We’re then fast-forwarding to arguably the clubs greatest ever season. In 1984, the club had won the FA Cup and this qualified them for the following years European Cup Winners Cup. In the semi-finals they were drawn against Bayern Munich and, after drawing 0-0 in the first leg in the Olympic Stadium, returned to Goodison Park to play out one of the greatest nights in the entire history of the club in the second leg. Meanwhile in the league, they had become serious championship challengers, and one performance on Match Of The Day against Sunderland definitively marked out their credentials.

For our final two Everton matches, we’re skipping forward to the 1990s and two matches which encapsulate the differing fortunes that the club had during the decade. The team struggled throughout the 1993/94 season and went into their final match of the season against Wimbledon needing a win to stay in the Premier League. What followed would go on to be one of the most dramatic afternoons in the two decades of the competition. For our final match, we skip forward a year to the FA Cup semi-finals, and their match against Tottenham Hotspur at Elland Road.

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The History: There is a certain irony to the fact that it was in 1992 that Denmark became the champions of Europe, as this came several years after what might have been considered to be the finest Danish team of all time. Denmark’s golden generation came from nowhere and faded from view almost as quickly. They beat England at Wembley in qualifying for the 1984 European Championship finals and, once there, came within a penalty shoot-out of reaching the final of the competition before losing to Spain. The team traveled to Mexico for the World Cup finals two years later with high hopes but, after qualifying from their group which included a thrashing of Uruguay, the team faced off against Spain and was handed walloping of its own. This might have been considered the end of the great Danish team, but a new generation of players beat both the Netherlands and Germany on the way to lifting the trophy in Sweden. Since then, performances have been mixed with the team failing to qualify for the World Cup finals in 1994 and 2006, and having only got past the group stages of the European Championships once since winning it two decades ago.

The Team: In sharp contrast with all three of their group opponents, there are few superstars in the Danish team, but this is a side of solid professionals with a smattering of senior professionals with a wealth of experience, such as goalkeeper Tomas Sorenson and striker Dennis Rohmmedahl. Three of the preliminary squad for the tournament ply their trade with F.C. Nordsjælland, who have just become the champions of Denmark for the first time, and other familiar names include Liverpool’s Daniel Agger, Arsenal’s Nicolas Bendtner and veteran defender Christian Poulsen. Elsewhere, Ajaxs Christian Eriksen has been receiving admiring glances from some of Europe’s biggest clubs of late. Recent results have not been great – they have lost their last two friendly matches against Russia and Brazil – but this is a team that qualified for the finals in style and still has one more friendly match to play against Australia to tune up before the finals.

The Coach: Continuing the trend for veteran managers, Morten Olsen has been in charge of the Danish team for the last twelve years, although his contract does expire at the end of this summer’s tournament. The majority of his playing career was in Belgium, where he played for Cercle Brugge, Racing White and Anderlecht between 1972 and 1986 – he won three Belgian championships in the early 1980s with Anderlecht – before finishing off his career in Germany with Cologne. He also won one hundred and two caps for his country. His coaching career began with two successive Danish championships with Brondby. He then spent a couple of years back in Cologne before coaching Ajax to a league and cup double in the Netherlands in 1998. Olsen was understood to want to return to club football this summer, although there has been no confirmation yet of what he will do once this tournament ends.

The Kit: Denmark’s national team was for many years associated only with their compatriot manufacturers Hummel, but they switched to Adidas several years ago and this year’s number, red with white shoulders, calls to mind the kit worn by the team it won the tournament two decades ago, which is arguably an act of supreme cheekiness by the company that took the contract from the company that had held it for such a long time. Still, let’s look on the bright side – Adidas have produced far worse kits than this in their time, and Denmark will be one of the better dressed teams at this year’s finals.

The Prospects: They may the underdogs in a group that also contains Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal, but Denmark won six of their eight qualifying matches for these finals, including a 2-1 win their final match against Portugal last year. Their experience will count them in good stead, but there are concerns that goalkeeper Tomas Sorenson may miss at least the opening match of the tournament with injury, and it is difficult to argue that their other seniors players aren’t past their best. That said, however, what might be the psychological implications of that 1992 win? It is now long enough ago to no longer be considered an albatross around the teams neck, but it may just infuse them with the self-belief that they can grind out enough results to sneak through to the quarter-finals of the competition.

The National Anthem: “Der er et yndigt land” (There is a Lovely Country) Denmark is a country with two official national anthems.  Der er et yndigt land is used on civic occasions, whilst another – The King’s Anthem– is brought out for royal and military affairs.  Der er et yndigt land was written in 1819 and adopted soon afterwards, in 1835.  It consists of four stanzas, of which only the first and the last three lines of the fourth are generally sung.  This is something of a pity, as after having established Denmark’s picturesque geography, the second verse begins:

“There in the ancient days
the armoured Vikings rested
Between their bloody frays”

Musically, it’s fairly hymnal and non-confrontational, much like the country it represents. Aside from the Viking hordes, of course.

The British Press Will Say: It is – as we have found out for ourselves in the course of writing this article – very difficult to talk about Denmark and the European Championships without mentioning 1992. This is forgivable. Stating that the team was “pulled off the beaches” to play in it is less so, because it’s not true. Other traditional favourites of the British press include references to bacon and the breed of dog that shares their name.

Don’t forget that with Euro 2012 approaching you can download the Twohundredpercent Euro 2012 spreadsheet here (for Excel 2007), whilst a version that will be compatible with older versions of Excel is available here.

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You can download the Twohundredpercent Euro 2012 spreadsheet here (for Excel 2007), whilst a version that will be compatible with older versions of Excel is available here.

You can follow Twohundredpercent on Twitter by clicking here.

As the presiding judge made clear in his summary, there is no statute which takes into account the football creditors rule, because the this rule is, in terms of the way in which it applies within the framework and protocols of inolvency law, so unique. It is difficult to think of another trade body – which is ultimately all that the Football Association, the Football League and all those other organisations that we refer to as “governing bodies” are, if you really stop and think about it – which demands that its members treat other such members differently in the event of insolvency events on the part of its other members.

It is easy to get sucked into emotive debates about millionaire footballers being protected while St Johns Ambulance aren’t, or why football clubs should receive preferential treatment to the HMRC in such situations. As ever in the event of emotive arguments, though, the cases for and against the retention of the football creditors rule are both more nuanced than we would ever guess from the timbre of those most keen to defend or attack it. The reason why the football creditors is in rule is in place to begin with is – or, as cynics might choose to add, is claimed to be – to maintain competitive imbalance within the fame. What would be, they argue, the moral implications of a football club hoovering up all of the best players from its rivals, declaring itself as insolvent and getting to hold on to those players without having paid for them.

Critics of the authorities over these claims cry disingenuity. They argue that this is an example of the insularity of football, of clubs choosing to overlook the broader moral implications of insolvency and the convention in insolvency that all creditors, once the division between secured and unsecured has been made, should be treated equally. They argue that the FA, the Premier League and the Football League could all take far more significant measures to protect competitive balance if they chose to, but that the more even-handed distribution of prize money and television money and the reintroduction of the sharing of gate receipts seems as far away as it has done at any point over the last two decades. Football, critics argues, wears a veil of caring about protecting the sporting integrity of its competitions to mask the real motive behind the football creditors rule – to enjoy a preferential status which means that football clubs themselves are insulated from the financial recklessness of other football clubs.
Both arguments have degrees of merit, but one matter that is seldom discussed wheh discussing the football creditors rule is that it’s not all about millionaires and clubs. What contitutes a “football creditor” has a clear definition and is broader than we might anticipate. The overwhelming majority of players that are affected by clubs suffering from insolvency events are far from millionaires. In the case, for example, of Plymouth Argyle’s many months of not paying its players, there was considerable talk of the genuine financial hardship that these players were suffering. They have, it could well be argued, a right to be recompensed for the jobs that they have a contract to do.

Professional footballers were little more than wage slaves for many, many years – a process that began to crumble with the end of the maximum wage in 1961. Repealing protection for workers could hardly be described as a very progressive move in the field of labour relations within the game. It is also often overlooked that what we could describe as the “civilian” staff – the office workers and so on – are also protected by the rule, and these are people that certainly aren’t in the pay bracket of multimillionaire players.

What is starting to become increasingly clear, however, is that the existing rules within the game are unsatisfactory. Over the last few weeks or so, it has started to feel as if the current raft of legislation that has been introduced in football over the last few years or so – the Fit & Proper Persons Test, the football creditors rule, the automatic ten point deduction for entering into administration and so on – is already creaking under the weight of the sheer level of mismanagement within the game, and it may be instructive that two of this season’s prime basket cases – Darlington and Kettering Town – both came from the Football Conference, the league with by far the toughest regulations for insolvency. As such, we could well argue that what is required within football is a cultural and attitudinal shift as much as a legislative one.

The continuing existence and financial security should be the only criteria of success by which football clubs – in particular smaller clubs – are judged. This will require the involvement of the authorities, the media and supporters themselves. The likelihood of it coming to pass is slim-to-none, but progress has already been made in this area at such a glacial speed that it would be easy to have missed it. The sugar daddy model of ownership is discredited at lower levels of the game and prospective new owners of clubs are now treated with suspicion that would be considered as bordering upon paranoia were it not for the fact that so many asset-strippers and charlatans have found their way into clubs over the last few years. There is, however, still work to be done in this respect.

At a legislative level, there is further work to be done. The anticipated use of a controversial pe-pack CVA by Kettering Town, coupled with the announcement that it intends to spend heavily on new players next season is a worrying development and is a nettle that the authorities have to grasp. Pre-packaged CVAs (which bypass insolvency practitioners and effectively allow directors to buy what they already own and whilst wiping out debts without any recourse for creditors) have been controversial enough to lead to cause for them to be outlawed (although the government ducked this earlier on this year. If their use increases, further legislation to ban their use in football will be required.

There has been little indication that the current line of punishments – relegations and points deductions – works, and it would be faintly absurd to suggest that clubs which don’t get into financial bother should be rewarded for merely doing what all football clubs, as businesses, should be doing. Fifty plus one per cent shareholding rules, as seen in Germany, seem like a pipedream, but the introduction of bonds to be paid by football club owners from their own money at the start of each season might work. Of course, the current emphasis upon what happens when a football club enters into administration takes the focus away from where it should be – on not getting into that situation in the first place.

The judge’s words with regard to the latest challenge on the football creditors rules made it reasonably clear that, from a moral viewpoint at least, the Football League’s “victory” was a hollow one. In noting that he could only issue judgement based on statute law rather than moral considerations, he allowed us to reach the conclusion that the football creditors rule is morally beyond the pale. We will never know whether the authorities truly believe what they say about competitive balance being of overriding importance when it comes to their rationale behind their fierce defence of this rule and there are at least crumbs of comfort that we can take from it. It seems likely, however, that with the culture of football finance now starting to gravitate towards debt avoidance rather than debt management, the rules that have been drawn up and redrawn several times over in recent years will have to be tightened still further. If there is one thing that we have learned beyond reasonable doubt over the last decade or so, it is that football clubs cannot, on the whole, be trusted to act honorably off their own backs.

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The initial proposals confirm that Kettering Town will be dropping two divisions into the Southern League Premier Division, but most of yesterdays headlines were made by Darlington, who will be dropping a vertiginous four divisions to play in Division One of the Northern League from the start of next season.

The reason for the severity of Darlingtons plummet is one that we have discussed on these pages before. The club entered into administration again at the end of last year but has been unable to agree a CVA with its creditors – the largest of which by some considerable distance is former chairman Raj Singh – meaning that the club has been left with no option but to exit administration without a CVA in place, a decision which leaves it in clear contravention of the FA’s regulations on dealing with insolvency events. As such, whilst the club itself had been hoping for a two division drop into the Premier Division of the Northern Premier League, it had been forced into a position in which it was prone to greater sanction, and greater sanction is exactly what has happened.

But what will the club find upon stumbling, blinking, weary and battered by the events of the last ten years or so? The Northern League is a curious league, one which was at the very top of non-league football during the era when there was a clear distinction made between the amateur and professional versions of the game. The league dominated the FA Amateur Cup – record ten-time winners of the competition, Bishop Auckland, were members – while its clubs made occasional forays to the latter rounds of the FA Cup, with the most celebrated example of this coming, perhaps ironically, four years after the FA ended the formal distinction between amateur and professional clubs in 1978 when Blyth Spartans made it all the way to the Fifth Round of the competition.

Since then, it could be argued that the Northern League has stayed at least partly rooted in a past that no longer exists. When non-league football began to calcify into what we now know as the Pyramid, the Northern League chose not to get involved, and this was a state of affairs that remained in place until the 1990s. By the time it did get involved, its status was much-reduced and it now acts as a feeder league to the Northern Premier League. Even now, though the last traces of the attitudes of amateurism (as a philosophy rather then as a pejorative reference to how its member clubs run themselves) remains in place. The champions of the last three years, Spennymoor Town, have opted not to apply for promotion into Division One North of the Northern Premier League, and they are not the only club to have made this decision.

To those looking in from the outside, this may seem like a curious state of affairs. After all, at the overwhelming majority of clubs at all levels, winning and progressing up through the division has become the be all and end all of clubs’ existences, with what is still regarded by most as the Holy Grail of a place in the Football League awaiting those lucky few that reach the very pinnacle of the Pyramid. It may seem perverse that there are several clubs that do not get involved in the celestial dance that is the application process for promotion, but to understand the reason why this is requires an understanding of the practicalities of running a semi-professional club at this level, and in this part of the world.

At the top of the Northern League, there are few amateurs who play purely for the love of the game and no financial recompense whatsoever. As such, a clutch of clubs in the north-east of England are pursuing a clearly definable group of semi-professional players, and with average crowds in the Northern League running at just over two hundred people per match, it is clear that these players are unlikely to earn very much. If a club from Division One of the Northern League (the NLD1) was to take promotion into Division One North of the Northern Premier League (the NPL1N), it would find that its costs would very quickly start to rise. Last season, there were just two clubs from the north-east in the NPL1N – Durham City and Harrogate Railway Athletic – and one of them finished in a relegation place at the end of last season. 

This has three significant likely effects for clubs that may be considering applying for promotion. Firstly, clubs from the north-east have to factor in very high travelling costs at a level of the game at which income is very limited. Secondly, players have to be found who are willing and/or able to give up almost every other Saturday and several midweek dates for lengthy trips to the Yorkshire and the north-west of England. Again, the limited financial resources available to these clubs mean that they can’t lure players to play at a level one division higher with significantly better wages. Finally, there is the fact that the clubs of the NPL1N, whilst they tend to enjoy somewhat higher average attendances than the NLD1, the length of journey for supporters is likely to put at least some of travelling. As such, the likelihood of attracting bigger attendances may not be as high as for clubs in the north-west, who enjoy a range of local derbies as part of their normal season.

It is impossible to say at present how Darlington will fare in Division One of the Northern League. On the one hand, it is likely that, even if their support falls away somewhat from the start of next season on account of the four division drop and the fact that they will be playing their home matches in Shildon, it is still likely that they will enjoy by a very long way the highest crowds in the division. If we work to the principle that the hardcore of the clubs support in the Blue Square Bet Premier sat at about 1,800 people, even a two-thirds drop in crowds from the start of next season would leave them with average home crowds comparable with the next best-supported club in their division. This has the effect of creating a virtuous circle in which commercial and sponsorship revenues are higher, which gives the club the ability to sustainably offer plumper contracts to players, which should give them a considerably better chance of being successful, which should lead to more local interest and higher attendances. This virtuous circle exists at the heart of all football finance, but it is at its simplest and most pronounced at this level of the game.

There will, of course, be supporters of Darlington FC who are looking at this drop with considerable trepidation, and those with no experience of the Northern League may well be imagining spending next season visiting roped off park pitches and wooden signs with “Here Be Dragons” clumsily painted on them. The facilities of some of the grounds that they visit next season may be a little basic and opposing crowds will, of course, be considerably smaller than they are used to. However, while it is difficult to quantify exactly how “good” or otherwise the NLD1 is, its clubs have clearly dominated the FA Vase in recent years (the NLD1 is at the highest level of the game that competes in this competition rather than the FA Trophy) and to merely write off clubs such as Spennymoor Town (the NLD1 champions for the last three seasons), Whitley Bay (FA Vase winners for three consecutive years between 2009 and 2011) or Dunston UTS and West Auckland (who played out this years FA Vase final at Wembley) might turn out to be something of a misjudgement.

From the point of view of the experience, though, Darlington supporters might just find themselves presently surprised. They are, of course, not the only set of supporters to have found themselves suddenly watching football in a very different environment to that which they had been accustomed. The supporters of clubs such as AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester have found themselves dropping from a greater height than Darlington have this week, and it is certainly not uncommon to find supporters of those two clubs who thoroughly enjoyed their experience of this level of the game and who wouldn’t change anything whatsoever about their years at or near the foot of the pyramid. The impulse to look at how far Darlington FC has fallen and grieve for this loss is completely understandable, of course, but it should also considered an opportunity to rebuild from the base up, to mould a club in the image that the supporters themselves want, free from the likes of Reynolds, Houghton and Singh, the wretched trio who did the groundwork which ultimately put it where it is today.

In a broad sense, if non-league football is to survive in the twenty-first century, a switch in perceptions is required. Darlington Football Club should aim for success on the pitch and promotion back to the level of the game from which it fell, of course. This sense of hope is the rationale behind the entire non-league pyramid and is the elixir of the twenty-first century football supporter. It is not, however, the be-all-and-end-all of Darlington FCs existence. After its experiences of the last year, its aims must be broader than the mere acquisition of mere trinkets. It must rebuild the bridges burned with its local community and, more importantly than anything else, it must work towards a home of its own in the town of Darlington itself. This is a long-haul job. Brighton & Hove Albion took twelve years to get a home of their own that they could genuinely call home. Enfield Town took ten years. FC United of Manchester will have taken around nine or ten years by the time that they move into their home in Moston. Football supporters, however, make their choices at an early age and supporting a club is a lifetime commitment. Those who stick by the club now should heed this advice – there is no words that can adequately describe the feeling that comes with every achievement on the road back to redemption.

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You can download the Twohundredpercent Euro 2012 spreadsheet here (for Excel 2007), whilst a version that will be compatible with older versions of Excel is available here.

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The History: For many years, there was an international team whose moment in the sun came in the summer of 1966 and wasn’t England. Portugal’s first appearance in the World Cup finals ended with them losing narrowly to the host nation and eventual winners. Coming off the back of the success had been enjoying in the European Cup in the years prior to 1966 this was, perhaps, no great surprise, but Portugal’s success proved to be a flash in the pan and it wasn’t until 1984 that the team managed a repeat of this performance when they pushed a brilliant France team to the last minute of extra-time before surrendering. A team led by Luis Figo, however, started the new century with a string of excellent performances, making the semi-finals of the European Championships in 2000, the final of the competition on home turf four years later and the semi-finals of the World Cup in Germany in 2006.

The Team: We all know the stars of the current Portuguese team. The sparkling Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the best players in the world who doesn’t, somehow or other, get the credit that he deserves for his lavish skill, Nani of Manchester United, Raul Meireles of Chelsea, Pepe and Fabio Coentrao of Real Madrid, Helder Postiga and Joao Pereira of Valencia. Can this team with several layers of talent overcome one of the pre-tournament favourites – Germany and the Netherlands – which will be the minimum requirement in order to get through to as much as the quarter-finals of the competition? The single common denominator of the last ten years of the Portugal national football team has been a tendency to buckle when the pressure gets too great. The lack of a truly world-class goalkeeper is also a concern for a team that will be up against major fire-power in at least two of its opening three matches. Portugal have, however, demonstrated before that they are plenty capable of getting to the latter stages of a tournament such as this.

The Coach: A professional player for seventeen years and an international for a full decade, Paulo Bento’s playing career was solid, if unspectacular with three Portuguese Cups – won with Estralo da Amadora, Sporting and Benfica – and a single league championship, won with Sporting in 2002. On top of this, he also spent four years in Spain, playing for Oviedo. His managerial career so far has taken in just one club and the national team. He moved straight into coaching the youth team at Sporting upon retiring as a player in 2005 and was promoted into the manager’s position a year later and went on to win two successive Portuguese Cups for the club in 2007 and 2008 before resigning in November of 2009 after failing to beat the Latvian side FK Ventspils in the group stages of the Europa League. His international career began just under a year later when he replaced Carlos Queiroz after the team had a dreadful start to its qualifying group for this summer tournament. Initially only hired for the duration of the qualifiers, he was offered an extension to his contract when the team made it through to this summers tournament.

The Prospects: The draw, let’s face it, is a tough one, and Portugal’s nightmare start to qualification – a home draw against Cyprus and a defeat in Norway – was enough to do for the coach. Paulo Bento, however steadied the ship and the group ended up as a three horse race between Portugal, Denmark and Norway, which saw Portugal qualify via the play-offs after finishing in second place in the group. This is a team of contradiction. It has players of lavish ability and it wouldn’t be an earth-shattering event to see them beat one of the Netherlands or Germany, but they finished in second place in their qualification group behind the other team that they will face this summer, Denmark, and Denmark beat them when they met in Copenhagen last October. There also, arguably, concerns that Bentos style of play could be too cautious for a team with Portugals attacking options. Should they get through the group stage of the competition, they could go all the way to the final. Getting through that group stage, however, is a major, major test.

The Kit: Portugal are also long-term adoptees of the Nike brand, and this summers kit is nice and under-stated, as Nike kits for international teams have tended to be in recent years – as ever, red with flashes of green. The change kit, however, is a little startling. It’s white with a big red and green cross plastered across of its middle, and with Denmark playing in red and the Netherlands in orange, we’ll probably get the opportunity to see it in action this summer.

The National Anthem: Portugal: “A Portuguesa” (The Portuguese Hymn) Portugal and Great Britain hold the longest-standing treaty agreement in the world – The Treaty of Windsor dates back to 1386 – so it is perhaps ironic that it was a nationalistic fervour against the British government that gave birth to the current Portuguese national anthem.  In 1890, the British government – demonstrating little-to-no capacity for irony themselves – issued an ultimatum to Portugal to remove their military presence from their colonies in Africa, in order to facilitate the building of a British railway from Egypt to the Cape.  Portugal acceeded to the demands, the country’s republican movement were stoked up into a frenzy and A Portuguesa was hastily written and adopted as its official marching song.  Twenty years later, the republican movement prevailed, and A Portuguesa became the official national anthem of Portugal a year later in 1911. Predictably, it’s a fairly strident affair, not least in the chorus:

To arms, to arms!
Over the land, over the sea,
To arms, to arms!
To fight for our Fatherland!
Against the cannons, march, march!

In the original version, that final line read “Against the British, march, march!”. And we’re sure that everyone can sympathise with that.

Don’t forget that with Euro 2012 approaching you can download the Twohundredpercent Euro 2012 spreadsheet here (for Excel 2007), whilst a version that will be compatible with older versions of Excel is available here.

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The first was that each offence would have been treated as another act of violent conduct worthy of a sending off, and therefore would have been treated like Barton’s third and fourth red cards of the season, bringing a five game ban for the kick and a six game ban for the headbutt, meaning that Barton could feasibly have been suspended for a total of fifteen games. The second way was that because Mike Dean did not produce subsequent red cards, the kick and attempted headbutt would be treated as incidents of violent conduct, each one worthy of a three match ban, making a ten game suspension in total. In that respect, the punishments fits in the middle of the likely range that Barton’s ban was likely to be, and therefore a fair, rather than harsh or lenient punishment.

The second way that the incident was treated, also allows for other circumstances to be taken into account, and the most likely one in this instance, appeared to be Barton’s previous behaviour. As well as being sent off six times in his career, Barton has already been found guilty of violent conduct twice by the FA – he was banned for six games for assaulting former Manchester City team-mate Ousmane Dabo in 2007 (which also saw him handed a fourth month suspended sentence), and for another three for punching Morten Gamst Pedersen in 2010. However, if the comments made by (unnamed) Chairman of the Regulatory Commission after the hearing, are anything to go by, Barton’s record wasn’t taken into account. However, one thing – not normally taken into account – was. The importance, and viewing figures of the game. The unnamed chairman stated: “There are rules of conduct that should be adhered to, and such behaviour tarnishes the image of football in this country, particularly as this match was the pinnacle of the domestic season and watched by millions around the globe” – and that’s a concern.

As it is suggested that Barton’s ban was increased because it was the last game of the season, and a title decider. Does this mean that had Queens Park Rangers been playing Wigan Athletic orSunderlandin January, and Barton tried to “take one of their players with me” (as he delightfully put it on Twitter), would his ban really have been shorter because there was less interest in it around the world?

One could argue that when it comes to bigger games, there is more pressure to behave, and act as role models, but when it comes to people looking to Barton as a role model, that ship has long sailed. Instead, the concern from the Regulatory Commission appears to be that Barton may have damaged the selling power of the brand, and made English football appear violent to those around the world, and that this had an influence on the bans handed out. In saying this, the Regulatory Commission have almost turned the role model argument on it’s head, essentially suggesting that if you do this lower down the pyramid, or even in parks football that you will not get a ban this long, because you won’t be being watched by a global audience of millions. And in a nation where the FA continually find themselves crying out for more people to take up refereeing, because of the numbers that drop out because of the treatment they receive at Sunday League level, that is a much worse message to be sending out than anything Joey Barton did earlier in the month at Eastlands.

“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” – Nietzsche

Don’t forget that with Euro 2012 approaching you can download the Twohundredpercent Euro 2012 spreadsheet here (for Excel 2007), whilst a version that will be compatible with older versions of Excel is available here.

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Apologies to Friedrich Nietzsche.

You can download the Twohundredpercent Euro 2012 spreadsheet here (for Excel 2007), whilst a version that will be compatible with older versions of Excel is available here.

You can follow Twohundredpercent on Twitter by clicking here.

The History: With three World Cups and three European Championships under its belt, it rather feels as if the story of the West German and post-war German national teams has no great need to be told. What is perhaps notable is that the West German teams that have remained in the public consciousness in Germany itself have been those that surprised and given their supporters artistry. The 1954 World Cup winning team’s performance in beating Hungary in Switzerland has been said to have had an effect on the morale of the country that took on a far greater significance than anything merely sporting, while the affection with which the team that thrashed England 3-1 at Wembley in the quarter-final of the 1972 European Championships means that it is these eleven players that have become canonised in the history of German football. If their team manages to win this summer’s tournament with a little elan and end that sixteen year run without a trophy, it might even find itself joining that particular hall of fame.

The Team: If the psychological effects of club football do have any effects upon international tournaments, then we could have pause to wonder how this German team will react to Bayern Munich’s recent defeat to Chelsea in the Champions League. After all, eight of the players selected in the preliminary squad for this summers jamboree are Bayern players. The likelihood is, of course, that the answer to this question is “very little.” Perhaps the most interesting inclusion in this preliminary squad is Julian Draxler of Schalke 04. Draxler is just eighteen years old and has made just nine appearances for the under-18 and under-21 squads but remains uncapped for the full team. With very positive reviews having come from his first two seasons in the Schalke first team, he could prove to be a rabbit up the sleeve, if coach Joachim Low picks him and takes a chance on him in the finals.

The Coach: That Joachim Low is one of the longer-standing coaches in these finals is a reflection on the current hire and fire culture in all areas of modern football. Low had a low key club career, with just one DFB-Pokal with Stuttgart in 1997 in his home country and an Austrian league championship with Tirol Innsbruck won prior to joining the national team as assistant to Jurgen Klinsmann in 2004 and his ascent into the top job following Klinsmann’ post-2006 World Cup resignation. A runners-up spot in the 2008 European Championships and a semi-final place at the last World Cup have silenced most of those that doubted the wisdom of the DFB in promoting him into this position, but it is possible to argue that he won’t necessarily become a national treasure until he brings a trophy back to Germany. Low is contracted to national team until 2014.

The Prospects: With ten wins out of ten in their qualifying matches, Germany sailed through to the finals, winning their group by a jaw-dropping thirteen points as the teams below them all took points off each other. They could have had a better draw for the finals. The Netherlands will likely be seeking to score another grudge win against them and Portugal are certainly not a team to be taken for granted, with only Denmark seeming likely to offer rich pickings at first glance. So, it’s not inconceivable that this Germany team could be knocked out in the first round. Few actually expect this to come to pass, however, and it would be unsurprising to see them reach at least the semi-finals of the competition and perhaps even win it.

The Kit: White shirts, black shorts and white socks. Simple, huh? Well, as any seasoned watcher of football kit designs will know, the answer to that question is not always necessarily a positive one. Adidas have produced some absolute stinkers for Germany over the years, with the period between 1988 and 1996 being a particular low point, but this summer’s design, a plain white shirt with three diagonal pin-stripes in the red, yellow and black of the national flag, looks like a winner to us. After almost twenty years away, green and white makes a return as the change kit, and this is a kit which, we understand, has been known to make grown men cry.

The National Anthem: “Das Lied der Deutschen (The Song of the Germans)“– Let’s get this sorted out.  The German national anthem – written by August Heinrich Hoffmann in 1841 to accompany music by Joseph Haydn written 44 years previously – is not, and has never been, called “Deutschland Über Alles”.  Yes, the first line of the first verse of the song does use those three famous words.  Adopted as the German’s official anthem during the Weimar Republic in 1922, since 1952 (for West Germany) and 1990 (as the unified Germany) only the third verse has been used.  For the record, the first line of this verse is “Unity and justice and freedom for the German Fatherland!”.  Brotherly love and fairness for all are the order of the day, so you can tell any tabloid reading ninnies of your acquaintance that it’s probably safe now to take their tin hat off.

The British Press Will Say: Well, you know. Look, the days of embarrassing war references are probably – but far from definitely – behind us, but that doesn’t mean that crude national stereotyping of some description won’t come into play at some point in the tournament. Expect tortured puns based on the word “wurst” or similar should they lose any matches and possibly veiled references to “normal service” having been resumed should they win the tournament. The notion of a Roy Hodgson-led England beating them (we know, we know) might just lead to a conflict in some corners of the fourth estate so agonising that it might just bend the laws of physics. When it comes to the British press and the German national football team, it’s best to expect the worst, double your lowering of expectations and consider anything above that to be a surprise. If there are any German team supporters reading this, rest assured that they don’t represent anything like all of us.

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