new blog: The Fiver | Away from the nasty tournament

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CAREFUL! IT'S MR ROY!

Portugal take on Spain tonight in a battle for the heart and soul of football which will see the Spanish tiki-totalitarians prevail by half a goal to nil. They will therefore earn themselves the right to watch Howard Webb prance around for 89 minutes on Sunday, and maybe use the other 60 seconds to notch the 0.000000000000000001 of a goal required to secure the Henri Delaunay Trophy, which they'll lift just before the sport stops forever. But while all this means Cristiano Ronaldo will this evening depart the arena in hot tears, having failed to keep any of his attempts to belabour the ball into the net from 55 yards in the stadium, he'll nevertheless have retained one sliver of his dignity – on account of having at least displayed the ambition to do a soccer goal!

The same can't be said for England, whose players gave up hope after a few minutes against Italy, and whose manager stopped bothering with pipe dreams such as going forward sometime during the 1970s. Happily for Mr Roy, he's now back home in Blighty, away from the nasty tournament, where there's no pressure to attempt to achieve anything tangible. He's sitting down at the table in his house, with Mrs Roy, enjoying a resolutely bland meal of warm pork chop, warm peas and warm potatoes which have been boiled in water with no salt. "Would you like some salt, Mr Roy?" "No thanks, Mrs Roy." Dare to dream? Cor, not likely!

Still, even someone as careful as Mr Roy searches out a little frisson of excitement every now and then. He usually gets his kicks by bristling during interviews at any perceived slight. And so it was today when he responded to Fabio Capello's rather witty quip referencing the disparity between Wayne Rooney's decent form for Manchester United, and his rather more indecent form in an ill-fitting England shirt. "Maybe he only understands Scottish," kapowed Capello yesterday, a zinger of beautiful simplicity, and one which naturally had to be explained very slowly to the press pack, who then ran off and blew it up into some tedious row.

"It's a bit cheap to kid on a player who was so anxious to do well," responded Mr Roy today, snaffling the bait, in an interview with the Talksport Wireless Company. Capello could, of course, have been even cheaper by questioning whether a manager should allow his best player, one who struggles when coming back from breaks, to clown around in Vegas ahead of a major international tournament. But he'd clearly done enough to get Mr Roy's goat as it was. "Rooney's attitude was magnificent. Capello is entitled to his opinion, I suppose. In the final game he didn't play to the level he can, but that's what football is about." Sure is! And with that, Mr Roy went away to plot England's comfortable mid-table place in their upcoming World Cup qualifying group, and dream about tomorrow's tea: egg and chips, with an adventurous dash of brown sauce. Yum!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"We can honestly say it was not among the best products of our talented cartoonist … if certain readers found the cartoon offensive, we apologise" – Gazzetta dello Sport manage to say they're sorry for an illustration depicting Mario Balotelli as King Kong, while actually suggesting that readers who took offence were the problem.

FIVER LETTERS

"Perhaps you actually credit Phil Brown with too much intelligence (yesterday's Fiver)? It's more likely he thinks 'homophobic' means being scared to leave your own home, rather than mixing the word up with 'xenophobic', which I imagine he thinks describes someone with an aversion to warrior princesses?" – Peter Ivate (and 1,056 others).

"Perhaps Phil Brown actually meant to say 'agoraphobic'? A fear of wide-open spaces would seem to adequately explain why Andrea Pirlo might be hesitant to pit himself against predominantly English midfields week-in, week-out. Either that or Phil got Pirlo and Antonio Cassano mixed up" – Gareth Patterson.

"I had to kench at your feeble attempts to jargogle us readers with the language being used in yesterday's Fiver. We're not all the hoddypeaks you think we are, although any more of your perissology and I'll be forced to take my tea-timely email custom elsewhere" – Simon Jeffs.

"I can't help wondering if these fancy words surfaced while the Fiver was reading contemporary accounts of England's glory years in international football, circa 1600. Or, perhaps, the Fiver is being pressured to raise its readers' level of erudition to make them more attractive to the Guardian Soulmates set?" – John Armitage.

"Steve Ash suggesting the abolition of Scottish football (yesterday's Fiver letters) is missing the point big style. Thanks to the Pope's O'Rangers Tax Case blog, justice is finally being done in Scotland with clubs voting against their short-term financial interests and in favour of forcing the Scottish FA to respect its own rules. All because of that one blog and the fans who, in their hundreds of thousands, are forcing their clubs to act with decency. If only there was something similar in England" – Geoff Saunders.

"I know it's hard for some to resist having a dig at the Scottish, but I think Steve underestimates the resilience of Scottish fitba. For example, despite their comparatively meagre resources, over the last decade the Queen's Celtic have still managed to beat the likes of Barcelona, Milan and Juventus in European competition. To anyone not familiar with the general standard of SPL football, it's hard to convey the unlikelihood of these results. It'd be like watching Manchester United get turned over by some no-marks from the Swiss leag … oh" – James A Crane.

"Re: Steve's suggestion that the Pope's O'Newco Rangers will start in the Scottish equivalent to the Ryman's Premier League. Isn't the Scottish equivalent of the Ryman's Premier League the Clydesdale Bank Premier League?" – Steve Moseley.

Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.

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BITS AND BOBS

Gareth Bale has signed a new four-year deal with Tottenham. "The club is progressing and I want to be a part of that," said the Welshman, whose side made Big Cup two seasons back, but have failed to qualify since then.

Thin-skinned France midfielder Samir Nasri regrets dropping eff bombs on a French hack and insists he loves Les Bleus. "This is a personal matter between me and a few journalists. I will explain when the time comes," he said, darkly.

Steven Davis wants to leave Pope's O'Newco Rangers for the sake of his career. "I need to be playing at the highest possible level," he said, suggesting he was ill-advised in joining them in the first place.

Dubai-based Al Shabab are the latest to cut Michael Owen down to size. "Michael Owen is on the downhill right now. He's not one of our options," sniped vice-president Khalid Bu Humaid.

Olivier Giroud has revealed that he signed for Arsenal rather than Chelsea because they were nice to him. "I feel it is a club that takes big care before signing a player, notably considering human values. Chelsea is very nice, but I am not convinced [Roberto] Di Matteo knows who I am," he sniffed.

And, in a neat twist from the old Nigerian prince routine, seven fake sheikhs in Spain have been banged up after attempting to convince Getafe president Angel Torres to deposit millions of euros into their accounts in exchange for a nefarious promise to send him several million more in return.