I've already back-tracked on unflattering comments I made towards Alvaro Morata in these pages, so let me now add Marc Cucurella to that list. From the first game Spain played against Croatia at the European Championships that they have just won so wonderfully, M to the C has performed like the little shaggy-haired irritant who impressed at Brighton rather than the cartoonish figure of fun that Chelsea have shaped him into. He has harried and bitten and invaded the personal space of would-be attackers like my nine year old boy trying to get the plastic ball off me in the corner of the living room. Then, in the 84th minute of the Final against England in Berlin, just when we'd forgotten he could cross the halfway line, he produced the match-winning ball for Oyazarbal (on for Morata).
Of course, it could so easily not have been the match-winning cross, with Declan Rice's header a minute or so later forcing Unai Simon into a save, followed by Marc Guehi’s effort being cleared off the line by Dani Olmo, but that ending wasn't used, and we are left with a Chelsea man's 'assist' cancelling out a Chelsea man's equaliser. It’s not all fairytales in football.
You don't need to be told these details, of course, it's likely that if you’re reading this, you watched, although nothing can ever be ruled out entirely, which is why people gave England a chance of winning, or saw it written in the stars: Yes ok, Spain may have won six games out of six in this tournament, including against the hosts and the World Cup runners up, equalling France's 1984 record to boot, but the Three Lions had done a bicycle kick in the 95th minute to level with Slovakia, beat the Swizz on pens and then rinsed the Dutch who'd finished 3rd out of 4 in their group in minute 90. What part of destiny don't you understand?
There are football lovers and there are those who don't give a shit about that sort of thing, generally known as supporters of the other team, and there's nothing wrong in that; nobody with any credibility is in it for the half and half scarves. That said, it feels fitting that Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams combined to provide the opening goal, and that both should play prominent roles. Yamal probably should have scored on his left foot to make it 2-0, but from infield he played in Morata to miss from close range (not that he's there to score goals, I hatsen to add) and Williams played in Olmo, who scuffed his shot wide just after the first goal.
For all that, when sub Cole Palmer sidefooted in from distance in the 73rd minute, there seemed, for a brief while after, maybe as brief as a minute, that this whole Coming Home scam might be legit. The boy wonder had done it thanks to that most English of things, an accidental plan. When Jude Bellingham lost the ball in his own half and dived in rashly and too late to stop sub Martin Zubimendi (more on him later) marauding through the English midfield, he can't surely have been thinking of the bigger picture, and yet Who Else perhaps could have helped engineer the gap that then appeared due to his own failings as Zubimendi advanced upfield and played an imperfect ball to Oyazarbal that ended with Jordan Pickford rolling the ball into the new space, where Palmer played in Bukayo Saka, who laid it into the box for Who Else to lay it back for the on-running Palmer to pick out the heel of the unfortunate Zubimendi on it's way to the net past Simon?
Qualitee, mate. Proper. Coming home, bruv, I tell ya.
This England team play in ‘moments’ they said. Southgate has used the Portugal model of 2016 and the French of 2018, essentially stay in the game and bank on a wonder from one of the wonders. Our boys are too knackered to play as freely as they did during the season, no matter what football blokes say about professional athletes not being allowed to be tired, the money they’re on. A very English mentality. Unfortunately, it’s also very English not to keep the ball very well - even with the players we have now. Moan about Grealish not being picked for the squad all you like, it’s a cultural problem. Portugal were underwhelming champions, it was said, but they could keep the ball and that must give you a better chance.
Perhaps one of those ‘moments’ was Rodri’s withdrawal at half-time, the player who ‘doesn’t lose’ (unless it’s to Spain’s Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter final and Manchester United in the FA Cup Final) unseen in the tunnel as the players re-emerged for the second half while defensive midfielder Zubimendi waited on the touch line, stripped for action. Initial intel was that it was centre half, Aymeric Laporte, Rodri’s former team mate, who had been subbed, but he was then picked out of the line ups by chief witness Lineker, at which point speculation and excitement in the pitch studio mounted as Rodri remained unsighted. There were shades here of the Ronaldo is-he, isn’t he? drama before the 1998 World Cup Final, not as sensational maybe, but potentially a “psychological blow” for Spain, as Ferdinand remarked. My mind raced to the Rooney documentary re-tracing Euro 2004, Michael Owen describing the mental toll of seeing your most influential player leaving the field - and possibly the tournament - as Wayne Rooney did against Portugal in the quarter final that year.
This, though, was Spain, and though they themselves have their own history with fragility, it turned out that Zubimendi was a better replacement for Ronaldo than, well, Ronaldo and certainly Darius Vassell for Rooney. Williams’ goal came just two minutes after the restart.
And despite the sub’s unwitting contribution to England’s equaliser, it was the other sub who ensured that Spain became the first country to win four European Championships, which is quite remarkable given the sense of underachievement over so many decades, and remarkable too, that it isn’t Germany.
As for England, they are the first country to lose successive European Championship finals - a tremendous upturn in achievement considering the pre-Southgate era 2016 humbling by Iceland in France. In two years time, it will be coming home again of course, which will be the ‘centenary’ World Cup played in all the world (FIFA is for everyone except Greta Thumberg) but more importantly marks 60 years of hurt, the 30th birthday of 30 Years of Hurt. And if it doesn’t come home for some unfathomable reason then, then it will be at the next Euros, when it’s actually at home already (along with other British Isles nations - do they all get to qualify?) and it will be 60 years since Sweet Caroline was released.*
Name.On.The.Trophy.
*Fact-check that if you must, but I’d question why somebody would make that up.
No comments:
Post a Comment