Good morning buddies.
One thing magical has occurred. The solar, the fantastic ball of fireplace in area 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 take advantage of it, and as such in the present day’s weblog will comprise some brief snippets of stuff fairly than the in-depth evaluation to which you’ve got grown accustomed …
*cough*
… let’s begin with final night time’s 0-0 draw between France and the Netherlands. I assumed William Saliba was mainly impeccable, however then that’s nothing we haven’t seen earlier than, and probably the most fascinating a part of the sport was the disallowed objective. Xavi Simons thought he’d scored, however there was a VAR verify. 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 capable of get there even when he had been capable of dive, however the presence of Dumfries was actually 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 type of working again and charged 60 yards up the sphere. So would I be sad if that objective had been allowed to face towards us? In seriousness, sure. I don’t suppose the problem was the choice, it was way more concerning the time it took.
Within the earlier sport, I totally loved the best way Wojciech Szczesny conceded a penalty. You possibly can nearly see the precise second he thought ‘Sod it, I’m simply gonna clatter this lad’, and so he did. His ‘Ahh properly, 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 aspect to be eradicated up to now.
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 offered an help for the equaliser and had a good sport all informed. Roman Yaremchuk’s winner was a beautiful strike, a deft contact and end, however I don’t suppose Newcastle’s Martin Dubravka did properly sufficient within the Slovakian objective. Ukraine face Belgium of their last sport on Wednesday, and Leandro Trossard’s males are in motion in the present day towards Romania. Turkey v Portugal might be a tasty one afterward too.
In switch information, David Ornstein stories that Michael Olise has chosen to hitch Bayern Munich, which makes me just a little 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 properly suggested on this matter.
Proper, that’s your lot. We could have a weekend version of our Euro 2024 podcast on Patreon a bit later, for now, take pleasure in your Saturday.
