Sunday 12 June 2016

Beau Jeu

2006: World Cup Winners
The excitement has been building but now the Euros are, at last, underway in France who won the European Football Championship in 2000 but of course they lifted an even more prestigious trophy in 1998, the World Cup, and were one of the teams that appeared on the 'Word Cup Winners' stamps designed by Madeleine Bennet.  They are off to a good start in 2016
In 2004 Portugal with home advantage were one of the favourites but the dark horses of Greece lifted the trophy.  The mascots chosen for sporting championships can be weird and random but historically the ones for the European Championships at least do tend to be playing football and Portugal featured a  little boy called Kinas in his Portuguese strip who appears on the stamps with the country flags.  As England's first game of the championships was against Russia I thought I choose this FDC of the 2004 Spain versus Russia match and hope we could emulate Spain. Things were going reasonably well and we were indeed winning 1-0 until the four minutes of added time and the resulting draw.  Happily with a Welsh surname I can jump ship and support the home nation team that won yesterday.  Did you say "fair weather fan"?
The European Championship opening ceremony featured cancan dancers so here is the home of cancan, the Moulin Rouge, the windmill of choice for Tord Nygren in his series of windmill watercolours for Åland's exhibition cards and stamps.  Åland Post traveled to Paris for the Salon D'Automne in November 2015.

An entry to Sunday Stamps II open theme week at  See It On A Postcard

4 comments:

Bob Scotney said...

Very appropriate for this weekedn with the beginning of the football. England could have done with the same win as Spain v Russia yesterday.

FinnBadger said...

Great timely set this week. I like the clean look of the UK stamp, and the Moulin Rouge cover is fantastic - love the postmark.

Heleen said...

Great choice, and beautiful stamps and FDC's!

Mail Adventures said...

I also chose windmills... But not football!