Italy Advances, France Goes Home, Olive Garden May Soon Lose Our Business

Your stylish Euro 2008 update brings you the latest styles from the Continent. You are unprepared for their daring cuts and dazzling fitness.

Dear Spain: please, please, please destroy Italy in your quarterfinal match. By destroy, I mean beat by at least a margin of eleventeen goals or more. Not unreasonable, especially considering how badly Italy played in this round of Euro 2008: skunked by Romania, destroyed by the Dutch, and finally meeting the geriatric French in a game they had to win in order to advance.

Fortunately, Italy found the one team more discombobulated than their own, and that was Les Bleus, who may have played their final game with astrology fan Raymond Domenech, a man so passionate he insisted on occasionally standing, holding out his arms, and then sitting back down in between the French blowing makeable shots on goal.

The game ended as soon as Luca Toni was taken down in the penalty box by Eric Abidal. Abidal, standing guiltily as Luca Toni was sprayed with fake blood by Italian trainers, earned a red card. Toni miraculously overcame the apparently fatal injuries, ten thousand American potential soccer fans vomited contemptuously in the direction of the sport (again), and Italy got both a point and a man advantage for the match.

I'd love to detail the rest of the match, but the fumes of disgust obscured my view. Whining, diving, cowardly Italy (Gianluigi Buffon, their superb goaltender, is excluded from blanket statement) go on to the quarterfinals, where if there is a raging Old Testament God in heaven, Italy will lose by eleventeen goals as requested in the first paragraph of this piece.

Oh, and they advance thanks to Holland refusing to lose a match in the name of all that is good and holy. Holland beat Romania 2-0.

P.S. I really, really don't like Italy, and if they win another game, much less the tournament, I will boycott the Olive Garden for life. (Double burn via implication that the Olive Garden is real Italian food, and not greasy noodles covered in bacon fat! Hey-o!!!!!!)

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.