Just a Boys' Game (1979)

Just Another Saturday (1975)

A panini with a baloney filling to go

Brilliant. I need never suffer from bloggers block ever again. Just discovered the perfect space filler courtesy of Socialist Unity blog's posting of Mark Perryman's Euro 2008 article, 'Our Single European Currency'.

I need not concern you with the article itself right now - that isn't a criticism, per se - but I would like to mention that Mark's piece originally appeared in the German footie magazine, 11 Freunde.

Clicked on the link to the German language football magazine, and sad to say that my two years of day dreaming and messing about in German lessons in my second and third year of Secondary School has ill-equipped me to understand 99.9% of what looks like a fascinating website, but my eye did catch the 'Panini-Zufallsbekanntschaft' (roughly translated as 'Panini-chance acquaintanceship') on the bottom right hand side of the page. If and when you refresh the page, you get a new panini sticker from past World Cups staring back at you.

It totally appeals to my inner football-geekery and half-baked nostalgia, and comes at the right time when I'm getting overly excited at the prospect of the start of the European Championships.

Daft thing is that normally I can take or leave the Euro Championships. I usually just keep an eye out for the final itself at the end of the tournament and, before that concluding match, idly speculate on how England will majestically fuck it up this time on the international stage, but I guess that the end of the season high drama of that penalty miss and Celtic retaining its title against the odds has resulted in me wanting more and more football.

So, in keeping with this cheap all you can eat buffet of close season football, I've decided that, whilst the tournament is going on, the blog will be given over to alternating posts between the usual meanderings about the SPGB, cheap pop music and sightings of Glenn Matlock in the East Village, with posts that are about nothing more than subject of the particular panini sticker that is randomly thrown up by refreshing the page on the 11 Freunde website. I'm sure that the blog in the coming weeks will be by equal turn embarrassing, boring and overly verbose. Just another Saturday afternoon on the blog, then.

Two thousand posts here I come.