MY FAVOURITE player of the tournament so far has been an Austrian chap with a hideously trendy shock of blond hair, a perpetually distraught expression and the name of - so far as I could tell from the commentary - Penis. I like him because he appears never to have played football before. Against Poland he set off on one mazy dribble down the touchline without taking the ball with him. He ended in a tangled heap, his legs hideously twisted around one another, while the Polish defenders looked on in bemusement. I assume he’ll arrive on loan at the Den by the end of July. In the meantime it is a great shame that Portugal’s second-choice goalkeeper, Quim, is not available for the tournament. The potential Penis-Quim confrontation would have been a boon to all childish commentators, as I’m sure you can imagine. Foreigners and their funny names, huh?

What a wonderful tournament it has been so far. I should recant and apologise for having lampooned the BBC’s desperation to whip up interest with those “who will you support?” adverts. I’ve been sucked in and in typically parochial fashion have started to cheer for countries which are sort of England if you go back far enough - Holland, Germany, Sweden. It’s become northwest versus south for me and if next season’s domestic fixtures bring half as much pleasure as watching the French and Italians getting hammered by the excellent Holland, I will be a happy and very surprised man. Dutch is but the occasional glottal stop and odd misplaced fricative away from English, isn’t it?

On Radio 5 Live, Steve McClaren has been delivering his expert opinion as each game unfolds, for which we are all extremely grateful. Aside from saying that certain teams are “useful” or “tidy” (all of them, actually, especially Croatia, for some reason), he has broken off every now and then to say what a tragedy it is England aren’t there. To which the nation, as one, rises up and says: well, whose fault is that, you hopeless, superannuated, idiot? And even on this narrow point he is, as ever, absolutely wrong. As many others have suggested, the real joy of Euro 2008 is that England aren’t there, so we can watch in peace and tranquillity and admire the football rather than sit there grimly, expecting, and receiving, the worst. We do not have to suffer the thick-as-mince Wag slappers and their endless shopping expeditions, the relentless hype, or that horribly tight knot of foreboding which manifests itself in the colon whenever the England team take to the pitch in a serious game. A feeling which never dissolves even after the final whistle has blown. Our newspapers are not full of futile jingoistic bravado, extravagant expectations and endless discussions about the terrible fragility of metatarsal bones or the parlous mental state of the overpaid and, frankly, not very good squad. Nor indeed do we have to sit there as Lampard, Gerrard and Cole et al labour away, suffused with ennui, and dig out a late victory against some third world country with a population of about 189 through the expediency of Peter Crouch ripping the scalp from some poor Rastafarian in the penalty area. We can watch teams whose forwards have learnt to kick with both feet, Michael Owen, and wingers who occasionally take on defenders and even score goals. There are one or two poor teams in the tournament, for sure, but none as guileless and transparent and incompetent as England, surely – which is, of course, why they are not there. Even the cynical Greeks play with more verve and control, which is saying something. Watching Euro 2008 you are reminded it will take England a long time to compete successfully at this level, if ever. Only Austria, of the teams on display, appear as awkward in possession of the ball and wish to give it away to the opposition as if it were an atomic bomb. None have such a problem doing the basics: trapping a ball cleanly and dispatching it to a player on their own side. There is fluidity and imagination from all sides, except maybe the Russians, a team from which England could not secure a point when we most needed it.

And in these hugely entertaining battles between, largely, former members and allies of the Austro-Hungarian empire, there has been much to invigorate the soul – the Croatian defeat of Germany (which cheered up McClaren) and both games in which Holland have played. And then there’s Portugal and Spain. The only player in this tournament I dislike more than Cristiano Ronaldo is that histrionic little monkey Deco, but you would not bet against either for the championship; if you’re me, you sort of hope and pray that their patently porous defences will ship one or two crucial goals. According to the usually reliable pundits – Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson – Holland have a porous defence too, but so far they have shipped one goal in two games against the world champions and the runners-up, and scored seven. Would that England had a defence as porous as that, or an attack even one tenth as lethal, for that matter.