Good morning pals.
One thing magical has occurred. The solar, the fantastic ball of fireside in house that has not been seen in Dublin for a lot of aeons now, has appeared this morning and the air is heat. So, I’m eager to benefit from it, and as such right this moment’s weblog will include some brief snippets of stuff fairly than the in-depth evaluation to which you will have grown accustomed …
*cough*
… let’s begin with final evening’s 0-0 draw between France and the Netherlands. I believed William Saliba was mainly impeccable, however then that’s nothing we haven’t seen earlier than, and essentially the most attention-grabbing a part of the sport was the disallowed objective. Xavi Simons thought he’d scored, however there was a VAR examine. The title Stuart Atwell was talked about. Oh god. Couldn’t they’ve discovered somebody higher? Like Stuart Little? We waited. And waited. And waited.
The VAR within the Euros has been environment friendly, fast and that has, in no small half, seen choices accepted far more readily. Not this one. The difficulty was Denzel Dumfries standing in an offside place proper between the Mike Maignan and the place the ball went in. I don’t suppose the French keeper would have been in a position to get there even when he had been in a position to dive, however the presence of Dumfries was definitely an obstacle.
My rule of thumb with issues like that is to place some Arsenal context on it. Would I be sad if we had a objective dominated out for that? Completely, however then I’d be sad if we had a Maradona hand of god objective dominated out after Ben White had picked the ball up like some form of operating again and charged 60 yards up the sphere. So would I be sad if that objective had been allowed to face in opposition to us? In seriousness, sure. I don’t suppose the difficulty was the choice, it was way more concerning the time it took.
Within the earlier sport, I totally loved the way in which Wojciech Szczesny conceded a penalty. You’ll be able to virtually see the precise second he thought ‘Sod it, I’m simply gonna clatter this lad’, and so he did. His ‘Ahh nicely, what are you able to do?!’ afterwards to the be-clattered Marcel Sabitzer was fairly humorous too. Clearly not as amusing for Poland as they misplaced 3-1 and are actually out of the match, the primary facet to be eradicated so far.
And earlier once more, Ukraine got here from behind to beat Slovakia. Oleksandr Zinchenko was caught out for a cross which led to the opening objective, however he supplied an help for the equaliser and had an honest sport all advised. Roman Yaremchuk’s winner was a stunning strike, a deft contact and end, however I don’t suppose Newcastle’s Martin Dubravka did nicely sufficient within the Slovakian objective. Ukraine face Belgium of their ultimate sport on Wednesday, and Leandro Trossard’s males are in motion right this moment in opposition to Romania. Turkey v Portugal could possibly be a tasty one in a while too.
In switch information, David Ornstein stories that Michael Olise has chosen to hitch Bayern Munich, which makes me a little bit unhappy as a result of he’s a participant I covet like a bastard. However, I’d a lot fairly he went there than Chelsea. No good can come of any respectable participant going to such an inherently noxious organisation, and I’m glad Olise has been nicely suggested on this matter.
Proper, that’s your lot. We may have a weekend version of our Euro 2024 podcast on Patreon a bit later, for now, get pleasure from your Saturday.
