The hooligans at least offered no pretence that anything would be different - immediately springing into brainless action. Absolute bile the lot of them - I hate how our national sport and team is in any way associated with these people.
The team though was a much more complex beast. It is too easy to trot out the "same old England" line; despite the infuriating opening game draw that seems to afflict us at virtually all tournaments. But what we saw for 91.5 minutes was a classy England performance, a well balanced team, pace, ambition and a fair deal of spirit.
We've got two total banana skin encounters to follow now - but I know that with performances of the same intensity we will sail through both. The issue of course is that the players all have a significant mental issue to deal with. The body language at the end of the game, understandably, was as if they had just lost the final on penalties - abject disappointment. They'd every right to be gutted, but need to move on fast.
That closed out the first full day, and I'm now in the throes of Turkey vs Croatia (baby is asleep...well timed) - which is a bit chaotic, but not quite living up to the expectations I had.
Later is Northern Ireland against Poland and Ukraine against Germany. We all know Germany are going to shrug off their poor form and become an indestructible machine - as inevitable as poor England suffering an early disappointment.
The wall chart is now in place, everything seems right with the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment