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In three weeks Greek football went from purgatory to paradise, but Paul Pomonis is not sure whether the euphoria will survive Colin Moynihan being called in for advice

“Greeks always exaggerate, whether in sorrow or in joy,” was Otto Rehhagel’s rather unkind re­mark when, minutes after the Euro 2004 final, a Greek TV reporter asked him to comment on the explosion of mass euphoria that greeted his team’s astonishing crowning as European champions. Anx­ious to preserve his seasoned pro image, King Otto had for once got it wrong. If anything, even in jubilation both players’ and fans’ reactions to the “fairytale of Portugal” were characterised by stunned incredulity and down to earth realism. “How on earth did you pull such a stunt?” a reporter asked striker Demis Niko­laides a few hours after the final. “I have no idea,” came the honest reply, while scorer Angelos Charisteas urged the fans back home to party on as “they would most probably never experience anything remotely similar in their lifetimes”.

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In the first of a series of articles looking at how the tournament was received at home, Al Needham strokes his chin, sifts through the discarded plastic flagpoles and wonders where all those crosses of St George came from. And does it mean anything anyway?

It’s good for a country and its people to take stock and re-evaluate its sense of identity every now and then, and I did just that in a bus shelter last month, sitting next to an elderly Jamaican woman, watching the endless procession of cars with plastic white flags with red crosses clipped to their windows. Where had they come from? It wasn’t this bad in 2002. Had a giant sandcastle firm been made bankrupt, or something? Was it just a local thing? And what did it all mean? “Look at these fools,” said the Jamaican woman, all of a sudden. “They don’t know what it means to be patriotic. In Jamaica, we have the flag up all year round, not for some… pussyclaat football game.” Then she sucked her teeth. For a very long time.

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Portugal resident Phil Town watched the local reaction to the national team's efforts change from despair to delight and back again over the course of Euro 2004

Well, it was, according to UEFA chief Lennart Johan­sson, the best-organised European champ­ion­ship ever. It did not have any cases of doping, and terrorism of any kind was thankfully conspicuous by its absence. It was also, of recent editions, the least scarred by hooliganism. Banning orders slapped on around 3,000 of England’s “finest”, plus a similar number from Germany, will have helped that, but so will a general sense, on the ground, that having a good time might just be better fun than kicking heads. And the mild-mannered and relatively non-aggressive nature of the Portuguese gave this mood a valuable helping hand.

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Beginning our European Championship reports from writers in Portugal, Philip Cornwall offers an upbeat assessment of the England experience, where expectations were met on the pitch and exceeded off it – even if the portents for 2006 are shakier

C autious optimism, last month’s WSC editorial sug­gested, was in order on and off the pitch for England at Euro 2004. I should have paid attention. Ten min­utes from time against Portugal I was edging nervously past caution and starting to dream. Then again, what happened next was a long, long way from the England nightmares of the past. The national team have won two European quarter-finals: in 1968 against Spain in a home-and-away tie, and against the same opponents in 1996 when, as hosts, they won on penalties after the opposition had had a goal disallowed controversially. Any sensible analysis of England’s exit has to have this context: it rarely gets any better than this and could so easily have done so.

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What's going on in Mitteleuropa these days? Ian Plenderleith discovers that the angst of the low crowds in the heart of the continent is alleviated only by poetic team names, a healthy beer culture, fine Canadian-made hats and Hungarian goose liver cooked in a patriotic red paprika

One quiet morning recently I found myself sitting at the computer reading out loud the results from the 26th round of play in the 2003-04 season of the Slovak second division. Dusla Sala 1 Tatran Presov 2. It sounded so good that I did it again. There was a certain kind of poetry to it and a special feeling that comes with knowing you are likely the only person in the world right now sitting at his computer and reading out loud the results from Slovakia’s division two.

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