Richard williams: england expects ... not very much - EGO E Cigs - Electronic Cigarette Starter Kit

England, who play their first match on Monday, have arrived at thetournament as no-hopers, and therein appears to lie their greatestcause for optimism. Football fans will remember that Greece wererank outsiders eight years ago but managed to beat the co-hosts,Portugal, in the final, thus replicating the achievement ofDenmark, whose players were recalled from their holidays in thesummer of 1992 to replace Yugoslavia, barred from participation byUN sanctions, and went on to take the trophy by defeating Germany.These precedents are being invoked to boost the morale of England,who arrived at their base in Poland as 14-1 underdogs withexpectations at an all-time low in a 16-team tournament due tofeature many past and present stars of the Premier League,including Cristiano Ronaldo, Robin van Persie and Fernando Torres,and for which Spain, the holders, are the strong favourites. Being England, however, they could not stay out of the spotlight orfree from controversy for long. Back in January the FootballAssociation lost their 6m-a-year Italian head coach, FabioCapello, following a disagreement over the decision to take thecaptaincy away from John Terry, who had been charged with directingracist insults at a black opponent during a Premier League match.Capello's replacement, Roy Hodgson, was appointed a mere 40 daysbefore the start of the tournament, and the team will play theirfirst match in the finals on Monday without several stars, lost toinjuries.

Also absent will be Wayne Rooney, who got himself sentoff for kicking an opponent in their final qualifying match andwill not reappear until the last of the three group matches,against Ukraine on 19 June. There was sadness, too, when JermainDefoe, the experienced Tottenham Hotspur striker, had to fly homefollowing the death of his father. He will return to the squad "indue course", the FA said. Everything is stacked against England, which is one reason for aperverse kind of hope.

But if they do exceed expectations it willnot be with the sort of football that has fans purring withpleasure. When Greece achieved their unlikely triumph eight yearsago it was through wilfully bypassing football's more graceful artsand concentrating on making themselves difficult to beat, and asimilar approach appears to have been adopted by Hodgson, whowatched his team beat Norway and Belgium in their two warm-upmatches by defending resolutely and scoring the only goal of thegame on each occasion. The 64-year-old is noted for his taste in literature hisfavourites include Kundera, Roth, Bellow and Zweig and, afterworking with clubs in eight countries, is credited with acosmopolitan outlook rare among English football managers. Histeams are noted for good organisation, the result of endless drillson the training pitch, but seldom produce exhilarating football,and his methods were not to the taste of the supporters ofLiverpool, where he was appointed manager in July 2010 anddismissed the following January. He restored his reputation at WestBromwich Albion, confirming a suspicion that he is at his best withteams of moderate ability and expectations.

If that is so, he has found the right niche with England. Illusionsof grandeur fostered by the media during the era of Sven-G ranEriksson and David Beckham were finally dispelled during the 2010World Cup in South Africa, when it became apparent that the membersof the so-called "golden generation" were never going to fulfiltheir promise. The current squad's average age is 26, but suchyoung players as 18-year-old Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain of Arsenal and21-year-old Danny Welbeck of Manchester United give cause foroptimism about a future extending beyond a tournament that ends inKiev on 1 July. Off the pitch England have made themselves the centre of a debateabout racism, and not just within their own ranks. Following thePanorama programme, Michel Platini, once one of the world'sgreatest players, and now the president of Uefa, Europeanfootball's governing body, confirmed that referees would respond tothe taunting of black players by halting matches.

But Uefa's record on punishing racism is not impressive and hiscredibility was hardly reinforced when he announced that any playerwho made a unilateral decision to respond by leaving the pitchwould be given a yellow card. Allegations of racism are also the key to the storm of criticalcomment aimed at Hodgson's refusal to recall Rio Ferdinand, theveteran Manchester United defender and former England captain, tothe squad after last week's injury to the Chelsea centre back GaryCahill. Ferdinand had been omitted, according to Hodgson, for "footballreasons" a claim disputed by many observers, who pointed outthat Anton Ferdinand, Rio's brother, was the player allegedlyabused last October by Terry. Sol Campbell, the former England defender, threatened in a Guardian column on Thursday to return his 73 caps if it were ever proved that thedecision had been made "because of race". Hodgson had been expectedto give a press conference on Thursday, but did not appear.

It wasthe result, the FA said, of a misunderstanding over his schedule.He will now speak to the media on Sunday, the day before the matchagainst France, when he can expect a barrage of questions about aplayer who is not present and very few inquiries about his team'stactics. Although England's group matches are all taking place in Ukraine,the manager and his squad are rather puzzlingly based in Krakow,several hundred miles away in Poland. On Thursday the players wentfor a walk and could be seen chatting to fans in a square neartheir city centre hotel, fulfilling the FA's promise that theywould "interact" with supporters and gain first-hand experience oftheir environment after being accused of shutting themselves awayin South Africa two years ago. Talking to Gary Lineker on the BBC's Football Focus before thedeparture for Poland, Hodgson emphasised the need to restoreoptimism to the squad and surround the players with a positiveatmosphere after a series of dispiriting performances in majortournaments.

"We have to try to get back to putting the church backinto the village," he said, leading to much Google searching andspeculation that this must be a saying picked up during hisemployment in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland or Italy. Suchenigmatic remarks were not characteristic of his predecessors in ajob that has been said to possess the capacity to relieve itsincumbents of their sanity. If things go wrong those words will nodoubt be presented as evidence for the prosecution.

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