Reasons To Be Cheerful, Parts 25-31

Ordinarily, I'd be fretting right now. We've seen possibly the finest group stage of a major tournament in my lifetime. I don't need to recall everything which has made it so, you know what those moments are (do your own damn recalling, people - this is my fourth post today and I say I'm entitled to a bit of lazy blogging).

I describe myself as agnostic. I had a very mildly Catholic upbringing - I made my first communion and my confirmation, and we occasionally went to mass - but it wasn't enough to convince me that He's there. What it has done is plant a seed of doubt in my mind from which a shoot occasionally sprouts and pokes into the happy part of my brain when I'm enjoying myself: what if He is there? What if He's teasing me, allowing me to experience some magical pleasure before striking me down with one of his thunderbolts? (Or is that Zeus?)

What if He's given us all this glorious football in the first round, only to present us with the Second Coming of Italia '90 in the knockout phase?

On Sunday, Richard Whittall posted an article entitled Euro 2008 Could Help Regenerate the European Game on his A More Splendid Life blog*. It's what I would have written: (a) if I'd thought of it first; (b) had I been a better writer; and (c) had I not been such a natural-born pessimist. I read it, re-read it, and re-re-read it, and it won me over. We have four fascinating quarter-finals to look forward to. Hopefully, as Richard argues, the championships will have as far-reaching consequences for football style as Greece's sadly did four years ago.

There. I'm optimistic. And it feels...well, strange. I'm sat in the roller-coaster cart. Hopefully it'll get moving, and I'll want to get on again when the ride's over.



*Given that as far as I know, Richard constitutes one-third of Sport Is A TV Show's readership, it might be a bit futile providing a link to his blog, but hey.