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Ah bloody hell Scotland. I’d really been looking forward to getting behind them and seeing them make some waves but they got off to such a demoralising start by losing to the Czechs. They played ok and gave it a go but a lack of quality cost them in the end. They’ve got some good players but they don’t have a striker and without a striker you’ve got nothing, as better teams than Scotland will also discover before this tournament is out. That really was the difference here. The Czech centre forward scored two great goals while the Scots had Sick Boy from Trainspotting bustling around up front looking like he was off his face on smack. Before the game I saw the team and asked in the group chat “who or what in the blue hell is a Lyndon Dykes?” The answer is he’s a crap striker who plays in the Championship. I can’t believe he started ahead of Che Adams, who isn’t great but he’s decent enough. The whole starting line up seemed weird to me though. Granted, Tierney was out injured (yet was in full training the next day) but Billy Gilmore was left out as well as Adams and Ryan Fraser. I wonder if anyone has told Steve Clarke that if Gilmore is good enough to be getting games for the European Champions then he’s good enough to get in the Scotland team. The Scots are up against it enough without leaving out their best players, but in fairness I can live with them losing this one and also the Croatia game if they were to beat England. With their best eleven out there they’ve got a chance, but it’s tough to see where the goals will come from. They played some good stuff against the Czechs and Robbo was fucking great. He could have even got on the scoresheet but as we’ve seen plenty of times he’s not great in that situation and his finishing is a bit shit. If he improved on that he’d be scoring half a dozen a season for us easily with the positions he gets into. Schik put the Czechs in front somewhat against the run of play with a brilliant header and then he added a world class second with a first time shot from halfway that looped over Marshall and left him in a heap in the back of the net. Keeper is too high up the pitch and Hendry should never have been trying to shoot in the situation he was in (leaving his defence exposed with a two v two), but fuck me that was a glorious strike by the forward. It’s unfair to blame Marshall for his positioning when he’s almost certainly been told to do that. Most keepers would rather be on the edge of the their own box and those who are pushed up usually aren’t that high through choice, but coaches no doubt feel the potential gains from them cutting out through balls is worth the risk of the occasional worldy like this one. It’s not the coach who ends up looking like a twat though, wrapped up in the netting and the subject of a thousand memes. They said on commentary that Schick was transferred between two Italian teams for £40m a few years back. That blew my mind. Is that where we are now, that players can go for that kind of money and half the football watching public have never even heard of them? Not just that, but £40m is actually closer to £80m when it’s Italian teams involved as they’re bad mingebags and don’t like spending more than they have to. Always crying poverty those fuckers. *Ok, so I googled that and it’s not true. Sampdoria signed him for €4m then sold him to Roma for €22m. In between that Juve activated a buy out clause of €30m but he failed a medical and it didn’t happen. Not sure where they got their €40m from but I’m relieved to know my stereotype of Italian teams being tight cunts has been re-enforced. The second goal was a killer really. Scotland had their moments but it wouldn’t go in for them. They waited 23 years for this and it was a bit of a damp squib. No-one will give a fuck though as long as they get something on Friday. Three points might be enough to qualify as one of the third placed teams so although this was a big blow it needn’t be fatal. Tell you what though, if the Scots are looking for inspiration they best get those Braveheart DVDs out because it ain’t coming from their coach. If there’s a more boring, uninspiring man on the planet than Steve Clarke then I hope to never meet him. Jesus he’s fucking hard work to listen to. Speaking of boring, Spain and Sweden are two of the dullest teams you’ll see albeit for vastly different reasons. Sweden are a Sam Alladyce wet dream, and Spain have bored the shit out of everyone for decades now where their tippy tappy possession bullshit. No surprise it ended 0-0 although in fairness to Spain they weren’t the reason this game was like watching paint dry. They tried to break Sweden down but it’s not easy when the whole team is camped on the edge of their own box. Sweden had no interest in doing anything other than defend, and they did it very well. It made for a proper shitty game though. Luis Enrique left Thiago out of the starting line up which undid all the goodwill he’d earned by dropping Ramos and not picking any Real Madrid players in his squad. As if they’ve got three midfielders better than Thiago! Or one for that matter. Their main problem is up top though. Alvaro Morata is the Spanish equivalent of Lyndon Dykes or Keifa Moore. How do Spain not have a better striker than him? I’ll tell you shall I? Because everyone over there wants to play tippy tappy five yard passes in midfield and no-one grows up wanting to be a goalscorer anymore. And what the fuck is Laporte doing out there? Declared himself French, couldn’t get in the French squad and now all of a sudden wants to be Spanish. Spain shouldn’t have lowered themselves like that, they’ve got plenty of players they could have picked instead. I don’t like this at all. Fuck him and anything to do with Man City. Sweden are shite but that Isak up front looks fucking boss. Really impressed with him and if he was playing for Spain this would have been an entirely different game. Can’t believe they subbed him, but so far one of the most glaring themes of this tournament has been coaches who appear to have been sniffing glue. The other game on Monday was Poland and Slovakia. There’s nothing that was going to make me sit through 90 minutes of those two so I’m basing this entirely on the highlights. Slovakia took the lead after Mak skipped past a couple of defenders and beat Szczesny (yeah I googled the spelling there) at his near post. The ball came back off the upright, hit the keeper and then went in. Goes down as an own goal but that was great play by Mak. Poland levelled with a total mis-kick from Linetty but then had a lad sent off for two yellows. The first was a blatant booking but the second is just a bit of an over zealous foul. Some proper petty Premier League shit that by the ref and completely out of place in this tournament. Slovakia won it with a nice strike by Skriniar but neither of teams look any good and Spain will go through easily. Slovakia are now in good shape to get second but this is a shite group and Spain have touched really lucky being drawn with these three stiffs. Looking forward to watching Isak for Sweden again though. There’s no Skrtel anymore for the Slovaks but Hamsik is still there. I’d forgotten how much he gets on my tits. He’s still got the same fucking haircut too. Reckon he’ll still have that when he’s in his fifties and working as a pundit on Slovak TV, the fucking weirdo. He left Napoli to take the money in China but within two years he was playing for Gothenburg and now he’s just signed for Trabzonspor. That’s some Rafa Benitez style career trajectory that. Rafa managed him at Napoli and maybe they’ll both be reunited circling the drain at Everton. Moving on, reigning champs Portugal got off to a winning start but they left it late inside a full stadium in Budapest against Hungary. Mad seeing a game played in front of a full crowd wasn’t it? Hopefully won’t be long now until it’s the norm again. Portugal’s starting eleven is probably second only to France. Really strong and well balanced. They found it hard to make the breakthrough even though they created plenty of chances. Spider Gulacsi in goal for Hungary was class but Portugal’s finishing wasn’t great. Ronaldo put one over the bar from four yards in the first half and it looked like it wasn’t going to be his day. With seven minutes left it was still 0-0 and Hungary had given as good as they’d got in the second half, even having a goal disallowed (rightly) for offside. Then a deflected strike by Guerreiro finally broke Hungary down and then Ronaldo bagged a couple late on. One from the spot and the other after a couple of nice one twos. The celebration after the pen was a bit OTT but that's Ronaldo for you, self indulgent cunt. Big fan of Jota just refusing to pass to his team-mates because he knows they’re all wankers though. Ronaldo and Fernandes (hate his fucking rat face) both lost their shit with him for not playing them in and having a shot instead. That’s our boy right there. Good work son. I enjoyed France v Germany even though it was far from a classic. It was two world class heavyweights facing off and although there wasn’t too much in the way of fireworks I found it to be a fascinating battle. Germany played quite well but had no cutting edge and there has to be major question marks over their forward line. That being said, the French are brilliant defensively so I’ll reserve judgement on Germany’s forwards until after they’ve played the other two group games. Not sure about Gnabry as a centre forward though? Boss little player but not a number nine. Why not stick Havertz there with Gnabry and Sane either side? Mind you, Sane was fucking shite when he came on and seems to have lost his way a bit. Werner wasn’t great either but on the plus side he wasn’t as useless as that Kevin Volland fella. Fucking hell, they’d be better off dusting off Mario Gomez and throwing him up there. Sure, he may be sixty years old now but they were still picking him when he was fifty so why not? Old Yogi Love has to stop sniffing his fingers and fix that forward problem if Germany are going to do anything, but they do have quality everywhere else and with three teams probably qualifying from the group they could still be able to make some noise in the knockouts. Rudiger bit Pogba and nothing was done about it. It was laughed off by most people and described as ‘not a full on bite’. Nah, it defo was. It doesn’t look like much but Pogba immediately yelled out in pain and he couldn’t have been faking that as his back was to Rudiger and he wouldn’t have known he’d been bitten unless he felt it, which he clearly did. He told the linesman but it wasn’t looked at by VAR, or if it was they did nothing. That’s a clear red card and a suspension, but it looks like nothing will be done. Huge difference in reaction to when Suarez did it, but I guess Rudiger doesn’t have a history of sinking his chompers into the opposition when he gets frustrated and it's therefore not as big a story. It isn’t an apples to apples comparison but even so, you can’t allow that to go unpunished, even if it was on Pogba. Speaking of Pogba, what the fuck was going on with his shirt? One long sleeve and one short. One wristband. The haircut. Everything about him screams out “LOOK AT ME!!”. He should have that tattooed on his fod. He looks like a 10 year old created him on FIFA., the fucking tit. He played well though and clearly when he can be arsed he is a talented player. As usual though, any time he does something decent it gets massively overblown. He was given man of the match (when really Ngolo Kante was the best player on the pitch, as he is virtually every time he plays) and he was the main focus on the BBC highlights package. Yawn. If he’s as great as people keep saying then how come the cunt can’t play a pass on time and kept delaying until Mbappe had ran offside? Fraud. The only goal of the game was an oggy from Hummels. Bit unfortunate really as he had to try and cut out the cross or Mbappe had a tap in behind him. The ball bounced up and he shinned it past his keeper. That poor bastard will be having ‘Nam style flashbacks for a while about trying to chase after Mbappe. What a mismatch that was. Hummels isn’t the quickest but I’m not sure there is any defender who can match Mbappe in a 30 yard sprint. He was lucky not to concede a penalty in the second half when he had a 15 yard start on Mbappe and still got burned off. It was incredible speed that. Hummels did well to make a last ditch recovery lunge and nick the ball away from him but he went through Mbappe’s legs to get it and he brushed his foot on the way through before winning the ball. That’s usually given as a penalty and if it had been I don’t think there would have been too many arguments, but I’m glad it wasn’t as to me that’s a good tackle from a player who looked like he’d been completely beaten. I loved that little 5 seconds of play as it was just great from both of them. Mbappe is fucking terrifying. Imagine him playing for a coach other than that boring little water carrying muppet show Deschamps. He’d be unstoppable. As it is he’s just relying on counter attacks all the time because France are just so fucking pragmatic under Deschamps. I mean, it’s effective so he’s doing a good job, but from a neutral’s perspective it’s frustrating as there’s so much talent in that squad. Their subs would probably make the quarter finals. Mbappe had a goal ruled out for offside and then created one for Benzema that was also ruled out for offside. Both correct decisions, one made by the linesman and the other by VAR. The first one was annoying because he was offside when he received the ball well away from goal and the flag should have gone up then. They’re told not to though so play went on and about 10 seconds later Mbappe is bending one into the far corner out of nothing. Stunning finish, but THEN the flag goes up. I get it. It was a close(ish) call and if the linesman had flagged earlier the goal never happens. That’s fine if he gets it right, but if he’s wrong then they want the goal to stand, hence the late flag. I just don’t like it, I prefer the way it used to be, mistakes and all. The second one was offside but difficult to spot in real time. VAR chalked that one off, but it was close enough that would we really be up in arms if that goal had stood? France were celebrating and it was cut short by VAR. I say they were celebrating, but no doubt fucking loads of French fans watching weren’t celebrating because they were waiting to see if it was given. This is becoming the new norm now That’s why I hate it. That said, so far VAR has done exactly what it is supposed to do and it hasn’t ruined games the way it did so many times in the Premier League. The refs have been fucking terrific too I have to say. There’s still time of course and I’m willing to bet that a really important game is going to be tainted by some VAR bullshit before the tournament is out. I just hope it’s England on the receiving end.