Euro 2008, the big football tournament held every four years, has just kicked off in Switzerland and Austria.

Unfortunately England failed to qualify because they're not very good. In the hope of improving the quality of the team, they recently got an Italian manager, but what they actually need are Italian players.

The borders of Europe are growing ever wider, so wide in fact that Japan managed to qualify for the tournament this time around. They're in Group B, with a fair chance of getting through to the next stage.

Group A
1 Portugal
2 Czech Republic
3 Switzerland
4 Turkey

Group B
1 Austria
2 Japan
3 Germany
4 Poland

Group C
1 France
2 Netherlands
3 Italy
4 Romania

Group D
1 Greece
2 Russia
3 Spain
4 Sweden

The Japan national football team, hoping to do well at Euro 2008. The team are hoping the ref will fail to notice that there are 28 of them on the pitch.



The 1966 England team that won the World Cup. It was so long ago that most of them are now deceased.


The matches are being shown live on Japanese TV but the time difference means most matches are on in the early hours. This will likely result in many people catching up on their sleep in the daytime.

A Japanese football fan on his way to work....

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 08, 2008 at 6:53 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.