Sunday 29 May 2016

No Seaman At Euros 2016

As the curtain comes down on another football season, we just about have time to take a breath before the European Championship starts up and England fans have the dilemma of who to support once we get knocked out at the group stage.     
A long running tradition of the English football fan is to is to find foreign footballers and snigger like schoolchildren if their name is a bit rude with not very good 90's German midfielder Stefan Kuntz being the high water mark of infantile chuckling and leading to the marvellous joke about how, at the Euro 96 competition, we needed to play like Matthäus or Klinnsman but instead played like Kuntz.
England had a goalkeeper called David Seaman which led to such commentator quotes as 'The defender could feel Seaman all over his back' and 'Seaman's all over the slippery ball' but although not in the same league, we do have a goalkeeper in the squad called Butland which sounds a bit like a theme park Elton John would come up with.
Funny names are a bit in short supply this tournament but Slovakia have a midfielder called Filip Kiss while Italy are hoping striker Ciro Immobile doesn't live up to his name.
German midfield Lars Bender is worth a smirk and if you pronounce it right, Ilkay Gundogan sounds a bit like gone doggin' but the award for best name goes to Albania defender, Berat Xhimshiti, especially if the commentators go with the X at the start of the surname being silent.
We can only hope that FC Eindhoven's Turkish midfielder Anil Koc one day graces a tournament but for now we may have to do with Austria's Christian Fuchs getting a red card so we can hear the immortal words, 'Fuchs Off for an early bath' which is always worth a giggle.

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