The Rain Of The Neutral Has Begun

Tonight we saw two games that fulfilled the only criteria that football should fulfil: they made you want to watch more football. At heart, football’s not about results or money or whether or not your replica shirt has its league tag on the right shirt sleeve. Whether watching or playing, football’s entertainment. All sport is. It’s not about pushing yourself to the limit or whatever martial phrase Nike trot out when they’ve invented a new kind of lycra made of old tea-bags and that cellophane you get off fag packets. If we don’t enjoy it, we won’t watch. Okay, golf probably fits into the small category of sport that doesn’t entertain when watching or playing, but that’s an exception.

I doubt Switzerland fans will want to watch more football tonight after their last-gasp knockout by Turkey, but I was certainly ready for more. And in a microscopic sense, Switzerland suffered tonight what England and the rest of the European also-rans have been suffering since last November. They have to watch teams they don’t care a lot about playing for their entertainment. In the second week, these birds come home to roost for quite a few nations.

I’ve never much understood the psychology of neutrality. If you have a team or a country that you give your heart to (sorry for the Bunty-style imagery, but it really is a love/desire thing), how can you raise the energy to watch anybody else. I’ve watched all of the international tournaments organised since I was eight, which was World Cup ’90, and because England were in most of those tournaments, I could find the time to watch Japan-Belgium and Ecuador-Croatia because they were teams that could potentially face England. It was good to be kept in the loop.

But this year, because of England’s absence, we’ve been asked to get excited about sixteen teams that we know well but don’t like very much, and some sections of media have optimistically asked us to pick a nation to support as a surrogate. What a nonsense. It fails on two counts. Firstly, you have to assume that the team you’ve chosen to support is your ‘second’ team, which implies you only care about them half as much and then what’s the point in that? And secondly, and most importantly, you’re being asked to give part of your emotional make-up to another, which is infidelity that no true football fan would ever consider.

I’m serious. I can begrudgingly admit the attractiveness of other team’s play, but out of 92 teams in the English leagues, I hate 91 of them. I can force out a short exclamation of praise whenever Ronaldo or Torres does something outstanding, but I could not bring myself to clap a Goal of the Month or Season against my team, because it makes them look stupid. So to multiply the remote possibility that I might consider defecting for ninety minutes by a million by asking me to support another country, there’s not a hope in hell. And I’m not even that patriotic.

But in both of today’s games, I could kind of understand it. Czech Republic-Portugal was the first time in the tournament that a team had come from behind to draw level, and it had some scintillating play. Not the equal of Holland, but because it had two teams on an equal footing, a decent winner from Ronaldo and even Baros stayed on his feet from time to time, by the end I found myself chewing my nails.

But it got better. Switzerland-Turkey was easily the most entertaining game so far, and for the neutral it had it all. The rainstorm that came down absolutely should have seen the game abandoned before half-time, but it levelled the playing field between a mediocre team in Switzerland and one with a modicum of talent in Turkey. The ball stuck to the turf like it was filled with UHU and it made for a game of both high drama and high comedy. Yakin’s opener almost fulfilled the comedic pratfall over a puddle-stranded ball we all hoped for, but it looked like it would be enough to send Turkey out and keep at least one of the hosts in.

The second half arrived, and Switzerland should have killed the game off long before then. They still slid around like kids on a polished disco floor, and Senderos looked like something out of Star Trek: TNG with all that grass on his face. But Turkey equalised, and the pitch dried a bit, and it became a fight to the death. We had rain, we had blood, and all we needed was thunder and we would have had all the storms from Big Trouble in Little China.

Swiss coach Kobi Kuhn looked on from the sidelines with tears in his eyes. I like Kobi Juhn; he’s a neutral coach - he looks like John Le Mesurier, or Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross. But it wasn’t his night. One minute before the end of injury time (mainly to a Turkish defender), the Turks nicked the game, making it doubly painful considering they hate one another.

It was a massive shame. Nothing against Turkey but Switzerland are hosts. Being in Germany during the last World Cup showed me the difference a good tournament for the hosts can do for an atmosphere. But Turkey can give me another thrill by battling the Czech Republic in Geneva on Sunday. If it’s half as entertaining, you can consider me an honorary neutral. Just don’t tell my club or my country.

Chris Stanley