As Spain splonked Italy 4-0 to win yet another major tournament, many British people were shaking their heads disapprovingly and bemoaning the lack of desperate goalmouth scrambles and twenty-two-man brawls.
Blaine Fleming, a sales assistant from Wandsworth, said: “Xavi, Iniesta and Alonso knocking it about in triangles, wearing the opposition down with intelligent movement and an innate ability to keep hold of the ball?
“Nah, not having it. I love football and all, especially the drinking and the shouting, but watching Spain reinvent the way the game is played has been a constant disappointment to me.
“It’s just too hard to follow what’s going on after five or six cans of Stella. Give me two workmanlike sides going hell for leather at each other in an end-to-end game strewn with basic defensive errors and at least one bloodied nose – now that’s something I can get excited about through my haze of warm lager and misplaced Viking blood lust.
“GET RID OF IT!!!”
Stephen Flummox, a publican from Stockwell, said: “If Spain were a game of FIFA, I’d switch off the Playstation and watch something with vampires in it.
“I like vampires.”
He added: “STOP FANNYING ABOUT!!! HIT THE MAN F***ING HARD!!!”
Meanwhile, Stuart Pearce has called up Blaine Fleming and Stephen Flummox to his England squad for the Olympics.