”Among countries, the latest football (soccer) jersey style seems to include having the national emblem over that of the involved football federation.”

Among newly formed or reformed/reborn countries, yes, eg FSU nations. Its saves them having to dream up a federation crest if they just use the national one with a football pictured beside it or such like. Its not a nationalism thing. Ireland, England, even the USA use a federation crest.

”From what I saw on TV, the BBC (as aired in Amercia) seemed to downplay the result of the game.”
They had no choice really. Blighty is all but out of Euro 2008 now, short of a miracle occuring. England will hardly even beat Croatia.

”The beef is on a call and the pitch.”
The referee made a wrong decision – it isnt even a matter of debate. The foul occured outside the box but a penalty was given. But that’s football, and ever country/team has been done wrong by officials at one time or other. None of the officials would have been Russian; its against the rules. They are likely to have been from the ref’s country of origin.

”No Englishman is ever fairly beaten’

- George Bernard Shaw. (St. Joan.)

Still funny today.”

Trust an Irishman to come up with that one!) But England were hard done by in Moscow, no doubt about it.

Mike, I’ll be in Moscow in December and if you want I’ll get you a Russia football jersey and post it to you. They arent expensive there at all, but mail-order will cost you a lot.

I was never a great believer in collective guilt.

I hadn’t heard that until now – very unclassy. On behalf of sensible Englishmen, I apologise.

In the lead up to it, the Beeb had a relatively high profile feature on Russian football (soccer) hooliganism.

However, the same packaged BBC version aired to the colonies didn’t have much about the game as I thought it would.

Not good manners on the part of McLaren. In fairness, the Russians displayed an understandable unhappiness with some of the results at the SLC Winter Olympics. Nothing matching what was posted about McLaren.

I didn’t see the game. The beef is on a call and the pitch. Were any of the match offcials Russian? If not, from where? As for the pitch, such are the advantages of being the home team. The Russians apparently didn’t violate any rules.

What spoiled the day was the press-conference after the game, when McClaren refused to answer the questions of Russian journalists and forbade them to translate his answers to the foreign journalists into Russian. It was rather disappointing to learn that some Englishmen are not gentlemen .

Upon a quick perusal, it looks good.

However, this isn’t the current Russian jersey in use:

http://www.subsidesports.com/uk/store/product_details.jsp?pid=72057594037942792&portal=af

Its other selections are impressive.

Gotta love the retro. jerseys.

In the colonies, Eurosport seems to have a fairly well establisged base.

http://www.football-shirts.co.uk/international.html

Would appreciate links to sites having a good selection of the latest style of national team jerseys.

I’m not sure of the reasons but I would bet it has something to do with motivation and these highly paid stars do lack incentive.

Hats off to Russia who played like they wanted to win.