14 DAY TRIAL // The national football team of England didn't make it to Euro 2008, the famous European Championship which debuts today, the 7th of June. Everyone knows that, and everyone also knows that England was outrun by Croatia and Russia in the qualifying group E for the final Euro tournament. Thus, England stays home while both Croatia and Russia are waiting for their kickoff matches on Euro 2008.
Well, for fans of England that can be happy with a not-at-all-real presence of their team at Euro 2008, there's a new mobile game to play: MCM Eur'08, created by SANCO, a London-based company.
MCM Eur'08 is a game that allows players to manage either England or other 15 teams via their mobile phones. Except England, all 15 teams present in the new game are qualified for Euro 2008 in real life too. So this means that there's a team qualified for the real Euro 2008 that was "eliminated" in the MCM Eur'08 game to make room for England. And that team is Romania, winner of the qualifying group G and part of the Euro 2008 group C, together with France, Italy and the Netherlands. We can't possibly know why exactly did the creators of MCM Eur'08 eliminate Romania from their game, but we do know that in it, England is in the above-mentioned group C, competing with the likes of Thierry Henry, Del Piero and van Nistelrooy.
Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong in wanting your favorite team to go to Euro 2008 and there's also nothing wrong in making a game that puts an unqualified team among the qualified ones. What I don't get is why they had to take out Romania.
Anyway, all those who want England in and Romania out for Euro 2008 can check out MCM Eur'08 on the official website of the game. Note that the game is only compatible with handsets manufactured by Nokia and Sony Ericsson.
What's left to say is that I wish a lot of virtual luck to the MCM Eur'08 players who will try to virtually lead England to a virtual trophy. The rest of the football fans will probably enjoy the real tournament, where teams like Romania are actually playing real football, on the field and not on a cell phone.
May the best team win and may England play better in the qualifying matches for Euro 2012.