Economipolitical kind of thing is all Greek to us
VIEW FROM THE COUCH:GERMANY V GREECE and John Giles was joined on the RTÉ panel by Constantin Gurdgiev, his cat, Brian Lucey, Peter Mathews, Morgan Kelly, David McWilliams, Paul Somerville, Eddie Hobbs, Paul Krugman, Mick Wallace, Pearse Doherty, Richard Boyd Barrett, a cardboard cut-out of Enda Kenny, Jedward and Twink, and Vincent Browne stepping in for Bill O’Herlihy for the occasion that was in it.
Constantin and Gilesie came to blows over whether or not the inflation-growth trade-off is non-linear, their dispute turning particularly ugly when the issue of Papastathopoulos’s defensive abilities were raised, a distressed Jedward screaming “OMG! Stop!” and Twink telling the pair to zip up their ticky-tackies.
Dreams? They’d freak you out sometimes.
Mind you, they’re not always wide of the mark. If you’d dropped in for the pre-match chat you might have thought football was more than a game, maybe even an economipolitical kind of thing.
Eamon Dunphy: “I think the Greek nation has been humiliated over the last two to three years, wrongly, and . . . ”
Austerity Bill: “Well, a lot of it has been their own fault, let’s be frank about it.”
Eamon: “Well, it isn’t actually.”
Liam Brady: “Stop! Break it up!” (placing a hand over the mouth of the panel’s Mario Balotelli).
Ah now, time to get away from the economipolitics. Over to ITV, then.
“The Big Bad Bossy Germans take on the Proud Turbulent Greeks,” said Adrian Chiles, telling us that Greece was a proud country “on the ropes”, but “the Germans are not known for being short of national pride themselves”.
“The Greeks will be politically motivated tonight, won’t they? They blame Germany for their woes,” he said to Gareth Southgate. “They might have to take a bit of responsibility for themselves in that respect,” he replied, having eerily transmogrified into Bill.
So, back to RTÉ in the hope of some footballcentric chat. Would Greece’s 9-0-1 tactics trouble the Germans, for example? Eamon?
“The people who caused this problem in Greece were not the ordinary people. It was the political class, same as in this country. The Greeks have been humiliated, this is the home of democracy, this is a great nation – and I think that will play tonight.”
Austerity Bill swivelled in his chair, which suggested he was dubious, and then almost lost his teeth when he told us Stephen Alkin was talking with Greek journalist “Giotis Panangiotas” over in Gdansk. “We can do it,” Giotis cried, but you couldn’t but note that the battery depicted on his t-shirt appeared to be running out of charge.
