The European Championships of Evil - Knockout Time!

It’s crunch time in our European Championships of Evil, which looks at which countries have been evil in history and evil in football and then rewards them for it. The group stages are out of the way and the teams that failed to qualify have gone home to their loving families, well-fed kittens and politically correct TV shows. With them gone, it’s time to forget the vaguely evil and focus on the seriously evil, separate the petulant divers from the on-pitch man-slaughterers, turn the bad taste fancy dress revellers away at the door and invite the real propagators of mass genocide in to sip on pints of alcoholic baby's blood.   QUARTER-FINALS
Russia 2-1 Holland

A face-off between evil in history and evil on the football pitch. It's Stalin versus Nigel de Jong. It's fields full of dead Tsarist-era serfs versus a field full of petulant men in orange bitching each other out. Rival Dutch fans may like to chant “Gas, gas, gas / Jews into the gas” at fans of Ajax, but Russian leaders over the years have actually gone one step further and put their citizens “into the gas”, or at least its Siberian equivalent (snow prison).

Germany 4-2 Greece

In a repeat of the real thing, Germany sail through, crushing their economically stricken dependents with a hammer made of Wagner, the Third Reich and earnest bands talking about how much they’re influenced by Kraftwerk (hi, Coldplay).    Italy 0-1 France

In a departure from the real thing, Samir Nasri wins a game for his country. His teammates hate him, he’s had about 46 tantrums at this tournament alone, he called a journalist a “son of a whore” and he starred in this corporate monstrosity of a video in which he waddles through Manchester City’s offices in the kind of low V-neck T-shirt that even the guys in Blue wouldn’t wear. As for Italy, there's the brilliance of Andrea Pirlo, which has swept away thoughts of constant match-fixing and consistent ankle-kicking. Having said that, this cartoon of Balotelli as King Kong is definitely pretty awk:

But not awk enough. Allez les Bleus plus de mal. England 2-0 Spain Now, I know reading about how great Spain are at passing is getting boring but let’s face it; they all seem like decent guys. You probably wouldn't find them glassing a DJ for refusing to play Phil Collins or racially abusing each other. Historically, though, it's closer, as both sides have produced some terrific colonial villains. Spain’s Hernán Cortés convinced the Aztecs that being able to ride a Horse and having pale skin made him a God, and then slaughtered them all. And a measure of how many bastards are lurking in Britain's past is how relatively unsung Reginald Dyer is. The “butcher of Amritsar” ordered the massacre of thousands of protesting Punjabis in the Indian city in 1919. Overall, though, England's footballers win out.

SEMI-FINALS

Russia 2-0 France

Which is more evil: a man (Napoleon) who wants to conquer an enormous country or a country which is so enormous, cold and full of disease that it can’t ever be conquered? Obviously the latter. It’s totally natural to be like Napoleon and want to conquer shit. It’s totally unnatural to be like Russia, all large and full of snow and dead people. Russia steamrollers into the final, backed up by a history of KGB-monitored domestic football and FC Anzhi Makhachkala, football's equivalent of the bad X-Men.

Germany 2-2 England (England win 4-3 on penalties)

In the tightest game of the tournament, JT’s boys sneak past the Hitler XI on penalties. After all, before someone told Hitler he hadn't gotten into art school and he lost the plot, Germany was all about sentimental novelists and radical philosophers. Us English have a more insidious history of evil that has left the world thinking we’re a bunch of depraved gentlemen perverts who spend our lives longing for the return of the days when we ruled the waves and fucked whores and servant boys from Bombay to Baghdad to Brighton. In football terms, the Germans have the oh-so-hip Bundesliga, in which local talent is nurtured and competition remains untouched by the arms dealers and oil thieves of the Premier League. Lionhearts edge it.

THE FINAL   
England 3-2 Russia

Call me biased, call me a desperate PR man for England’s flagging evil industry, but damn it, the English have a long, proud history of crafty rape and slightly weird pillage. And you know what? The world liked it. They needed a bunch of pith helmet wearing sodomites to blame shit on. They needed a collection of fruity voiced deviants who smile to your face before stabbing you in the back to come along and rule them like a king.

The great thing about English evil is that, for a while, it was everywhere. Russian evil has always been domestic, Stalin Robbie Williams to England’s Mumford and Sons. I mean sure, large swathes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia suffered under the Soviet Union but come on, the English crossed seas to bring evil to the world. They toured hard. And in John Terry, England has Europe’s premier evil footballer, a man so hateable that cheering him on feels like an act of delicious immorality. Here’s to you, John: you may not be a European Championship winner, but you are a European Championship of Evil winner. Now collect your prize…

Follow Oscar on Twitter: @oscarrickettnow

More into booze than evil? Try this:

The VICE Euro 2012 Drinking Competition!