Down to 10 men after Matthijs de Ligt’s red card, Frank de Boer’s side panicked and unravelled against zesty foesFarewell then, the Netherlands 2021. Never mind total football: this was a total collapse. And not just a simple collapse, but an abject, jaw-dropping collapse, the kind of collapse you can see happening in front of you in real time, like a slow-motion car crash.Thrown by the second half dismissal of Matthijs de Ligt, a Dutch team that came romping out of the blocks in Budapest, all regal vim and pep, was transformed at a stroke into a sagging orange soufflé. Related: Czechs bounce into last eight after Matthijs de Ligt sparks Dutch implosion Continue reading...
Jack Grealish made things happen, including the all-important goal, and so may have earned his place for the last-16 tieWith 67 minutes gone at Wembley, with the game starting to sag a little and stretch towards its slightly fretful end notes, Jack Grealish could be seen walking slowly, steeped in a sudden fug of melancholy, towards the far touchline. It was a walk with a touch of theatre, a degree of flounce.It would be wrong to read too much into it. Grealish flounces when he’s happy. He had, earlier, flounced all over the opening 20 minutes of this game, creating the opening goal and, together with the hugely impressive Bukayo Saka, reworking not just the trajectory, but the basic sense...
Arsenal youngster was everywhere against Czech Republic as Gareth Southgate’s side sealed top spot in Group DA curious thing happened on Tuesday night. England played a European Championship game at Wembley and it was – and I had to look this word up, so apologies if the meaning isn’t quite right – enjoyable. People sang and cheered. The national stadium, so often a theatre of irritations, felt happy and alive. England shuffled diffidently – and not without a few alarms – into the round of 16. And on a night when Jordan Henderson and Harry Maguire made their returns, England’s leader on the field was a 19-year-old from west London with five caps to his name. Related: England beat Czech...
After Patrik Schick’s stunning goal for the Czech Republic, hosts full of hesitation belied their adoption of a Baccara classicSomewhere along the road to Euro 2020 Steve Clarke and his players adopted Yes Sir, I Can Boogie as their anthem and, in many ways, it has proved a great choice.Yet while the 1977 Baccara hit is infinitely more uplifting than Flower of Scotland, a song including the lyrics “you wanna know if I can dance” and “I’m a sensation” could be construed as a slightly overconfident theme tune for a side competing in their first major finals for 23 years. Related: Schick’s halfway line hit helps Czech Republic spoil Scotland’s party Continue reading...
Change is good but the England manager’s tactical tinkering is starting to feel reckless as the Euro 2020 defeat in Prague shows“At that moment, Svejk looked as if he had fallen down from the skies from another planet and was now looking with a naive wonder at a new world, where people were demanding from him idiotic questions he had never heard before.” Jaroslav Hasek’s great Czech comic novel The Good Soldier Svejk follows its amiable hero through the contortions of central Europe during the first world war. Its real subject, though, is human folly, human conflict and the absurdity of human attempts to manage the chaos. At which point cut to Mason Mount on Friday night in Prague, another...