England-France Euro 2012 Round-Up: Some Jole Bad Puns

Jole Bad Puns: What The Papers Say On England

England's Euro 2012 campaign has garnered the widespread coverage the national side usually enjoys/endures at major tournaments, and their opening match against France has prompted the Lescott puns movement.

The Daily Mirror go with "Kings of Joleon", a riff on the Kings of Leon for those of you not down wit da kidz, while fellow redtops The Sun and the Daily Star's blood relation is in evident with "Jole good" and "Jole well done". Kudos to The Times for the best headline though: "Donetsk best thing".

Not everyone is as buoyant though, considering England had just one effort on target, and The Guardian remain level-headed. "England huff and puff to a draw" reads their back-page headline, while Dominic Fifield's "five talking points" sprinkles more realism on the lack of support for attacking trio Ashley Young, Danny Welbeck and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Oliver Kay too offers perspective away from any remote giddiness in The Times by labelling Hodgson's side "gritty, not pretty" as England again lacked guile.

His colleague Matt Hughes' England ratings make for bizarre reading however. Joe Hart, despite conceding Samir Nasri's saveable strike, gets a good seven, while the gamely duo of Danny Welbeck and James Milner are dismissed with fives whereas Scott Parker, overran and overawed save for a couple of blocks, gets a solid six.

Ian Herbert gets a similar line too in The Independent, as "England's artisans keep Rooney in the picture", pertinently drawing parallels to the time of austerity.

Paul Hayward has endured infamy since the advent of Twitter, and he may be in store for another backlash after another suspiciously homoerotic feature. He gushes about Steven Gerrard and Parker for The Daily Telegraph.

Nasri's goal celebration was aimed at the French media, it transpires. "That was at you," he revealed at the post-match presentation ceremony where he was rightly named man of the match. There was also an amusing incident in which his arrogance was again exhibited...

And finally, Ray Clemence, England's long-standing goalkeeping coach and fourth official acquaintance, got injured in the warm-up when he tweaked his achilles tendon. Although a gormless moron eating a Mars bar wasn't required since deputy Dave Watson was on hand to put Hart through his paces.

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