As appetizers go it’s a hell of a good one – hours before Canada starts back up in its World Cup qualifying campaign Euro 2012 starts. Unfortunately the latter will gain most of the media attention that day, especially in major urban areas where there the ex-pat communities will be out in full force.
Good for them. Honestly. The time for banging our heads against the wall trying to lecture people into caring about the local game over the game in Europe has passed. People have heard the message about supporting local soccer and many of them have done so – even if they’ll be more excited about the Euros than Canada v Cuba.
Hell, I’m equally excited. The European Championship might be my favourite sporting event in the world. In its current format it’s an orgy of spectacularly good soccer and it’s beyond wide open. This year there might be legitimately eight teams that you could argue to win. And that’s before you consider Denmark and Greece as past champions.
This is going to be an enjoyable few weeks. I plan to write on it on a blog that I started just for the occasion. You can read Eurosnobs here.
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I hope to provide daily commentary, but am not promising. The reason I’m not is because I realize that this space must take priority and here we need to be focusing on the domestic game. This brings me to my one complaint about the European championships – the way it will be covered and given priority over local games here in Canada.
It’s one thing for a fan to be focused on the excitement of the event at the exclusion of the domestic game. It’s quite another for the media to.
News needs to be local. Local sources need to put their resources on covering the local game. If they have the ability to do that and cover the sexy foreign stuff as well, then great. But, let’s be honest here, no one is going to the Globe and Mail for their Euro insight. Not when The Guardian is a click away.
Any Canadian paper that sends a reporter to Eastern Europe but not to Cuba deserves to be criticized. That paper also deserves to fall into the irrelevancy that is most certainly slipping towards.
Enjoy the Euros – I will – but always remember that it’s the icing on our already filling domestic soccer cake.