-school football, the first you watched, when there was nothing more resting on it than the pleasure of seeing 22 men trying to play a game with beauty and it did not really matter who won as long as the way in which they did it was exciting and pleasing to the eye. The football, and footballers, of your youth, when attempted imitation over the park was the sincerest form of appreciation.

Saturday morning, 11 am, Switzerland vs Czech Republic, followed at 1:45 pm by Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugese teammates taking on Turkey.

Soccer by Ives has broken down each of the four groups. Jeremy St Louis from Fox Soccer Report offers up his condensed version and ‘the chosen one’, Jose Mourinho is picking Spain.