PARIS—Now that the biggest, most important sports story of this summer (and possibly of ANY summer, ever) has been tidily wrapped up with Brett “The One” Favre’s trade to the J–E–T–S Jets Jets Jets (seriously, how was this guy not lumped in with the celeb-triumvirate of Brit, Paris and Barack?), we are free to concentrate on the second-biggest sports story of the year.

The Games of the twenty-ninth Olympiad begin today, a crazy eights sort of day in Beijing, China. Here in France, where a recent poll in La Tribune noted that only forty-five percent of French claim to be “excited” about the games, they still call the host city “Pékin.”
In all the newspapers and television programs, it’s Pékin this and Pékin that. This always strikes me as a little anachronistic, for some reason. Linguo-geography buffs, you have the floor. (more…)

It’s not fair. I followed the rules. So why am I the one who feels cheated?

PARIS—It’s not fair. I followed the rules. So why am I the one who feels cheated?

Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme, at the outset of this year’s race, was doing and saying all the right things to convince the casual sports fan that this was the year that the Tour would break free of the doping scandals that have diminished its reputation over the past ten years.

And then, the Italian star-in-the-making Riccardo Ricco, winner of two stages, holder of the Tour’s polka dot jersey (top-ranked climber) and white jersey (top-ranked rider under 25), a popular rider with a decent chance of finding himself on the podium next weekend in Paris, flunked a drug test. He was later charged by the French gendarmerie with possession of a controlled substance.

And so here we go again. Guess we know why Ricco was so fast in the Pyrenees. (more…)

PARIS—The withdrawal symptoms have graciously abated. It’s been twelve days since I went cold turkey on international football. I’ve been following the advice of my doctor, taking each day as it comes, and keeping in mind that—however strong I might feel in the weeks and months and years to come—it would take me just a careless channel-flick past an ESPN Classic broadcast of the 1970 West Germany-Italy match to fall off the wagon.

Like a smoker who succeeds in quitting, only to find himself addicted to a replacement crutch, Diet Coke or chewing gum or coffee, I’ve found a new fix: the Tour de France. I’ve never been much of a cycling fan, but then again I’ve never lived in France until this year. When I mentioned the other day to an old friend that I was excited for this year’s Tour and he replied, “Oh, yeah, you always loved watching that back in the day” (not true), I realized that my sports obsessions are fertile ground for all kinds of dangerous revisionist history.

For the record, I’ve never:

1. Bet an unborn child of mine on the result of a Kansas City Royals spring training baseball game.

2. Won the New York marathon by cleverly riding the entire race in a yellow taxi cab to within twenty metres of the finish line (as if I’d have the kind of money to pay for a scheme like that—twenty-six miles is a hell of a fare!). (more…)

BARCELONA—As I awoke this morning from uneasy dreams, it took me a couple of minutes to figure out exactly where I was, and how I’d gotten here. Turns out I was on the couch of my man in Barca, Lizou.

“David, I’ve just had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Spain beat the Germans, and we partied in the streets of Barcelona till dawn.”?

For only the second time, Spain are champions of Europe. But judging from the wild celebrations that followed Sunday’s 1-0 victory over the Germans in Vienna, the victory songs somehow haven’t gathered too much dust in the intervening 44 years. They sang them all, and then sang a few more, and are probably still singing them out there somewhere, though I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave the apartment to find them with this pounding headache I’m nursing. (more…)

PARIS—And then there were dos. Or zwei.

Spain beat Russia 3-0 last night to reach their first major final since 1984. They’ll play Germany on Sunday in Vienna, at the Ernst Happel Stadium, for the title of Champions of Europe 2008.

A pretty sexy match-up, no? And beyond that, there’s the fact that, quite improbably, the two betting favourites heading into the tournament are the two last teams standing.

Seriously, the punters knew it all along? Why, exactly, were we wasting our time these last three weeks, playing all these meaningless games, if some lout in Brixton with twenty quid to burn already knew what was going to happen? (more…)

PARIS—What a finish in Basel last night, a wild ending to one of the most exciting Euro semifinals ever played! Or so we’ve been told.

Didn’t see Miroslav Klose’s go-ahead goal in the 79th minute? Missed Turkey’s last-gasp injury-time charge, and the final whistle? Yeah, you and me both.

Apparently I was wrong to diss the copyright zealots over at UEFA. They so desperately need us to wire them money to watch those oh-so-precious match highlights on my tiny laptop screen, because they’re clearly too broke to disseminate live images directly from Basel. The entire world (save Swiss viewers in Zurich and anyone watching on al-Jazeera – wha?) missed two or three significant chunks of the second half due to what UEFA’s calling electrical storm interruptions in Vienna, some 800km away from the stadium itself. My suspicion is that UEFA conked its signal out purposely, so that we’d all have to go online and pay to see the Klose goal. Nice try, UEFA, but TF1 showed me the replay during the third blackout! (more…)

PARIS—So what the hell am I supposed to do with myself tonight?

For the first time in 17 days, this evening’s slate of high-drama international football matches is empty. I’ve really enjoyed the last two-and-a-half weeks for not having to decide what to do to entertain myself on a given evening. The answer was automatic: I’ll watch the Euro.

Now? I don’t know, maybe I’ll go for a bike ride, or plant a tree, or hug a homeless man. What is it that people do to fill the hours of the day when they’re not watching football? Sometimes I feel like I just wasn’t made for these times. (more…)

CHAMBOURCY, FRANCE—The Germans sunk Portuguese hopes of Euro glory last night in Basel with a 3-2 victory high on fireworks and drama. Or so I hear.

I didn’t actually watch the match, which by all accounts was a classic, and another triumph for attacking soccer in this gloriously offensive edition of the Euro. I was out in “rural Paris,” in a suburb a half hour from the city, playing the witty, charming writer boyfriend at Mlle. Trotter’s summer office party. Hey, it’s what I do.

Luckily for me, my friend Lizou was watching from Barcelona, and he was only too glad to keep me apprised of the goings on in Basel by SMS. Here’s what transpired: (more…)

PARIS—Vi ses, Sweden, and khairete, Greece.

While we’re at it: zbohem, Czech Republic; uf widerlüge, Switzerland; pfueatti, Austria; do widzenia, Poland; la revedere, Romania; and au revoir France.

Oh, and a very belated cheerio to England. Can’t forget them!

With Russia’s impressive 2-0 victory over Sweden last night, the final eight (or The Group of Seven and Russia) of Euro ’08 is set. Guus Hiddink’s boys (and is there a better international coach in all the world than The Goose? Over the last ten years, he’s taken overachievers the Netherlands, South Korea, Australia and now Russia to the knockout stage of a major international), clad in an eye-popping red, dominated the Swedes in a game that could easily have finished 5-0. Andrei Arshevin, the Zenit St. Petersburg striker who sat out the first two Euro contests with a suspension, scored the insurance goal early in the second half after point man Roman Pavlyunchenko had opened the scoring in the first.

Pavs, as I’ve taken to calling him, is for me (along with Turk Arda Turan) the surprise breakout of the tournament to this point—a big, blonde beast up front for the Ruskies, always smiling, blessed with an excellent first touch and a finisher’s mentality. (more…)

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. (more…)

PARIS—Well, I guess they can’t all be Ali-Frazier III.

On Sunday, we saw the Thrilla in Geneva. Last night’s Germany-Austria game was more like Tyson-McNeeley. Yawn.

I will say this about the Austrians: they held their own in the scoreless first half. The Germans had some dynamite opportunities to put the game away early, but Austria fed off the Viennese crowd and actually had some chances of their own.

But a familiar problem continued to afflict the Austrians: namely, a lack of finishing. Erwin “Jimmy” Hoffer, especially, found himself in several good shooting positions but sorely lacked a world-class touch. And when Michael Ballack’s rocket of a free kick blistered the twine early in the second half (our first free kick goal of the tourney. What took you people so long?), it was all but over for the Austrians, who now needed to score twice to go through. Not gonna happen.

The Germans closed ranks to preserve the 1-0 lead and the second half was dull beyond belief. From what I’ve read this morning, things weren’t much better between Croatia and Poland, who also put together a 1-0 snorefest. The lowest scoring, least interesting day to date. Who said to tune in for a possible classic on Monday night? Oh, right. My bad. (more…)

PARIS—The match of the day, of the weekend, of the tournament, of recent footballing memory!

Yes, the Swiss defeated the Portuguese B-team last night in what will go down in popular lore as a—no, wait, it was that other game, the Turks versus the Czechs, that had commentators on British TV reportedly saying, near the end, that they would not be surprised if a spaceship from Mars landed in the centre circle, so shocking were the events unfolding on the pitch in Geneva.

We—the Mlle., her brother and I—caught the game at the complicatedly named Cafe Italian Bar in Paris’s 11ème, and with the last round of group-stage games demanding coincident start times, I had to argue with a drunk regular who thought the meaningless Porto-Swiss game would be the better of the evening’s entertainment options. I narrowly defeated said drunk Frenchman in this epic battle of wits, and we tuned into the elimination game. He asked me who I thought would win, and I said “b’en, les Czechs sont meilleurs, ils devraient gagner. Mais on ne sait jamais.” Truer words were never spoken. (more…)

PARIS—Ok, ok. So it looks like the Netherlands might be a pretty good side after all.

Saturday the Oranje matched, and perhaps even surpassed, the magnitude of their shockingly skilled victory over current World Cup holders Italy four days previous. In putting the screws to the French (the ’06 runners-up) in equally dominant fashion, Marco van Basten’s side have to be considered the on-form team of the tournament to this point, with Spain hoping to at least challenge for that position tonight with a good result against the Swedes.

I watched the game in a packed cafe right on the Place de la Bastille, at a spot where the cheapest pint of draft beer was €10.60, a new personal-high sighting. We (Mlle. Trotter, her brother, and I) opted to travel the bottle-of-wine route instead, this being the more French move anyways. We toasted les Bleus as the kickoff arrived, but we must have done something wrong because for the first twenty minutes the French looked completely lost, while the Dutch moved the ball around the park with ease and grabbed a 1-0 lead off a header by Dirk Kuyt, co-captain of the all-ugly team alongside his opposite midfielder, Franck Ribery. (more…)

PARIS—You learn lessons every day, living in this city. Yesterday’s important lesson: always call ahead.

The Polish bar we’d metro’d all the way across town to watch Poland-Austria at? Very closed. As in, forever. Serving up pints of Zywiec no more. Pushing up the daisies. This was an ex-Polish bar.

This was a bad situation for two reasons. (more…)

PARIS—No! No! No! Don’t stop a-scorin!

Seven more goals on Day 5 of Euro ‘08 action. I think Mlle. Trotter and I are the good luck charm for massive scoring outputs. We’ve stayed in to watch the games at home the last two days, depriving ourselves of the euphoric experience of hearing a collected mass of humanity cry out in unison when that magical spheroid finds the back of the net, seven times each night. You can thank us with a medal, or by building us a monument. Your choice.

Now the bad news: we’re hitting the town for the Group B matches tonight, doing the bar thing with friends. Goalless draws are here again.

Portugal and the Czech Republic put on a fantastic show in last night’s early game, with both teams attacking from the opening whistle in the hopes of avoiding the cruel-but-deserved fate handed by the footballing gods to defense-first Greece on Tuesday. The Czechs truly merited a better result, but Portugal, wearing white, finished their chances better than their opponents in equally counterintuitive red (it seemed like Deco was setting a Portuguese teammate up for a golden opportunity every other minute) and with the 3-1 win Porto is the first team to qualify for the knockout stage. Congrats to Luiz Felipe Scolari’s boys, and let’s hope the recent confirmation of the manager’s move to Chelsea doesn’t prove a Parcellian distraction for the Fightin’ Lusitanians going forward.

In the late game, the story was the pitch. I hear swampland in Florida drains better than the St Jakob-Park stadium in Basel. After a spectacular storm, extreme standing water impeded the movement of the ball along the ground (a rather important thing in soccer) and turned the first half into a tiny-tikes game of kick-it-as-far-as-you-can-in-the-air and run-after-it, only the Swiss were quicker to catch on than the more ball-talented Turks. The former opened the scoring on a centering pass that literally sloshed and stopped in a puddle a foot from the goal line and was tapped in by Hakan Yakin.

And according to the French commentators on TF1, that was it. It’s over. Game, set, match. Of course, the team scoring first had won every game in this tournament, they noted, so why would this be any different? And as they mentioned this fact, Yakin missed a second tap-in from almost the same spot as his first. No worries, though. They already scored first. The Swiss had it in the bag.

But as King Kaufman of Salon reminds us during every international soccer tournament, it’s actually the second goal that matters—the team that scores second historically enjoys a higher winning percentage than teams scoring first. So when Turkey tied the game 1-1 in the second half, it was bad news for the Swiss. And the maxim had been proven true once again when, two minutes into injury time, Arda Turan fired home the winning goal. Second goal equals good times, people.

Except, of course, that the Czechs had scored the second goal a couple hours earlier, and lost. Confused yet? Me too. That’s why the team who scores the most goals wins. It’s simpler that way.

Now, heading into Sunday’s final group match between the Czechs and the Turks, the two sides sport identical stat lines: one win, one loss, two goals scored, three goals allowed, three points. The Czechs must be kicking themselves (it’s what they do best) for allowing a late goal on a counterattack when they were pressing for an equalizer against Portugal, because now, with the teams even across the board, their final game is a true elimination contest. According to Euro 2008 tournament regulations:

7.08 : If two teams which have the same number of points, the same number of goals scored and conceded play their last group match against each other and are still equal at the end of that match, the ranking of the two teams in question will be determined by kicks from the penalty mark, provided no other teams within the group have the same number of points on completion of all group matches.

So tune in Sunday at 20h45 for the first “unofficial” knockout game of the tournament!

Wednesday recap

Winners: Portugal 3-1, Turkey 2-1

Top Player: Cristiano Ronaldo played like the best player in the world, firing seven shots, five of which hit the target and one of which, off a marvellous pass by Deco, beat Petr Cech. For comparison, the entire France-Romania snoozefest featured a single shot on goal.

Best Goal: Ronaldo’s was good, but for drama and quality, you have to give it to Arda Turan. Too bad I can’t link to the video, because UEFA’s a douchebag.

In-Game Beverages: Homemade sushi was on last night’s menu, so naturally we washed down my falling-apart spicy tuna rolls with Asahi. It was super dry.

Tonight: Mlle Trotter and I head to Paris’s 20ème arrondissement for Germany-Croatia in the early tilt, followed by perogies and Zywiec at a Polish bar where we’ll meet with friends for Poland-Austria. In attendance will be our Austrian friend Gregor, courageously taking the plunge into what he termed the “lion’s den.”

Predictions: Germany 1-1 Croatia, Poland 2-0 Austria. Sorry, Gregor!