The first of what I hope to be many examples of lazy and substandard football journalism: Paul Wilson in the Observer on 3 June 2012.

You can click on the link to see what he says for yourselves.

First up, he makes the odd assertion that “praise for Spain has been slightly grudging”.  Is this right?  Mr Wilson certainly doesn’t trouble us with any supporting evidence for this slightly perverse contention.

He then goes on to suggest that had Germany won the European Championships in 1976 (which would have made them winners of three consecutive tournaments as a Spanish win in 2012 would) it would have been less of an achievement than a hypothetical Spanish victory in 2012.  His reasoning for this seems to be that, back int he day, there was only a 4 team tournament to negotiate.

Although that is correct, it ignores the fact that 32 countries entered the 1976 competition (at a time when there were considerably fewer independent countries in Europe).  Eight teams topped their respective groups and went into the quarters.  Only the semis and final (and 3rd/4th placed play-off) were held as a “tournament” but that shouldn’t be used to denigrate the West Germans’ achievement: they still beat (or, in 1976, nearly beat) everyone put in front of them.  Quite why that is less of an achievement is far from clear.

He then goes onto make a series of highly generalised remarks about how difficult it is to predict anything in this tournament.  What I would like to read from a professional journalist is more than make the following sweeping statements that pretty much anyone could:

• “it is easy to spot that Denmark face perhaps the toughest task”
• “Poland and Ukraine are the weakest teams on paper”
• “home advantage should never be underestimated”
• “it would be foolish to dismiss Oleh Blokhin’s team on the grounds that Andriy Shevchenko is too old or the strikers do not appear to have enough goals in them”
• “France and England will be expected to progress from Group D”
• “No one who witnessed two woeful sets of displays at the last World Cup would sensibly suggest France and England ought to be favourites for anything”
• “No one knows quite what to expect of England”
• “Like all good tournaments this one contains a genuine group of death”
• “The Germans, as ever, will be fancied to go a long way”
• “Spain are firm favourites”
• “Goalscoring ability could well be the deciding factor in Group A”