Men Against Boys

The ecstasy of last Friday’s Champions League play-off round draw is still there. No matter how we do against the Swiss runners-up, whether we progress or not, no matter that they eliminated the Turks from Fenerbahce, it still couldn’t have got any better.

 Let’s look at another angle of the non-champions qualifying route in terms of their countries. The ten team line-up looked like this:

 Russia v France

Germany v Italy

Spain v Portugal; and

Holland v Ukraine

 In terms of international football, over a two-legged affair, you wouldn’t put your house on calling any of the above winners.

 And so on to us. England versus Switzerland. You’d even strongly fancy Fabio Capello’s smoke-damaged fire alarms against that lot of Gawd-Alps-Us.

 Tottenham Hotspur, the mighty Tottenham Hotspur, who finished fourth in the best league in the world. The league that lended 113 players to that World Cup tournament in the summer. Easily out-stripping the nearest rivals from Germany or Italy, who could only muster a mere 80-odd apiece.

 The fourth best team in that heavyweight league against a bunch of Swiss par-takers in a paper-bag-weight league of part-timers. And they’re not even the best of the sorry bunch!

Our draw was the closest thing we could get to a bye and we really can start planning for the Group Stage now. Where we belong. You have to admit, it’s getting better. It’s getting better all the time.

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