England’s Not Going To Euro 2008, But Steve McClaren Is….

Cue epic epic riots in England.

Tis true. Despite his well-documented failures in leading England to the tournament as a participant, McClaren will be making his way to Swissaustria as a member of the media. Ole Steve will be asked to offer up his “expert analysis” on the various games during the finals for BBC Radio Five Live. So what McClaren is going to do is give you all the inside tips and then you can figure out how not to apply them to your assessment of the English national team. Also, they made sure Fabio Capello’s English still isn’t good enough to understand a word he’s saying, so as not to have a repeat performance heading into WC 2010 qualifying.

The suits at the network were also nice enough to hand Steve a soft first game, the June 8th matchup between co-hosts Austria and Croatia. The same Croatia which effectively ended England’s Euro hopes.

Good move/bad move? Well, ratings are ratings, and I’m pretty sure intent isn’t counted when Five Live is counting its listeners at the end of the day. So the question becomes: will more people purposefully tune out McClaren’s broadcasts, more people tune in to hear what kind of “expert @#$%ing analysis” he’s giving, or will they simply not care and tune in for the footy? Who knows.

What I do know is there will be a lot of broken radios in England during the Euros.

[Originally posted on Euro 2008 Blog]

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Category: Europe