UEFA Euro 2020 Football Championship

I was surprised at the freedom the Spanish goalie had in jumping around, I thought the rules state to be motionless until the ball is kicked, no? 

Belgium - Italy looks like the tie of the round though Spain - Switzerland and Czech Rep - Denmarrk may be more entertaining with 3 of the teams having exceeded expectations and are playing with house money.

England - Ukraine will probably be a dreadful match with England hopefully winning

Croatia-Spain was insane. My favourite part of course being the first goal after 18 minutes. I didn't think something like that was even possible in football of that level. Clearly not the most well-played match, but it had high entertainment value all the way.

France-Switzerland was exciting. I'd expect France to win easily, but the Swiss fought very hard, and I think they deserved the win.

Germany-England was boring, and I remember very little of it. The audience booed during the German national anthem. Very disrespectful...

Ukraine-Sweden was boring too, and the players looked tired most of the time. Then in the extended time it got downright ugly with all the fouls and damages (and a deserved red card I must add). There was no flow.

A few notes, not necessarily about this Euro thing, but in general it shows and fits.

Many years ago, I remember the NFL, used to show plays to their players on the bench while the offense (or defense) were on the field, that showed the plays. Technology has changed things, and allows for a lot more to be seen and shown, however, I do not exactly see laptops in front of all players and instead I see the soccer and most sports, the players locked up in their seats twiddling their thumbs.

About 10 years ago, I goofed around with helping some kids soccer, for an "elite" team, and since I was the nut that always saw the ideas and concepts, I drew them up on paper and made sure that I could see them happen more than once and recorded the time when. One game we lost, I pulled out all the diagrams and showed how we allowed this or that team to do this and that, and never adjusted.

The coach looked at things, ripped up the whole thing and then said that the game is for the kids to have fun! That it was not a school with whips and such!

Needless to say he didn't coach anymore after that year, as he wasn't intelligent enough to appreciate how things could be adjusted on the field, and specially with youngsters just learning the game and not realizing they are being taken advantage of because their coach can not see things on the field!

This was quite visible in the last WC and the one before that. It was very clear who made the adjustments, with the only thing that was not quite clear as to how some teams did not change from their "formation" and assumed that the opposition was too stupid to know it! That coach won't last much either!

Today, with technology all over the place, it is really difficult to not find a team that is not aware of things that are happening. With one exception! France is known to not give a damn/darn about this or that and not listen to their coach and do whatever they want on the field. Many times it worked so not a whole lot was said, but when it came to a tougher game and an opponent that was not in the mood for a picnic in the park with a nice bottle of wine, the French ... mailed out the rest of the game. And they lost because someone else was more interested in winning and trying harder!

Today, the smaller nations, with all the electronic this and that, have gotten way better than most people would imagine, and they are taking their shots at the big teams for the past 30 to 40 years, and are showing that they are well versed and better coached than 40 or 50 years ago, when the big teams rarely lost unless it was to each other. Africa came up at that time big time, and their speed was a real problem for many teams when they got better at it! A coach that did not adjust to help prevent that and create a manner of play to counter that, did not deserve to win, and this was the case with the USA team, that STILL has a hard time with faster teams! 30 years later, the same story! And American coaching has gotten worse? Who knows and we will see what GB comes up with, but I do not expect the USA to get into the second round of the WC. I find their "formation" too rigid and not helping the players get better, although GB seems to have adjusted some of their formation to better help players up front, that are STILL grossly starved for attention and a cross ... one of the worst parts of the USA game. Reminds me of JK, and his tank mentality ... we go right through the middle, and Jozy only got the ball when two or three folks were on him ... I would say that is horrible coaching!

Just some fun observations and how TV has changed the game. The sad thing is that European rich folks that run the game do not see that TV has not hurt the 4 big American games at all ... and improved the officiating as much as possible, whereas Europe still wants the referee to make mistakes so that their power teams can continue winning and making the commercial success off their team! Anything else would be a disaster!

Nice to see some not well known teams to shake up things ... I'm not surprised to see Germany/France fall, and I think that we will likely see one or two more big "upsets" because of it.

Abysmal performance by Germany in the second half. They tried to play possession football in their own half as England wouldn't allow it in their half. That was never going to work. Instead of finding the holes in the England defence, they offered their own when they lost the ball. Need some creativity to get out of the own half but that wasn't there. Safety first by players who are too prone to mistakes for safety.

Congrats England!