Last night Brain Cox told me the past may still be out there as part of the fabric of spacetime, I'm not sure there's much of the tournament I want back. How about you? What rattled your cage? This is mine rattling.
Like the Gove puppet I'm tired of experts. Two small examples - HARRY REDKNAPP, marking Welsh and Portuguese players prior to their game assigned Pepe 7 and James Chester 8, he had them opposite each other in the line-ups! Pepe played for Real Madrid, is strong, pretty quick, brave, absolutely committed and a near talismanic influence who was eventually heroic in the final, whilst James Chester sometimes plays for West Brom and is decent. Exhibit Two - ROY KEANE (the man who threw away all Jordan Rhodes's goals for Ipswich for just £100,000), exercising his goalkeeping expertise on Rui Patricio assessing that the save from Greizmann's header in the final as one any keeper would have made. Does he have any idea of the skill, speed of foot and spatial awareness from a keeper to go backwards under a less than powerful header to not only tip it, but to get a full hand there and push it over the bar? Obviously not! But then did I hear or read anyone realising how great a contribution Patricio made to Portugal's defensive solidity? His handling and decision-making were excellent, his bravery unquestioned and when a defender was in trouble with a difficult ball he was prepared to take responsibility. Keeper of the tournament- well everyone nods through Neuer or Lloris, but it's Rui Patricio for me, he should get the freedom of Lisbon.
I heard a lot about the centre forward being dead. Okay Harry Kane looked close to it, but surely someone has noticed that Germany started the tournament without a centre forward and were toothless, they brought an old one in and briefly looked capable of winning the whole thing, until he got injured and without one they returned to toothless? And if more proof were required, Portugal brought on a Swansea surplus centre forward who scored a typical old-fashioned centre forward's goal to win the tournament .... is that Stephen Fry declaring QED?
Then there's the cult of the manager. Deschamps appeared flavour of the month, maybe it was his cute white hair and suit? Okay he turned some things round with second half changes, but mostly they were his own glaringly obvious errors. Then in the final he selected Patrick Vieira three times in Pogba, Matuidi and Sissoko, looked surprised they didn't have the subtlety to break down Ronaldoless Portuguese resistance and took off the one player potentially clever enough to do so in Payet. And lots of journalists thought he was the manager of the tournament. And suddenly decent Roy Hodgson is a pariah because English players are so afraid of public and media reaction they all climbed into the freezer against Iceland, when in fact he was just a well-paid victim. Workers often ask what are managers for, why don't players?
Unlike Brian Cox the entire media has proved unwilling to examine spacetime for evidence in even the very recent past of anything positive after England's more than disappointing performance. But very recently we had players good enough in friendlies in which the opposition was certainly trying to beat France easily, to be far better than Germany, eventually to break down that impossible Portuguese defence and even to beat Wales at the tournament. So despite all the media soul-searching about the our game needing a complete revolution we have recently proved our ability to beat the four most successful teams in the tournament.
If I were a Premier manager with Sky money behind me I'd splash some to bring the Albanian defender Hysaj from Napoli. He looked the real deal. I'd lure Jeff Hendricks from Derby and I wouldn't touch Alberto Morata with a barge-pole. And I think there could be a worse investment than the few million required to lure Adam Nagy from Ferencvaros. For all I know some of these things may already have happened.
I enjoyed Iceland's success, and Wales's too, but it did all point too the shortcomings of all the other teams whose general performance level hovered around the tired and brainless. Both Wales and Iceland functioned on the influence of two or three really good players which should never have been good enough to overcome teams and in cases like Belgium and France whole squads full of very good players.
So what rattled your cage and were there any positives? The format was weak, but without it the winners would have gone out in the first round ....... The referees weren't bad at all. The media and commentary pretty much plumbed new depths. Some of the fans were great. The pitches looked poor. The stadia looked great. The French people were impressively good losers. The games suggested the end of our domestic seasons and the start of tournaments need to be further apart - it wasn't only England looked jaded.
Like the Gove puppet I'm tired of experts. Two small examples - HARRY REDKNAPP, marking Welsh and Portuguese players prior to their game assigned Pepe 7 and James Chester 8, he had them opposite each other in the line-ups! Pepe played for Real Madrid, is strong, pretty quick, brave, absolutely committed and a near talismanic influence who was eventually heroic in the final, whilst James Chester sometimes plays for West Brom and is decent. Exhibit Two - ROY KEANE (the man who threw away all Jordan Rhodes's goals for Ipswich for just £100,000), exercising his goalkeeping expertise on Rui Patricio assessing that the save from Greizmann's header in the final as one any keeper would have made. Does he have any idea of the skill, speed of foot and spatial awareness from a keeper to go backwards under a less than powerful header to not only tip it, but to get a full hand there and push it over the bar? Obviously not! But then did I hear or read anyone realising how great a contribution Patricio made to Portugal's defensive solidity? His handling and decision-making were excellent, his bravery unquestioned and when a defender was in trouble with a difficult ball he was prepared to take responsibility. Keeper of the tournament- well everyone nods through Neuer or Lloris, but it's Rui Patricio for me, he should get the freedom of Lisbon.
I heard a lot about the centre forward being dead. Okay Harry Kane looked close to it, but surely someone has noticed that Germany started the tournament without a centre forward and were toothless, they brought an old one in and briefly looked capable of winning the whole thing, until he got injured and without one they returned to toothless? And if more proof were required, Portugal brought on a Swansea surplus centre forward who scored a typical old-fashioned centre forward's goal to win the tournament .... is that Stephen Fry declaring QED?
Then there's the cult of the manager. Deschamps appeared flavour of the month, maybe it was his cute white hair and suit? Okay he turned some things round with second half changes, but mostly they were his own glaringly obvious errors. Then in the final he selected Patrick Vieira three times in Pogba, Matuidi and Sissoko, looked surprised they didn't have the subtlety to break down Ronaldoless Portuguese resistance and took off the one player potentially clever enough to do so in Payet. And lots of journalists thought he was the manager of the tournament. And suddenly decent Roy Hodgson is a pariah because English players are so afraid of public and media reaction they all climbed into the freezer against Iceland, when in fact he was just a well-paid victim. Workers often ask what are managers for, why don't players?
Unlike Brian Cox the entire media has proved unwilling to examine spacetime for evidence in even the very recent past of anything positive after England's more than disappointing performance. But very recently we had players good enough in friendlies in which the opposition was certainly trying to beat France easily, to be far better than Germany, eventually to break down that impossible Portuguese defence and even to beat Wales at the tournament. So despite all the media soul-searching about the our game needing a complete revolution we have recently proved our ability to beat the four most successful teams in the tournament.
If I were a Premier manager with Sky money behind me I'd splash some to bring the Albanian defender Hysaj from Napoli. He looked the real deal. I'd lure Jeff Hendricks from Derby and I wouldn't touch Alberto Morata with a barge-pole. And I think there could be a worse investment than the few million required to lure Adam Nagy from Ferencvaros. For all I know some of these things may already have happened.
I enjoyed Iceland's success, and Wales's too, but it did all point too the shortcomings of all the other teams whose general performance level hovered around the tired and brainless. Both Wales and Iceland functioned on the influence of two or three really good players which should never have been good enough to overcome teams and in cases like Belgium and France whole squads full of very good players.
So what rattled your cage and were there any positives? The format was weak, but without it the winners would have gone out in the first round ....... The referees weren't bad at all. The media and commentary pretty much plumbed new depths. Some of the fans were great. The pitches looked poor. The stadia looked great. The French people were impressively good losers. The games suggested the end of our domestic seasons and the start of tournaments need to be further apart - it wasn't only England looked jaded.