I guarantee he won’t.
Ah yeah for sure. Saying that, I do very much enjoy major international football tournaments all the same. Enjoyed WC 2014 (group stages at least) and the Euros in 16 too.
Champions League is obviously a much higher level these days but there is still plenty to entertain when you’ve an international tournament on going over a month.
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Apart from the England games against Scotland, Holland and Germany, I don’t think Euro '96 had that much to recommend it.
France, Holland, Italy and Spain were all poor enough. Portugal weren’t the force of future years.
The Czechs and to a lesser extent the Croats were useful, but the Czechs proved a flash in the pan and didn’t qualify for either of the next two World Cups.
Germany won the tournament just by being solid. But they were no great shakes.
European football was at a fairly low ebb, it was in a sort of no man’s land between the excellent Germany/Holland/Italy/England teams of the late 80s/early 90s and the emergence of France and Holland in '98. Romania and Bulgaria had declined.
'96 was also robbed of the Yugoslavia team which would have been a dominant force of the time only for the war.
Things had moved on a good bit by 1998 when France, Holland, Italy and Croatia were all better, and particularly by 2000. I think England were probably better in '98 as well than they had been in '96.
Hotel Phinx yesshh. A week after my 21st.
Now its another 21 years since…
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Missed the Portugal v England game in 2000 working late. Seething.
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I’ve increasingly found that I enjoy major championship group stages (rounds 1 and 2) the most. The possibilities are endless. It’s fresh. It’s new. There are 2 or 3 games per day. You’re energised by it, taking in the coverage on the different stations and so on. Round 3 suffers, if that’s the right word, for the simultaneous kick offs in each group. You miss a bit. The last 16 can be okay, as they usually crack on with it straight away. But then I start to feel a little bit sad ahead of the last 8. Some teams you’ve become attached to have been eliminated, often controversially or unluckily so. Then the days with no matches arrive, like when the last quarter final is on a Sunday and you have to wait until Wednesday for the first semi final. You feel like a child realising they’re in the final week of the summer holidays and it’s all going to end soon. I remember being distraught on the Sunday night after the 2014 WC Final. I was still feeling quite low on the Monday night while attending Dirty Dancing in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre.
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He’s played about a dozen games this season. Don’t mind the hun hype
That’s a great post. You can see the evenings drawing in by the time the final is played in mid July.
At the end of every tournament there’s a real sense of sadness that you won’t see a lot of these players at another major tournament again too.
This time there’s a lot of GOATS who have been ever present for most of my teenage years/20s heading off into the sunset who I don’t see playing at another summer tournament. Qatar in winter time won’t really count.
I’m thinking Big Ron, Modric, Ramos, Chielinni, Pepe, Kroos. I’ll be sad when these boys exit the stage.
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You absolute steamer.
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You’re dialling it in there fucko.
Steady on.
Covid is over… You can all go shit in your hat.
You could smell the Fanny off his post
The knockout stages are gone so negative now. When I was a kid it was all about the ko stages. Now the group games are the best part
It’s all downhill after the final early kick-off on days which have three different kick-off times. This is generally the final game of the second round of group fixtures.
At the last World Cup this was England v Panama, which was the final 1pm kick-off.
One thing I’m greatly looking forward to at this tournament is observing the effort put in by commentators to bring us the action.
Adrian Eames and John Kenny must be dreading commentating on the late game from Glasgow and then having to hotfoot it all the way to Baku for the early kick-off the next day, especially with Covid testing regulations for flights. The back of their throats will be in absolute bits by the end of it all.
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Hopefully Stephen Alkin gets a go at it too this summer
I think the BBC is showing the Copa America as well which is being run at the same time so should be a great summer of football
And soccer.
RTE will surely have a woman commentator this time.
Mrs Billy Sheehan’s time has come.