Comments on: Monday Marseillaise Blogging (Special Tuesday Edition)

By: ejh

ejh — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:52:47 +0000

The latter (there’s a link in my earlier post if one looks hard enough).

Feel sorry for the bloke who thought he’d won the competition though.

Henry was on the bench but did not come on.

By: Chris Brooke

Chris Brooke — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:21:23 +0000

MO’N: Didn’t TH come off the bench? Or am I just making things up.

ejh: Is the Spanish problem that the Dutch have already cornered the market in pro-Spanish lyrics (”I have always been loyal to the King of Spain”) and now they can’t find suitable alternatives of their own? Or is it Franco-related, somehow?

By: Martin O'Neill

Martin O'Neill — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:48:49 +0000

One forgets some of the less-than-stellar players who started in that Final! I’d completely blotted out all memory of Frank Lebouef, and it’s astonishing to recall that Stephave Guivarc’h (who, as I recall, couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo) was preferred to Thierry Henry. How long ago it seems already…

By: ejh

ejh — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:54:02 +0000

I saw the National Opera of Moldova perform Nabucco at the Albert Hall a few years ago. It was the most lacklustre opera I’ve ever seen. Watching them on the stage at the start, instead of seeming terrified at the imminent arrival of the Babylonians, they gave the impression that they were lounging in the street waiting for the betting shop to open.

The Italian anthem is another that opts to go on forever (whereas pretty much the only virtue of GSTQ is that it gets itself over with as soon as possible). Meanwhile the Spanish anthem still lacks any lyrics, and a good thing too.

By: cliche guevara

cliche guevara — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:47:57 +0000

This would be the game in which the French Secret Services drugged Ronaldo pre-match to ensure he’d be useless and so demoralise the whole team, leading to a 3-0 French win.

Remember, not all conspiracies are made up by people on the internet.

By: Stephen Marks

Stephen Marks — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:02:04 +0000

but by skipping straight to La Marseillaise at 5 minutes in, you miss the magnificently operatic anthem of Brazil at 3 minutes in, which lasts a full 2 minutes as against only one for France. It sounds like something that escaped from one of those pop productions of Aida by the National Opera of Moldova, complete with live elephants.

Grandiloquent and interminable operatic anthems seem a Latin American speciality. As I recall, Argentina and Venezuela both run Brazil a close joint second.