After tournaments like Euro2000 it's no surprise that most people now prefer football to life itself. The whole enterprise was like the best book you've ever read: memorable characters, a compelling story with that kept building to a powerful conclusion, innumerable entertaining sub-plots and generally teeming with incident and entertainment.
Now it's all over, you lust for the next one by the same author, but hope he writes out the Norwegians.
What made it even better than a book was the fact that it was all on TV. The world is a gloomier place this week.
But was Euro2000 really evidence that football is passing through some Golden Age, or were there other messages emerging that were more worrying? I went to the boozer to find out, and overheard the following conversation:
Mr Optimism:
Flipping heck, that was a great tournament. Loads of great games, stacks of goals, and the best team won.
Mr Pessimism:
Yeah, and the best team was France. As an Englishman, that tournament should send you into a mood of utter despair. What happened in the last four years? Why is it that most teams stepped through some timewarp into an era of skillfulness, athleticism, intelligence and wit while we went back to dragging our knuckles along the floor and beating each other over the head with clubs? You expected Keegan to take off Paul Scholes and bring on Piltdown Man.
Mr Optimism:
Oh come on, Phil Neville's not that bad looking. Anyway we were two minutes away from going through to the quarters.
Mr Pessimism:
Where our fiendishly intelligent tactics would have opened up the naïve Italian defence like a can of peas.
Mr Optimism:
You mean 'give it to Becks, let him stick it in and see if Big Alan can get his nut on it'? It beat Germany.
Mr Pessimism:
Pevensey Bay Ladies could beat Germany.
Mr Optimism:
But we'll learn. And anyway, there was more to the tournament than England. What about all the free flowing flamboyant football?
Mr Pessimism:
What about all the free flowing flamboyant cheating? What about Francesco Totti's double piked back somersaults with a full twist? Most of the time he deserved to win a free kick for the sheer degree of difficulty. Everyone was at it. Shearer even bragged about it. People just wouldn't stand up. Most games it was like watching a troupe of miming goalkeepers.
Mr Optimism:
But all that old cynicism and intimidation's leaving the game. Think of the footie: I mean Portugal were a joy.
Mr Pessimism:
Yeah, punching the ball off the line, beating the ref to a pulp, garrotting the linesman and then claiming there was a UEFA conspiracy. It's lovely stuff to watch.
Mr Optimism:
What about Holland, though - total football, a classic blend of good old fashioned hard work and silky continental ball skills.
Mr Pessimism:
Been reading the papers, O? In case you've forgotten, Italy stitched them up like a bunch of kippers. A classic blend of good old fashioned dour, stifling, frustrating negativity and cynical, selfish, spirit-crushing defensiveness.
Mr Optimism:
But come on, this was an attackers' tournament. I think the effects of the off side rule change are finally filtering through.
Mr Pessimism:
Apart from to Filippo 'Groundhog Day' Inzaghi: "Hold on a second, I'm 1 on 1 with the goalie in fourteen yards of space!! - oh no I'm off side... Hold on a second, I'm 1 on 1 with the goalie in fourteen yards of space!! - oh no I'm off side...". Would it have been a feast of football if Italy had won it?
Mr Optimism:
Dunno. Nice kit, though. And lots of food for thought the next time you go to the barbers. In fact, the whole tournament was a high watermark of sporting rug rethinks.
Mr Pessimism:
Yeah, the Paul Scholes scally gingernut goes global. And anyway, haircuts, haircuts, haircuts - what was it with Euro2000 and haircuts? Never mind the haircuts, where were the great footballers?
Mr Optimism:
Zidane, Henry, Figo, Davids, Kluivert, Montella, Hagi -
Mr Pessimism:
de Wilde, Matthaeus, Ince, Heskey, Martyn, Neville, Neville.
Mr Optimism:
I don't care what you say. I thought that Euro2000 was the best football event ever. I'm buying the media hype. Even the TV coverage was ace.
Mr Pessimism:
But who couldn't enjoy Johann Cruyff's lectures on three dimensional geometry? And David O'Leary, I so agreed with him when he said: 'Now what dey've got to do in de second half is go out and play some football.' And as for Barry Davies, he's become so inflated that they didn't fly him back to England, they just let go of the rope and he floated back of his own accord.
Mr Optimism:
You miserable get. You must have got some pleasure out of it?
Mr Pessimism:
Oh, yes. It was fantastic.
• Damian Lanigan's new novel Stretch, 29 is available now from Amazon.co.uk.
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