Morning:
6°c
Visitors to the UEFA website are greeted by a clock counting down to the first Euro 2008 game, and there are eight days, eight hours, 28 minutes and 43 seconds, as I write, before the Swiss meet the Czechs tomorrow week.
But the timepiece that disturbs me, with its haunting echo of the old Doomsday Clock that indicated how close we were to nuclear obliteration, is an imaginary one that currently reads 30 days, 11 hours 13 minutes and 43 seconds. This is the gap between now and the final in Vienna, and an ominous feeling in my bones insists that Germany will be there.
We'll touch on other contenders in future columns, even if it isn't easy to dredge up excitement when England's sole official representative will be Steve McClaren, in his capacity as Alan Green's stooge (and don't they deserve each other's company? Preferably in a lift during a three-week power cut).
Watching the team coached by Old Beetroot Face's successor on Wednesday deepened the gloom. Admittedly the game raised some questions - if John Motson sincerely believed that a goal against the USA constituted catharsis for John Terry, for instance, where was his carer to stop him saying it out loud? - but they were half-hearted enquiries born of boredom and indifference.
At one point the thought occurred that this was the perfect chance for Fabio Capello to give Theo Walcott a run out. Then I flipped over to Britain's Got Talent, and realised that there are quite enough precocious children on telly without Don Fabio adding to the stockpile.
Here was yet another wretched evening in the company of England, then, although not for once because of the performance, which was competent enough; but the unavoidable contrast between the pointlessness of the fixture and the relevance of those to come for Europeans across the seas.
In a bid to whip up interest, newspapers invite us to pick a surrogate team to support, and forced to choose mine would probably be Holland or Portugal.
But we're English, dammit, and defined by our hatreds, so it's more a case of picking a team to unsupport. Which brings us back to the Germans.
Many sound judges strongly fancy "The Hun", and with good reason. The young, athletic and attack-minded side that so nearly reached the World Cup final two years ago must have improved with time and experience. Their qualifying form was excellent, there is no outstanding rival, and they will have home advantage should they reach the final. I am aware, before anyone writes in, that the Anschluss was reversed. Even so, Austria, like much of Switzerland, is German-speaking, and effectively they are on home soil.
And so up the cry goes up "Where is the next Yordan Letchkov?" The gleaming-pated Bulgar remains an English football hero for the bullet header that removed Germany from the 1994 World Cup.
Two years later, they did us on penalties en route to winning Euro 96, but since then, despite appearing in another World Cup final ( 2002), they have won nothing.
Not since the European Football Championship began 40 years ago have Germany, or West Germany as was, gone more than a dozen years without a major trophy, and I see no reason to think they won't at least go very close this time.
And us? Well, for us there is nothing but to pray for a new Letchkov, who would represent our only hope of greeting Euro 2008 as an oasis in the barren desert that is international football for the follower of England.
FA glories are lost in translation
It takes something very special from the Football Association these days to startle with the range and depth of their incompetence. This duly arrived earlier in the week when an improper conduct charge against Alex Ferguson and Carlos Queiroz, for insulting referee Martin Atkinson, reportedly disintegrated over a transcription error.
Apparently, someone mistook Queiroz's remark about referee Martin Atkinson's "job today" for calling him "a robber". Not an easy mistake to make, however strong the accent.
Blues could always make a Wise decision if favourites reject role
Less speculation attends a vacancy in the Vatican than surrounds the appointment of Chelsea's new manager, but, almost a week after Avram Grant's dismissal, there remains no imminent prospect of white smoke emerging from the Stamford Bridge chimney.
No one outside the club affects to have much clue and, as always in these circumstances, the only people relishing the suspense are the bookmakers, who make untold fortunes from rapidly changing and generally misleading markets about managerial appointments.
Yesterday's firing of assistant manager Henk Ten "Kiss Me" Cate suggests that his compatriot and former boss at Barcelona Frank Rijkaard isn't in the running, leaving Roberto Mancini the shortish-priced favourite ahead of Mark Hughes and Luiz Felipe Scolari in what begins to look, very vaguely, like a three-horse race. Then again, the Newcastle United stakes looked, very clearly, like a one-horse race with Harry Redknapp a 1-8 chance less than an hour before he rejected Mike Ashley's offer.
Is there a Kevin Keegan figure from Chelsea's pre-Abramovich past waiting heavily cloaked in the wings, ready to storm the stage should Roman's first, second and third choices turn down £5million a year? I certainly hope so. Dennis Wise is a 200-1 shot, but he hasn't failed as Chelsea manager before and so fails the Keegan test. Anyone fancy a few quid, at 750-1, on David Webb?
Murray's good and bad show
From a dank and drizzly French Open comes a ray of hope that Andy Murray is finding the form required to penetrate the world's top five.
Dreadful in the first round against a qualifier, Murray dismantled the useful Jose Acasuso with the perfect blend of power and finesse and celebrated with a slightly disturbing roar of relief.
Today it gets harder still when Murray meets the clay court specialist Nicolas Almagro, but if the Scot wins his path to the quarter-finals and lashings of lovely ranking points looks clear.
What an infuriating bleeder he is, his form oscillating as wildly as his moods. When he learns to string the brilliant displays together, he has the talent to turn tennis's ruling trio into a quartet.
That may take a while, but for now reaching the second week in Paris would be a useful stride on a climb that has already been punctuated by too many false steps.
