All New Supersized Trophy for Euro 2008

You read that right. UEFA are doing away with the current European Championship trophy. The trophy (left) lifted by the USSR in 1960 and by every winnner all the way up to Greece in 2004 will no longer be used.

The Euro 2008 winners will instead lift a new version, almost identical to the original but longer and heavier. “UEFA wanted to improve on the quality but also the scale of the trophy, and have a focal point for the event. It was felt that the original trophy was too small to do this,” UEFA said.

So basically what’s happened here is that the European Championship has looked around in the showers, seen the length and girth of other trophies like the Champions League and decided that they didn’t measure up.

And so UEFA has shelled out on some expensive cosmetic surgery to make the Euro 2008 trophy seven inches longer and one pound heavier. Couldn’t they have just bought a big fast car instead?

It’s not all bad news. The new trophy will still bear the name of Henri Delaunay and all the past tournament winners will be levered off of the old trophy and glued onto to the new one. But if size doesn’t matter (and I’ve been assured it doesn’t) then does this mean tradition matters even less?