UEFA Euro 2008, the latest recycling of code base from EA Sports, is your typical soccer game. (In fact, it’s basically FIFA ‘08 with a few minor additions and new players.) However, the nationalistic aspect has been played up. You can fight for the opportunity to captain your country’s team. You get to see your flag fly high when you play.

You also even get to hear your country’s anthem play before your matches. Unless, of course, you’re from Northern Ireland. Instead of hearing “God Save the Queen“, Northern Ireland’s anthem as a constituent country of the United Kingdom, players of Northern Ireland will hear “The Soldier’s Song“. That would be the anthem of the Republic of Ireland. Oops.

(You don’t want this fellow to rise from the dead, EA Sports, to put his boot in your arse; he was just ornery enough to do it)

No big deal, though, right? It’s not like Northern Ireland has been at the center of a bloody ethnocentric war between Unionists and Nationalists for generations that could be inflamed in the slightest by seeing Northern Ireland’s proud sports warriors vow to play for the Republic of Ireland in song. Thank goodness, right?
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• MR. IRRELEVANT believes that the Wizards signing Gilbert Arenas to a $126 million deal is worth the mountain of moolah.

• DC SPORTS BLOG learns that cute young girls love to have their pictures taken with Clinton Portis, even if they don’t know who he is.

• JOE SPORTS FAN changes the channel, as ESPN dedicates a full hour of airtime to announce the nominees for their ESPY Awards.

• Greg Oden heads back to school to take a biology class, but not before he stops by the Taste of Chicago.

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We enjoy getting the MAXIM-um fun out of NFL cheerleader photo shoots.

• We wish a happy birthday to Bolivian basketball babe Claudia Porras!

• Manny Ramirez socks the Sox’s traveling secretary over ticket troubles.

• A conservative website runs news of sprinter Tyson Gay by referring to him as Tyson Homosexual.

• Spain’s Euro 2008 success was bad news for Madrid’s erotic film festival.

• Now that Charles Barkley is all paid up, who’s Steve Wynn to sue now? Answer: The NBA & Alonzo Mourning’s charity organization.

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• LARRY BROWN SPORTS flips through the channels, and finds FOX cameras catching the Cubs’ Kerry Wood flipping the bird in the bullpen.

Wood really shouldn’t be doing that - such hand gestures might land Kerry right back on the DL.

• Stephanie Stradley of AOL FANHOUSE floats along rumors of Cedric Benson joining up with the Houston Texans.

• DEADSPIN discovers that Kevin Love is well-versed in the Cheez Doodle aura of Stephen A. Smith heckling.

• WITH LEATHER turns green at the news that this year’s Olympic sailing competition is threatened by algae.

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Congratulations once again to the Spanish national soccer team, or “La Furia Roja,” as they’re known in their home country, for shaking off the years of frustration, failure, and choking since their last Euro win in 1964.

But that success took its toll in parts back home: the International Erotic Film Festival of Barcelona reported a serious decline in attendance on Saturday. Aiming for the same audience, the festival had obviously expected the Spaniards to do their usual (up to now) disappearing act in the knock out rounds.

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• The NEW YORK TIMES volleys up the tale of one obsessive AVP fan.

• SIGNAL TO NOISE serves up SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s lead tennis writer defending Justin Gimelstob’s little anti-Anna Kournikova rant.

• ESPN’s Pedro Gomez discovers the stadium that hosted Sunday’s Euro 2008 final also once hosted Jewish inmates as a World War II Nazi prison.

• PRO FOOTBALL TALK can’t stand the new Chiefs’ stadium policy, and you won’t stand for it, either.

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So remember when we told you that today offered some of the best spectacle an American soccer fan could hope for and that you should drop everything and tune in for the day? We remember it like it was this morning. Yeah. We’ve discussed this before, but we’re kind of an idiot.

In the primer, the L.A. Galaxy wilted in the D.C. heat to lose the Battle of the Abbreviated Locale Names, 4-1. D.C. United held such control that Known Invalid Ben Olsen even participated in a little ball touching near the end. Still… hey, scoring, right? That’s good, no?

If so, perhaps we should have dropped that hint around Germany or Spain. In a word: gack.

In the Euro 2008 final, Spain dominated much of the match but could only score once in the 33rd minute. Captain Hair (aka Fernando Torres) outclassed German keeper Jens Lehmann for the only recordable action of the final.
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