Football football football! Its nothing but football, morning noon and night

I love football I do. This will become very clear throughout the course of this blog.

At its best it can be exhilarting, tense, joyful and utterly utterly heartbreaking. Its a form of art, and world class footballers are the composers, artists and poets of the modern day.

As much as I love club football, I don't quite think you can beat every second June when either the Euros or the World Cup is on. Sure, there's the odd dud game or the Greece or Switzerland or South Korea or whoever who can make it almost painful to watch. But this is more than compensated by the truly great tournament and career defining moments. The World Cup 2006, what will people remember (aside from the Zidane headbutt!). Take *that* goal Argentina scored against Serbia. Absolutely mesmeric. Or, how about, for my money at least, one of the greatest games I have ever watched. Even more so when you consider it took 118 minutes for a goals to score. In two shots football is summed. Grosso running screaming arms a flutter apeing Tardelli's classic celebration from 1982. Then the camera cuts to two German girls in tears. A look so despairing you'd swear something much more tragic than losing a football match had occurred. As someone who had his footballing heart broken by Italian six months ago I empathise completely. Oh well. As someone in a film once said "We'll always have Paris".

Anyways.

To my original point. The best thing about the run up to the summer tournaments is clearly the adverts. I concede they are there to sell footballs shirts and boots. But that doesn't change the fact that you get to see footballers doing mad skills. I saw this year's Nike ad last night before the Man Utd - Barca game and it was pretty awesome.

So here's a rundown of my favourites of recent years. Naturally most of them feature Brazilians. And Eric Cantona as some light comic relief.

Cantona versus El Diablo (and how young does Ronaldo look!)
Ronaldinho being Ronaldinho
Olé!
Parklife!
Joga Bonito
Cage Football

And of course, the all time classic

Brazil in an airport

Enjoy.

And for the record, I'm going with a Ronaldo inspired Portugal to beat the French in the final. I was going with Croatia until Eduardo's horrendous injury.

I'll be supporting Spain though - Xavi, Cesc, Iniesta, Silva and Torres. With David Villa and Joaquín in support. Irrestible. They'll still get beat in the quarters though....

There you go Joga Bonito.