Barging The Poles

So the gnomes of Zurich have done it again, postponing the Macedonian event at the eleventh hour, and ruthlessly scuppering the weekend leisure plans of a million lazy bastards. Furthermore, it deprived the Irish team of the right to sleep in the corridors of a crummy hotel, play against awkward opponents on an awful pitch, and celebrate with piss-weak Macedonian lager afterwards (according to Mick McCarthy), had they won.

Given the dire quality of the last Macedonia v Ireland game in 1997, some of us would have preferred to have a look at the Yugoslavia-Croatia fixture on Eurosport, but that one went for a Burton as well, leaving us with a menu whose main attraction was Spain 9 Austria 0.

It is hard to see how UEFA can throw out Yugoslavia at this stage, for already there have been dark mutterings of lawsuits and protests. Other countries, notably Denmark, have also whined and bleated about the fairness of Ireland and Croatia prospectively playing in a mere four-team group stripped of its strongest side.

One option is the bombing of Yugoslavia's national stadium into a thousand small pieces, which might force the mad Slavs to fall on their swords of their own volition, and withdraw into the night. Alternatively, we could try to eliminate them by beating them in a game of football. But with the group now grinding on like one of NATO's press briefings, can anybody really be bothered waiting that long?

On Saturday afternoon, England gave that method a go against the piteous Poles, who must by now feel as though they are trapped in international football's version of Groundhog Day, forever doomed to traipse along to Wembley every so often and get wellied, no matter how poor the recent form of their English oppressors.

The Poles were evidently resigned to more of the same from the outset, judging by the demeanour of their half-time substitute, who appeared to drag on a cigarette and stub it out with his heel before running onto the pitch. England didn't even have to play particularly well to win comfortably, although in comparison with what they did against the wretched Bulgarians last October, their performance was perfection itself.

As Paul Scholes punched in his second goal, a journalist of my acquaintance sitting nearby in the pub, who happens to be a Manchester United fan, was heard to utter the immortal sentence, "You little ginger cunt!", raising the issue of cheering players at club level and vilifying them in international matches, especially when the international team in question happens to be England.

I once received a remarkably unpleasant letter on this subject from a reader in London, who took issue with a piece I'd written about England's shortcomings at international level and the happiness that I experience when they lose to, say, Argentina. (The guy also expressed the fervent hope that Stuart Clark would beat my brains out the next time I cheered against them, but never mind.)

To pick two examples out of thin air, Liverpool fans from Ireland do not cheer for Manchester United simply because of the presence of two Irish players in United's line-up; while Stuart Clark himself, an ABU of the first order, was once spotted typing the words "Paul Scholes, bless his little ginger head" in response to the red-haired one's fine goal against Tunisia in the World Cup.

This line of argument has a certain inexorable logic. It also allows Foul Play to carry on supporting the Polands of this world every now and again, with predictable results.

Anyway, enough of such idle fripperies. For some of us, the real action was taking place in the Stade de France in Paris, where France failed to break down Ukraine in a gripping encounter. Foul Play, sensing the prospect of an upset beforehand, had wagered a considerable sum of money on the result with three other scurvy hacks.

While I am loath to reveal just how much hard cash came my way as a result of the nil-nil stalemate, I can assure you that when the final whistle went, I was suddenly wealthy enough to afford the price of at least two of Andriy Shevchenko's toenail clippings. Dirt included.

The great man was in subdued form on Saturday night, getting scarcely a sniff of the ball, and even missing an absolute sitter with ten minutes to go. This was hardly surprising, given that his manager, the crazy Lobanovsky, had forced him to play in a position more commonly associated with Damien Duff, for the night that was in it.

Yet Lobanovsky's record is such that he must be trusted. The French, revealingly, refused to treat the 0-0 scoreline as a bad result, and while Laurent Blanc was guilty of hyperbole when he described the Ukrainian defence as the best in the world (Volodymyr Mykitin, anyone?), there is now little doubt that we are looking at the first true emergence of a new long-term European footballing superpower since the Dutch began weaving their spells in the mid-1970s.

When Mick McCarthy takes time to contemplate having to go out and play against such disgustingly talented teams as the yellow-shirted sons of the steppes, either in the play-offs or in the finals should we actually qualify for the damn thing, the issue of Macedonian accommodation arrangements will surely be placed sharply in perspective.