Football

Right now, it’s a bit like you’re five years old and it’s the night before Christmas but you can’t be sure who is going to come down the chimney, Santa Claus or Benito Mussolini. I mean for football fans – not for the public school bedwetters on here who refer to the world’s favourite sport as ‘girlball’. Italy are unbeaten in their last 33 games: good. Runs come to an end sooner or later. This is a game tailor-made for Southgate’s favourite tactics of stifling containment. This may well turn out to be one of the most boring matches in the history of football. I would start with Sancho and Grealish, just to worry their backline a little. But he won’t. And who, now, is to say that he is wrong, given what he has achieved?

England 2 (herringmuncher og, Citizen Kane) Denmark 1 (anotherherringmuncher) It was a penalty because the referee gave a penalty and VAR agreed. OK, Denmark? I wouldn’t have given it, mind. But then I would have given the absolutely stonewall penalty when Kane was clattered in the Danish penalty area a little earlier. Either way, it would have been a travesty if England had not won. They absolutely hammered the Danes for the last 75 minutes of the match: the game became a siege. Did the Danes have a single chance after their goal? I don’t remember one. I scarcely remember them attacking. I’ve decided I don’t like them and they’re going on my list of awful countries as a consequence of their bad-tempered, sour grapes, griping.

Italy: 1 (moped riding infant) Spain: 1 (swarthy bull-taunting thug) Spain are not terribly good at penalty shoot-outs. Hell, even England beat them in 1996. And so they lost a match they had dominated pretty much from start to finish. If you remember, I tipped Italy to win this tournament right at the outset — but there are flaws to this side.  What you need to do — to state the obvious — is take the chances you create, because with Italy there will be chances. They are a counter-attacking side and invite pressure. If that pressure amounts to playing neat triangles outside the penalty area, then forget it. You need to get behind their backline, missus. You need to frighten them. And so Denmark vs England.

I’m struggling to work up much enthusiasm about England’s progress in the Euros. I know, I know, Tuesday night’s victory was the first time England has beaten Germany in the knockout stage of a tournament in 55 years — and the moment Gareth Southgate, the team manager, finally made amends for missing his penalty in the semi-final against Germany in Euro 96. It’s conceivable we might make it all the way to the final, but I’m more excited about watching QPR play Leyton Orient in the first round of the Carabao Cup. Why? One reason is that in the past ten years I’ve become a QPR superfan.

England: 2 (Sterling, Kane)  Germany: 0 (nobody at all) Well, that lifted the spirits a bit. And coming after the French being evicted by their alpine neighbours, it has meant quite a lot of alcoholic celebration in Liddle Towers. A deserved victory over Germany — who, contrary to popular belief, we do beat quite often. But not often when it really matters.  Credit to Southgate. I am no fan of the man, although he seems a decent and likeable chap. But he got it kind of right here. He is still determined to restrict the number of truly creative players (Sterling aside) in the England team to one. In the first half, Saka. In the second, Grealish. Saka faded badly after 30 minutes, at which point England devolved to the pass-it-back thing and we looked wanting.

The question is surely destined to become a pub quiz staple: ‘Who moved a bottle 18 inches across a table and was said by the media to have wiped millions from the share price of a major corporation?’ Cristiano Ronaldo’s casual dismissal of a product-placed bottle of Coca-Cola — and Paul Pogba’s subsequent pushing aside of a bottle of Heineken — during Euro 2020 press conferences earned them nearly as much attention as any sleight of foot they performed on the pitch. For years the corporations have been mightier than the players but this isn’t the case any longer. There has even been some talk of legal action against Ronaldo and Pogba but who would this benefit? More to the point, who would be most damaged?

England 0 Scotland 0 Hungary 1 (Fiola) France 1 (Griezmann) It is remarkable how Southgate has sucked the life out of such talented players over the last two or three years The wonderful Hungarians almost took my mind off England’s lamentable performance last night and the usual stupid, self-serving, excuses from Southgate. England are easily the most boring side in this tournament. It is remarkable how Southgate has sucked the life out of such talented players over the last two or three years. Maybe we should hand out MBEs for any England player who can score. Scotland fought well and won every fifty-fifty ball – but then England consider themselves above fifty-fifty balls. Matt Hancock would be a better England manager than Mr Waistcoat.