Sticker album crisis averted

There's some serious stuff to talk about in this post - but first let's talk about stickers. Immediately after my last post declaring my lifelong desire to collect Panini stickers, a friend got in touch and pointed me to Panini's tablet app offering. I am now completing my virtual album and the Hungarian flag shiny is absolutely resplendent. 

I'm writing this post whilst watching England's opening game vs Croatia (more on this later, but at least now we know why Southgate named so many right-backs in the squad). Let's recap what has happened so far:

1) Italy smashed Turkey 3-0. They looked very solid and classy whilst doing so and immediately added themselves to my 'contenders' list. In my state of isolation, I'd not realised they were on a 28 match unbeaten run, so they're clearly not in the habit of losing football matches. Watching them reminded me of 90's Italian football. Good technique and guile, but such a compact and narrow style that things are somewhat constricted. This is in part due to the pitch. I always wondered whether the Stadio Olympico just looked tight because of the flat camera angles (with the pitch being in the middle of the running track) - but a bit of [actual] reseach tells me that thre pitch is 10 metres shorter and 4 metres narrower than the Villa Park pitch that I see week in and week out. If I could really be bothered I'd do the metres-squared-available-per-player calculation and nod knowingly at how the resulting compactness is obvious. 

2) Wales got lucky. I watched this game out of one eye whilst video-gaming, but from what I saw they would be the happier of the two teams with a point.

3) Belgium at a canter. They eased themselves into the tournament nicely with their own 3-0 win. Lukaku looked back to his powerful best; although I do find it frustrating that he fails to connect cleanly with so many of his shots. If he hit the ball more true, I think he'd be unstoppable. Russia looked awful btw - one particular sequence of play just showed the Russian players to be literally at 50% speed and physicality of the Belgium players. They are well on their way to the meek exit I expected. 

4) That incident. (Christian Eriksen) Oh my how utterly terrifying it all was. I had actually gone to a pub for the first time since lockdown and was having a cool pint of lager and a burger - the game on my phone, just set down on the table. I was glancing occasionally to check the score and watch any promising looking attacks. So my experience of the situation was an odd one. I was primarily glancing at the clock and the score rather than the actual action..but had noticed no actual play on 3 or 4 consecutive glances. This is when I could see something was up; and I started to take note. As I saw the look of utter horror on fans faces I was panicked and wondered what on earth was happening. Bomb? Terror attack? I tuned in and then felt immediately sick. A friend of mine, of similar age to Eriksen, had a heart attack and brain haemorrage a few years ago, falling forward in the street and dying before reaching hospital. It is a shocking and heartbreaking reminder of the fragility of life; and the cruelness sometimes of our departure from this world. I felt moved to tears seeing Eriksen's partner pitchside, beside herself with worry. For them both, and everyone around them, I hope their life can return to some sort of normality as soon as possible. As humans, I don't think we are built to cope with these kinds of things. We're here, as a nation, off the back of hundreds of thousand of Covid deaths (including my own father), and yet a near miss on prime-time TV will have hit the majority of us harder.

Certainly I feel pleased that the tournament can be more of a "get well soon Christian" affair than a morbid memorial.

I will sign off now - looking forward to Grealish showing that he's the game-changer in a minute; and looking forward even more to North Macedonia making their tournament debut later. 

More soon