So, have we all recovered from Wednesday night then? For only the second time in their entire footballing history England will play in the final of a major tournament. In achieving that Gareth Southgate and his players are helping long-suffering England fans to banish memories of all those glorious failures of the past, especially those […]
Over thirty years ago in the days before Channel Four popularised Italian Football in this country, a quite remarkable story emerged from the exotic seeming Serie A, one that captured the imagination of this at the time teenaged football obsessive. None other than Diego Armando Maradona, disillusioned after a 2 –year stint at Barcelona characterised […]
With it being a significant amount of time, (well just over a month!), since our last excursion onto the continent and one of our Football Tourist weekends; the wife and I looked at options to escape the autumn routine and eventually settled on a trip to Turin. As someone who grew up with an exotic […]
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 […]
Just as they had done against Belgium in their opening game, Italy implemented their tactical system perfectly and completely stifled Spain in the first half of the highly anticipated Round of 16 clash in Paris. The incessant pressing and near perfect defensive organisation meant that Spain couldn’t find any space to play through them and […]
After the excitement of Croatia’s stunning victory over Spain the previous evening, I didn’t really have high expectations for the final day of group games; I felt that Portugal would have to perform better after their first two disappointing games and that while Ireland would no doubt give it their best, having to beat Italy […]
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 […]
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see any of the Spain-Czech Republic game but from what I have read it seems like the Czechs provided stern resistance and managed to keep Spain at bay until Pique’s late header sealed all three points for the holders. I felt that Ireland were a little bit unlucky not to […]
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