Hard to be neutral with foes drawn together

TV VIEW:"AGINCOURT, WATERLOO and now Donetsk – France versus England, live on ITV," said Clive Tyldesley. He did, seriously.

You know, it’s that class of talk, despite all the efforts to be grown-up about this, and the weighing of Thierry Henry’s misdeed against Trevelyn’s stockpiling of corn, that possibly left a few hoping England met their Waterloo in Ukraine yesterday.

That leaning, though, had to measured against the fact that Roy Hodgson appears to be a thoroughly good man – but then, to balance that, there’s John Terry.

Decisions, decisions. Neutrality, as is often our national wont, seemed like the sensible option for this tussle, but then Clive did his thing. So, allez on you good things.

“Our lack of hope has become our chief source of hope,” said Adrian Chiles chirpily as he welcomed his ITV viewers to England’s Euro 2012 opener. “Obviously we don’t want to do what Ireland did last night,” he added, just as we were beginning to warm to the fella.

Two thirds of his panel, though, Jamie Carragher and Gareth Southgate, were decidedly more positive. Jamie (who’s from Liverpool, lest you were unsure), reckoning the middle-ish bit of the French team – Ribery, Nasri, Malouda, Cabaye and Diarra – was “not that good”, a stinging rebuke to those who tried to insert most of them in to their currently-on-minus-points Fantasy Euro 2012 Football team. (The same folk, incidentally, who laughed at the notion that the archaic Andriy Shevchenko might add a goal or two to the line-up. Morto).

Gareth agreed with Jamie, reminding us of how often Nasri in particular had been rubbish for Manchester City in the season not long ended, suggesting he sometimes “disappeared” entirely in games. For those who took that as a cue to place a tenner on the Nasri lad scoring, may ye choke on yer Champagne and lobster thermidor.

Patrick Vieira gave a marginally alternative view, although, not to be too harsh about it, he hadn’t been all that convincing at the weekend when he attempted to analyse the French team for ITV, forgetting the name of his nation’s goalkeeper and asking for assistance from his fellow panellists in identifying the French left back. “Um, the United player,” he said, giving them a hint. “EVRA!!,” they replied. “Ah yes,” he said. “Huh,” wondered the rest of us.

Over to Clive and his sidekick Andy Townsend. Clive, the Engelbert Humperdinck of football commentating, somewhat backtracking on his hawkish “Agincourt, Waterloo” battle cry by conceding that England had “a better record in the Eurovision Song Contest” than they do in the European Championships.

But then Joleon Lescott scored and all kinds of everything reminded Clive of 1966. “Is it too early to get over-confident again,” he asked, while a chorus of “football’s coming home” filled the stadium. Andy advised caution, but there was no deflating Clive.

And then Nasri scored. And he made a kind of a “ssssssh” gesture, which, you assume, was directed towards Jamie and Gareth – and, maybe, Clive.

“Joe Hart, I think he’ll want to save this,” said Andy while analysing the replay of the goal, and he was more than likely right.

All square at half-time, then, and it was much ado about nothing after the break. There were times it even had the look of that Italia 90 Entente Cordiale between Ireland and the Dutch, both sides seemingly happy-enough-ish with the draw.

Clive wasn’t happy, though. At all. With the ref, that is. He reckoned he was being a bit too cordiale towards the French, and Andy agreed, wholeheartedly. But he still found time to praise Ribery by noting that he’s a danger when he runs “across the ground”. As opposed to being, say, riskily airborne.

Come full-time, Hodgson doffed his cap to the ref, alleging he was fair, which seemed like a bit of “ssssssh” in Clive’s direction.

Vieira, meanwhile, had no major complaints, happy enough with the draw. “If you want to win games, you need to score goals,” he said. Jamie and Gareth nodded.

PS We’ll trust our emailer Brendan on this: “Peter Collins identified Anatoliy Tymoshchuk as ‘Too Much, Chuck’, which phrase would normally put me in mind of Cilla Black’s admonition to her Bobby that he was hitting the booze a bit.”

You know, apart from our setback against Croatia, this tournament is proving to be just a little bit terrific.