Forget all that guff about the size of the pitch and numbers of players. The real first rule of football is never, never, never, under any circumstances, offer hostages to fortune.
The English manager at these European Under-18 Championships in Cyprus should have known this, of course. Howard Wilkinson led Leeds United to the English Premiership title a few seasons ago and was recently made the English FA's technical director. The lad, in other words, knows a bit about the game.
Yesterday, in an Ayia Napa team hotel shared with his Irish rivals, Howard (or Sgt Wilko as he has been nicknamed) let the cat out of the bag. He doesn't have a clue. Not about that golden first rule anyway.
A few hours before last night's vital final round of group matches, Wilkinson bumped into Irish team manager Brian Kerr and coach Noel O'Reilly in the hotel foyer.
"It's crazy," said Wilkinson, or words to that effect. "They want the teams in Sunday's finals to go to Nicosia for a three-hour reception before the game. Well, there's no way I'm taking them," he added.
From that point on, as everybody who has ever had anything to do with the professional game will know, the writing was on the wall.
England needed a point to qualify for Sunday evening's final but they didn't get it. The Irish needed to beat Cyprus, and for England to be beaten by Croatia if they were to make it to the UEFA championships final. Ireland won 3-0, with the Wolves striker Robbie Keane getting two of the goals and Coventry City's Barry Quinn the other. England, it now turns out, go home early, with Croatia (again 3-0 winners) going into the third place play-off which Wilkinson and the people who make the promos at Eurosport clearly felt would be Ireland's opportunity for a consolation prize.
Kerr, after an anxious wait for confirmation of the result of the England game, was in predictably jubilant form as his team celebrated in front of some 300 Irish supporters in the tiny ground where the victory had taken place.
"I said to Noel [O'Reilly] as I came away today: `If we get through tonight they can keep the lads at the reception for 10 hours for all I care'." Looks like our latest crop of Eurobeaters are in for a very long weekend.
