Alessandro Del Piero hasn’t played for Italy since the 0-0 draw with France on 8th September 2007. He was completely overlooked for the recent friendly against Portugal, where Italy claimed an impressive enough 3-1 win. So at 33 years old it’s possible he might not wear national team blue again, but he’s planning to. The [...]

I was looking forward to seeing Croatia in action at Euro 2008. After Slaven Bilic’s men manhandled England so expertly – twice – in qualification they looked a good bet to go deep this summer. But a lot of Croatia’s game revolved around star striker Eduardo, the expert finisher who so far has 13 [...]

Here’s an interesting concept, what if a best eleven wasn’t picked on reputation but entirely on statistics? That’s the the idea behind the Castrol Performance Index, which we’d be able to take a lot more seriously of it wasn’t sponsored by a lubricant. Still it makes for interesting reading. The mathamagicians working on the CPI [...]

Euro 2008 isn’t too far away and we’re planning to cover it in a big big way. To do that we need our team blogs firing on all cylinders. So if you’ve got what it takes to captain one of the available Euro 2008 blogs (or any other national team blog) then we want to [...]

Raúl held a joint press conference with Spain coach Luis Aragonés yesterday, where the finally back-in-form Real Madrid striker basically asked the people and press to stop hollering for his international recall. Raúl hasn’t played for Spain since the 3-2 defeat to Northern Ireland back in 2006, and for a while there he didn’t really [...]

I’ve always thought of Switzerland as a nice healthy country full of nice healthy people, but the Swiss government disagrees. According to them, 64% of Swiss people are out of shape and that’s not good enough when you’re co-hosting Euro 2008. So now there’s going to be a national sports week in May, the month [...]

There’s a row brewing between FIFA and the Spanish government, and there’s a chance it could end with the Spanish national team not competing at Euro 2008. There’s a joke in there somewhere about Spain never competing anyway, but I’m far too sophisticated to make it. FIFA are getting hot under the collar over the [...]

There won’t be any teams from the UK at Euro 2008 this summer after England’s abject failure to do anything but lose to Croatia, Scotland’s valiant but doomed effort, Northern Ireland coming close but no cigar and Wales just being Wales. But that doesn’t mean the fans won’t go. The Austrian Tourist Board are still [...]

Euro 2008 is on the way people. It’s less than four months away. We’ve already met and then named mascots Trix and Flix, and now they star in the video for “Like a Superstar,” the official anthem of Euro 2008. Sung by Shaggy.
Yes, that Shaggy. “Mr. Boombastic” himself, who I honestly thought had disappeared along [...]

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s looking forward to a great year, with the African Cup of Nations just around the corner and Euro 2008 in the summer. Normal World Cup Blog service will resume tomorrow.