Progress Report

Everybody has now played two games and what have we learnt?
1. England have a lot of strikers at their disposal and Roy intends to use them all. Often at the same time. Roy gets criticised for being unadventurous (how many adventurous sixty-eight year olds do you know) but two half time substitutions against Wales was bold.
2. England fans are, in the main, decent and courteous people but we have a small minority of complete arses. Having said that, so do a fair proportion of the countries at the tournament.
3. Our fans singing “Fuck off Europe, we’re voting out” is a good indicator of the level of debate in the EU referendum
4. The Russian hooligans have taken crowd violence to a different level. If we want to compete, we have to step up our combat training.
5. Raheem Sterling is not as good as he thinks he is. But he’s also not as bad as we think he is. I know the level of hyperbole goes up several notches during a tournament but everyone needs to calm down a bit.
6. Even though most pundits wrote off the Italians chances, they now appear to be one of the favourites for the tournament.
7. Everyone except Cristiano Ronaldo loves Iceland. He criticised the Icelandic team for having a “small nation mentality” which is perhaps not surprising seeing as Iceland’s population is the same as Leicester.
8. Whilst the Welsh are definitely not a one man team, they’re extremely reliant on that one man.
9. Spain are really good. We all knew that anyway but after the last World Cup, I think we’d all started to doubt whether this astonishing generation of players could do it again. I watched the game against Turkey and it appears that they can.
10. Joachim Low is a fan of the smell of the contents of his trousers. Fine in itself but I’d rather not have seem him actually do what he did. Also, sadly for him, it’s what he’s now going to be remembered for which is a shame seeing as he managed a team that won the World Cup.
11. The refereeing has been way better than anyone expected. Long may that continue although a couple of dodgy decisions going England’s way would partly make up for Frank Lampard’s over the line non-goal in 2010.
12. Flares are readily available in France. And also apparently very easy to smuggle into heavily policed football stadia.
13. Croatian football fans seem to be more pissed off with each other than fans of other countries. Whilst things in the Balkans have definitely calmed down, it’s apparent that they’re bubbling away nicely just under the surface
14. Policing in riot gear from a distance with tear gas is not sophisticated. The French police should really take some tips from their English counterparts.
15. The Welsh fans are rather good at communal singing. Their national anthem before the first game was a spine tingling moment.
16. Belgium are a strange team but if they ever properly get it together, they could win the whole thing. Although it’s also possible they’ll lose to Sweden and be on the first plane home. At least they haven’t got a long journey back
17. Football is a brilliant game. Anyone who doesn’t like it just isn’t watching it properly.