EURO 2008 INFO

The thing that everyone says to me when I tell them I’m going to Euro 2008 as a Times blogger is: “Who are you going to be supporting?” Do war correspondents get asked this when they set off to cover conflicts that don’t involve the UK?

For the first time in 14 years I can watch a tournament without the anguish, disgust and bitter disappointment I have to endure when England are involved. I have a chance to experience football as it was originally intended — as a pastime, a leisure pursuit. I can relax, appreciate good play, use phrases such as “a great advertisement for the game” and “it’s a shame there had to be a loser”. No pre-match stomach-ache or post-match tears. Football will be a game again.

When I watched John Terry step up to take that penalty in Moscow — the heroic Englishman, Captain Courageous — then fall on his arse and hit the post, I felt it was a taster of what this summer would probably have been like if England had qualified. So I’m celebrating the fact they aren’t going to be at Euro 2008 and I’m definitely not giving any other, newly adopted team the opportunity to rain on my parade.

And what better setting for this impartial approach? Austria was declared “permanently neutral” in 1955 and Switzerland has been neutral since the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. When in Rome . . .

Nevertheless, people have been generally dismissive of my “may the best team win” approach. “Oh, no,” they say. “You’ve got to support somebody or you won’t get properly involved.” At this point I get all football purist and say that supporting a team is not about choice, it’s about duty, about local or national pride.

I know there are Liverpool and Manchester United fans from Bath and Great Yarmouth, but that doesn’t make it right. Temporarily supporting a national team is like smoking at the weekends; once you get a taste for it, you’re lost. Before we know where we are, we won’t just have London Reds, there’ll be England Germans who travel the world watching their chosen team never lose a penalty shoot-out, or England Brazilians dancing the samba on the terraces at yet another World Cup victory.

If you’re genuinely concerned about not being able to get involved enough in Euro 2008, I have a morally acceptable alternative to switching your support to another team. Ask yourself this question. How did you feel when Cristiano Ronaldo missed his penalty in Moscow? If you’re not a Manchester United fan, you’re probably smiling warmly at the memory. Well, this may be your way forward.

At the last World Cup I went through a period of hating Ronaldo after Wayne Rooney’s sending-off. I was at the Portugal-France semi-final and, like lots of England fans at that game, I booed Ronaldo every time he touched the ball, or at least I did for about 20 minutes. Then I decided that he was so brilliant I’d just sit back and admire his heavenly skills.

However, for all that, I can’t say that I’ve warmed to him as a bloke. I’ve never met him, but I don’t much care for the winks and the little smiles at opponents and officials. I suspect that even United fans, while worshipping him as a football genius, would struggle to get through a night out with Ronaldo without wanting to give him at least a little slap.

If you’re one of the people who get wound up by Ronaldo, you really don’t want to see him holding up another trophy, do you? In other words, you don’t want to see Portugal as European champions. What I’m suggesting is a sort of anti-support policy. England fans, rather than selling their souls to another team, should pick a national team they don’t like and put their energies into wanting them to lose.

You may have all sorts of grudges, not only players who get on your nerves. A rubbish national anthem, voting patterns in the Eurovision Song Contest, a holiday romance you’re taking antibiotics for — anything you choose. So, for example, you could think that Ronaldo is a lovely fellow but still decide to anti-support Portugal because they keep beating us on penalties and their police have been a bit pernickety with the Tapas Nine.

While this approach is based on negative feelings such as jealousy, rage and spitefulness, it still seems more acceptable, on moral grounds, than supporting another team.

As I say, I am above all of it. Let football be the winner.