SkyDaz Banter: Pre Bolton

Europe! There I’ve said it. If anyone admonishes you for using the word tell them I said it first. Blame me. Europe is a big expanse of land kept apart from us by a small stretch of water. God bless the English Channel. In Europe they speak many different languages, have strange customs and play football in unusual styles in exotic sounding leagues, Bundesliga, Serie A and La Liga.

I have said all along that Blues are not good enough to play in Europe, yet. I know we already play in Europe by virtue of England being part of the continent but you all know what I mean.

Qualification for the European competitions is complicated enough. The top four in the Premiership automatically qualify for the Champions League and after that the rest gets a bit confusing. For example if Arsenal play Manchester United in the FA Cup Final then that provides additional European places by virtue of the fact that, and quite rightly so, they will compete in the big European competition as opposed to the UEFA Cup. Or the Cup Winners Cup Winners Cup!

I’m not too sure how far down the Premier League you can finish and still enter a European competition. Don’t even get me started on the Fair Play League place up for grabs! Anyway all the Blues can do is finish as high as possible and let some overpaid jobsworth sitting in Brussels with nowt better to do than juggle football teams decide whether we can play with the foreigners or not. Once he’s finished checking the curvature of bananas that is!

Talking of Serie A I hope we don’t have to play any Italian clubs after the fiasco of the Anglo-Italian Cup, which incidentally was designed to improve relations! The memory I have of this ill fated tournament was the amount of red cards and I believe some ex players and officials are still required for interrogation by the Carabinieri. I think the crowds that turned up to view the spectacle in Italy could also be pedantic enough to question my use of the word ‘crowd’.

So before you think we should be ashamed of mentioning Europe consider some of the other teams who play in the tournaments every season. There are some Welsh teams with too many consonants in their names, Polish sides with scrabble scores in the hundreds and some teams who still clear animal waste from the pitch before kick off. I am not referring to the Scottish League by the way! We have as much right to partake in the available competitions as the likes of Charlton, Fulham, Southampton and even the little clubs like Villa and Liverpool.

I agree that, knowing Blues as long as we have, we would end up with a two-legged tie against the likes of Dnepropetrovsk, Young Boys (Switzerland) or MyPa (Finland). One I can’t pronounce and the others I wouldn’t want to play with. Don’t get me wrong there are some big name teams in Europe currently languishing in mid table who could make the lesser cup competitions like Marseille, Hamburg, Sampdoria and Atletico Madrid.

But don’t be embarrassed to dream about Europe. We have as good a chance as anyone and it would be great to have the chance of playing a top European team. Let’s just hope they are no better than Sunderland though, otherwise it will be a stunted adventure.

Article reproduced with kind permission of the BCFC official matchday programme.