Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 20 June 2008 / Leave a comment

Jonathan Wilson is relieved to find some ridiculous haircuts and wonders if the next Chelsea manager is developing a turnip complex.

I had, I confess, been slightly disappointed in this tournament.

Naively, I had thought central Europe was the home of the mullet, but ridiculous haircuts had been thin on the ground, and that despite the vast numbers of hair-dressers' shops that litter the urban Swiss landscape. Repeatedly in the first couple of days of the tournament, I would see a sign announcing "COIFFEUR-HAUS" and make towards it, thinking I could just do with a nice espressso, only to be brought up short on seeing the oiver-groomed photographs in the window.

The former Austria forward Toni Polster was once the owner of the greatest mullet-tache combo in the European game, but seeing him on television the other night was like seeing one of those late Muhammad Ali fights in which he blundered around failing to beat Trevor Berbick while all the time your mind was remembering him beating Sonny Liston.

The proud mane was gone, replaced by something greasy and far more sensible, and although the tache remained, it looks rather sad these days, patchy and uncertain, bereft of its partner.

But then, like buses, or Lukas Podolski goals, after waiting an eternity, two came at once. The steward sitting between the Germany and Portugal dug-outs in Basel last night had clearly pushed the boat out. Not only did he have a magnificent wet-look, tight-curled perm mullet in black with a few flecks of temple grey, but he had accessorised it with a thin, almost Zapata style moustache, a hoop ear-ring worn in the left ear and a tattoo on his left fore-arm. This was like an eighteenth-century pirate with a Kevin Keegan fetish had turned up to play centre-forward for Kickers Offenbach in 1981, and it was magnificent.

So hats off to him - if only because I suspect he himself wouldn't be able to wear a hat himself - but just as we in the press box were admiring his lonely commitment to the proud tradition of Mitteleuropean hair-dressing, Joao Moutinho went down injured, at which up popped a stretcher-bearer with a thicker, fluffier hatch and a far broader, Tom Selleck-style moustache. Truly, a feast, and a lesson to all of us who had all too hastily lamented the end of the golden age.

You wonder whether Chelsea may consider themselves over-hasty as well.
The nature of international football is that it will usually end in a defeat, but - thanks to that messing about with the side against Switzerland, after they'd already qualified from the group stage - Luiz Felipe Scolari's Portugal career has ended in two. You do wonder whether there is a danger of teams becoming too clever. Certainly last night, Portugal looked disjointed for the opening half hour or so, as though they were trying to recover their rhythm; Germany, meanwhile, seemed fresh and energised following victory - albeit scruffy - over Austria in their final group game. You wonder whether Croatia might suffer something similar to Turkey tonight [Turkey are 4.9 to win the game] or Spain against Italy [Italy are 3.25] on Sunday.

Worse, Scolari's record in his last four tournaments now reads, in
order: winner (with Brazil in the 2002 World Cup), runner-up (with Portugal at Euro 2004), semi-finals (Portugal, World Cup 2006) and now quarter-finalists. It's not necessarily the case, but it would be easy to look at that and see a manager in decline.

Worse still, there was a moment yesterday when he took on the shape of Graham Taylor in the notorious "Do I not like that" documentary that charted England's failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. After Ronald Koeman had not been sent off for a professional foul on David Platt, Taylor ran down the touchline to berate the linesman: "Tell your mate out there, he's just cost me my job." Last night Big Phil, incensed by something far more trivial launched into the fourth official, although at least he was perpetually hitching up his trousers as he did so. "It's my job," those of us in the front rows clearly heard him screech. "This is my job...."

Not any more it's not.

Tags: Euro 2008 Betting, Germany, Portugal, Quarter-finals, Scolari