Since you asked, Exeter City beat Cambridge by one goal to nil last week and thus reclaimed their place in The Football League. Which is great, firstly because they are my favourite team, secondly and thirdly because of that too, but also because in the past years, the club has gotten rid of their debts and, while at it, of the crooks who caused those debts too. Now it is a healthy club, run by its fans, strongly embedded into the local community and with players who don’t get paid ridiculous amounts of money. It is good to like a likeable club.

If you don’t care about such things when choosing a team to support, you might be delighted about the sixteen unlikeable teams who will contest the European Championships starting next week. (Mind you, I would lie if I said I’m not going to follow it at all. In fact, watching Portugal beat the Netherlands in KlaipÄ—da four years ago, with all the players’ names being Lithuanianised —Japas Stamas, Vandersaras— is one of my personal football highlights.) For lack of participating team from the British Isles, you might even consider supporting ‘Holland’, as the Dutch national team is generally known as. In today’s Guardian, one Geoff Hurst gave five reasons for doing so. The Dutch, for example, play really good football. Also they have really good players. These players, furthermore, play football really well and some of these players are even better than others. Finally, there are loads of tulips in the country. Which, if you asked me, are rather sad reasons for supporting a team, are they not? Unless, of course, you are really into tulips.

(Geoff Hurst was a footballer who played for Stoke City and West Ham United and now spends his days telling tedious anecdotes involving tulips.)