Haven’t we been here before? Just when we had started to believe that maybe, just maybe, football might be coming home, England were found wanting when it really mattered. Moscow 2018 will now be filed along with Turin 1990, Wembley 1996 and England’s other glorious failures. Once again, when football immortality beckoned, England couldn’t grasp […]
almost unbelievably, one of them is England. It is probably fair to say that Gareth Southgate and his team have far exceeded the expectations of a nation that had developed apathy towards the national football team after recent dismal tournament showings. If it was possible to question England’s credentials after the penalty shootout win over […]
I approached the start of summer with a sense of trepidation, as is the norm for me in the odd-numbered years, the years without a major tournament in which to completely immerse myself for a month, and to minimise the amount of time spent in the purgatory of having no football to watch. My immediate […]
Despite finishing third in their group, looking far from convincing on their way through the knock-out stages and losing their star player to injury in the final, Portugal find themselves Euro 2016 winners. Quite how they managed to do it, or indeed France conspired to lose it is a mystery? Portugal’s safety-first, risk-little style won’t […]
Sunday’s Euro 2016 Final sees France take on Portugal at the Stade de France. While the hosts have seemed to gather momentum with each game that they have played, especially in their knockout games; Portugal have won little praise thanks to their pragmatic and quite frankly rather boring approach. Both teams have significant firepower up […]
After the heartbreak of England’s penalty defeats to Germany in 1996 and Argentina in 1998, my wife wisely decided to save herself further misery and drew upon her French heritage and the strong Franco-Gooner connections and became a fully-fledged supporter of Les Bleus. As an Arsenal fan myself, and having lived in Marseille, I can […]
Due to my own five-a-side football commitments I only got home in time to watch the last five minutes and then extra time and penalties of the Poland –Portugal match. After an early goal which saw Lewandowski finally get his name on the scoresheet, by all accounts the match was a bit lacking in goalmouth […]
Other than Portugal sneaking a win late in extra time against Croatia, who couldn’t replicate their performance in defeating Spain in the Group, and the two surprising results on Monday, the Round of 16 went largely to form. We now have the four quarter final match-ups over the next four days; here are some thoughts […]
With the start of the knockout phases and three matches per day, the intensity of the tournament went up a notch or two over the weekend, but my wife and I decided that the only way to spend the weekend was by watching all six games. First up was Poland and Switzerland, the game started […]
Friday was our last full day in Nice, so we made sure we watched all of the games. After a trip to Monaco where we spent the grand total of an hour; if you aren’t into yachts, motor racing or spending 29 Euros on a cheeseburger, there isn’t really a lot more to see and […]
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