++ [ originally posted by Martin ] ++
But many fans are not neutral and like to see their team go though.
Of course. And the whole point of a tournament is that only one team ends up being crowned the winner, which means with every tournament, most everybody ends up supporting their favorite as a losing side. This is true whether France wins the Euro or Greece does.
But I think it's also kind of a cop-out when you only follow a major tournament, held once every 4 years afterall, as long as your favorite is in it. And as soon as they are eliminated, you switch to watching "Three's Company" reruns instead.
For all of us to bother to come back to a forum such as this and embarrass ourselves publicly on a regular basis, I maybe have this delusion that we care about the health and welfare of the whole of the sport -- and not just our narrow slivers of interest in personal favorites. (And god knows I can only take so many, "Who's better, DP or Ghandi?" threads...)
And speaking subjectively, it also adds to the excitement when the best teams are playing upto their best, because you can feel the cut throat competition and you live the moment.
Ahhh -- but therein lies the paradox. If the best teams aren't playing up to their best, you soon have to call into question who really is best then.
But when the favorites are nowhere to be seen, it takes more for me to get interested. You know the feeling?
Don't get me wrong, Martin. I
do understand where you're coming from. I know I am guilty of over-intellectualizing this. But my point here is to point out that there are some very interesting (and dare I say "exciting"?) things happening underfoot with this Euro -- it's all a matter of perspective and where you look for them. I feel this Euro has been a great tournament, and it's not over yet.
If you were a great tennis player, wouldn't you want to beat Pete Sampras to prove to the world and yourself (!!) that you really could do it? And I don't mean a 50-year-old Sampras, I mean Sampras at his best.
But given that Sampras hasn't won a title in some 5 years, that's not even possible now. Past is past. Similarly, France at their best is a thing of the past too -- and the decline certainly didn't just start at Euro 2004.
To draw a parallel here to football, I feel like we have a lot of people who still have it in their heads that Sampras is the best in the world even when a Roger Federer has proven himself to be worthy of those accolades now. So the reaction is, "Roger Federer? He's no Pete Sampras!" -- even when Pete Sampras is no longer a "Pete Sampras" anymore for that matter.