http://www.euro2008.uefa.com/ There are no teams from the British Isles at all. No UK team, no England, no Scotland, no Ireland, nothing. You're making me root for the Germans instead of England and there had better be an explanation for this and it had better be a good one.
The English FA are to blame for this embarassing situation. They appointed a muppet as the national coach and that is the reason to why England have not qualified. Ireland can legitimately use the same excuse. Wales and Northern Ireland are smaller countries (i.e. rubbish at football) so their failure to qualify is not a surprise (although to be fair to Northern Ireland, they punched above their weight for much of the qualifying games and narrowly missed out). Scotland, in true tartan fashion, mounted a heroic bid to qualify against overwhelming odds and narrowly missed out. It's no shame for Scotland to have failed to reach Euro 2008. Although, given their recent qualifying record, no surprise either. As an England fan, I find the whole situation to be a disgrace and all those who thought it was a good idea to appoint a failure as national coach should be sacked and have their testicles removed.
He's going to work in spain so it's the same thing. Still pissed it got a million+ when he was fired.
You say that, but I saw the lack of qualification as a necessary evil to make the FA sit up and take the job seriously. Otherwise had we managed to get into the competition by the skin of our teeth you can bet that moneky McClaren would still be in charge today. At least this way would could get the rebuilding underway sooner. But, yes, from a fan's point of view it is very dissapointing that we will have to wait at least another two years to cheer on our boys at a major competition.
At least McClaren had some managerial experience and grasp on reality. It was a joke to appoint Steve Staunton, and a pity that he was put in such a position, because he was an outstanding servant for the team as a player.
