Hot Tea Tuesday | Euro 2012 Special

Hot Tea Tuesday – a lil’ bit of eye-candy for your Tuesday teatime. This week, it’s our Euro 2012 special.

Our resident hot footballer expert, Anne Whelton gives us her Hot Tea Dream Team…

With Euro fever well and truly in the air (get on board the green bandwagon – you’ll find some inspiration here), you non-football lovin’ gals might be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing for it but to forsake your menfolk to the pub and stay at home with the curtains closed and a decent boxset on the TV for the next three weeks. But that’s where you’re wrong, because there’s a good reason it’s called the beautiful game and while we’re more than happy to support our Boys in Green, we’ve selected our Dream Team, in the *cough* classic 2-5-3 formation, to lift the Hot Tea Tuesday trophy come July 1st.

Goalkeeper: Iker Casillas, Spain
Probably the most difficult position to fill in our top 11 given the quality and quantity of keepers in this year’s tournament; there’s our own Shay Given, always a safe pair of hands in a crisis (Sunday’s 3-1 defeat aside), then there’s Spain’s Victor Valdés and Pepe Reina, both of whom are on the bench for our top choice, the Spanish captain, Iker Casillas. The most capped player of all time for the Spanish national team, the Real Madrid keeper has won pretty much every bit of silverware you can think of and who can forget this moment after his World Cup win in 2010. Swoon!

Defender: Gerard Piqué, Spain
Piqué does good facial hair, plays for Barcelona and is dating Shakira. Yeah, that Shakira. That’s all you need to know really.

Defender: Mathieu Debuchy, France
Easy on the eye, the young Frenchman has plenty to prove in this year’s tournament, clocking up just five previous caps from friendlies over the past number of months. Did we mention he’s easy on the eye?

Midfielder: Cesc Fàbregas, Spain
It’s hard to believe the Spanish heartthrob (yeah we just used that word) is only 25 years old but seems to have been knocking around the international and domestic scene (in both the UK and Spain) for years. A steady head in the middle of the field, Fàbregas is going to be a crucial cog in the Spanish wheel come Thursday.

Midfielder: Wesley Sneijder, Netherlands
Speaking of steady heads, Sneijder is considered one of the best midfields in the world; he was even voted UEFA midfielder of the season in 2010 when he played a crucial role in getting his country to World Cup Final in that year. Oh and this is his wife – a match made in football heaven.

Midfielder: Yohan Cabaye, France
Another young Frenchman, Yohan has only just come under our radar despite playing Premier League football for over a year now with Newcastle United. Known for being good under pressure when it comes to a penalty shootout, we should see plenty of him in the Euro 2012 campaign if France can stay in the mix.

Midfield: Jesús Navas, Spain
A good right winger, I’m pretty sure Mr Navas can see my soul with those eyes.

Midfielder: Hugo Viana, Portugal
A tough choice for our last spot in the midfield, it was a toss up between Germany’s Thomas Müller, Russia’s Roman Shirokov and (a personal favourite) the always reliable Spanish midfielder Xabi Alonso, but as variety is the spice of life we decided to go with the 29-year-old Portuguese midfielder. Another former Newcastle United player, Viana has been knocking around the international scene for over ten years now; lets hope he can make his mark in 2012.

Forward: Kevin Doyle, Ireland
We couldn’t compile a dream team without an Irishman, so up front everyone’s favourite Wexford man, Kevin ‘Doyler’ Doyle makes the cut in our final 11. The usually reliable Wolves player failed to impress on Sunday against the Croatians so let’s hope he pulls it out of the bag on Thursday.

Forward: Andriy Shevchenko, Ukraine
The oldest member of our squad (at 35), there’s no denying that Shevchenko has still got it if the Sweden game was anything to go by (he scored two goals and won man of the match). However, what you might not know about the third-highest goalscorer in Champions League history is that his family was forced to relocate when he was just nine year’s old after his village was affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 and in his youth he was a competitive boxer.

Forward: Olivier Giroud, France
Yet another Frenchman and the tallest member of the team at 6.3, Olivier made his international debut a mere seven months ago and seems to have gotten into the swing of things if his photoshoot with Tetu Magazine is anything to go by! Check out those green eyes.