It’s Not Coming Home - Again

My interest in football – especially international and Premier League football – has waned a bit in recent years, and I’ve rarely watched live football on TV, especially since covid, what with the lack of atmosphere at games played behind closed doors. I approached Euro 2020 with some scepticism; I wasn’t expecting to watch many games, and I wasn’t overly optimistic about how enjoyable it would be.

 

As it turned out, I watched more games that I expected, and enjoyed them much more than I had anticipated. It helped of course, that England surpassed my expectations (a Semi-Final place was the best I was hoping for, and even that was a stretch), but in any case, the quality of the games – especially in the knock-out stages – was mostly excellent. Two games on the same day – Croatia v Spain, and France v Switzerland – were spectacularly entertaining, and then the next day England beat Germany, and any victory over Germany is one to be savoured.

 

Spain's Mikel Oyarzabal celebrates scoring their fifth goal in their thrilling game against Croatia. Picture:  REUTERS/Stuart Franklin

The football benefited from the return of the fans, although a multi-country, multi-city format during a pandemic introduced some unnecessary risk. It seems that at Wembley especially, the supposed covid restrictions that required fans to show their vaccination status or a negative test result were not rigidly enforced, and the chaotic and violent scenes at the stadium and other parts of London on the day of the Final were as predictable as they were saddening.

 

In the end, England’s quest for a first tournament win since 1966 fell short in the penalty shoot-out against Italy. It won’t be long before ‘thirty years of hurt’ becomes sixty at this rate. Perhaps Messrs Broudie, Skinner, and Baddiel will update the tune in time for the 2026 World Cup, unless England manage to go one better than this year before then.

 

Comparisons between England’s final this year and 1966 are inevitable, and as much as anything, they display the changes that the country, indeed the whole world, has gone through in the last fifty-five years.

 

Take the crowd at Wembley. In 1966 most of the men were in suits and ties; rosettes abound, and the flags being waved were largely Union Flags. Now it’s replica shirts and the Cross of St George.

1966 at Wembley

And everyone looked older. Take a picture from 1966 and compare it with one from this year, and most of the fans will be roughly the same ages, but those from 1966 look older, and they certainly seem to be have been more mature in their behaviour. In 1966 no one was sticking a lighted flare up their backside as one England ‘fan’ did before the game this year. Sadly, the events at Wembley and in Central London on final day make a possible England bid for the 2030 World Cup looked doomed to failure.

Wembley 2021

It isn’t just the fans. This is a picture of Sir Alf Ramsey – plain Mr Ramsey then – at the time of the 1966 final. He was 46 years old.

 

Then there is Gareth Southgate. He’s fifty in this picture. But then, everyone looks younger and dresses younger these days. 

When I was a teenager my grandparents seemed incredibly old, but in reality they weren’t much older than I am now, yet as my mother said, once her mother hit fifty, she became old, and acted old. My parents never owned a pair of jeans between them, or trainers; my dad didn’t even own any polo shirts or t-shirts come to that. His casual wear still involved putting on collar and tie, even if he wore them with a windbreaker rather than a sports jacket.

 

Much has been made of the youth of the England team that lost to the Italians, particularly the ages of those who missed the crucial penalties. Yes, Bukayo Saka, Jordan Sancho, and Marcus Rashford are 19, 21, and 23 respectively, but in 1966 England had Alan Ball (21), and Martin Peters (22). Hat-trick scorer Geoff Hurst was just 24, as was Nobby Stiles; even Bobby Moore was just 25. The average age of the 1966 team was 26.5, compared with 25.27 for Gareth Southgate’s men.

 

The refereeing, and the use of VAR impressed me at Euro 2020. In fact, the first game I watched made me wonder if VAR was even being used. It was unobtrusive and seemed to be genuinely there to help referees, unlike the version used in the Premier League which seems to just stoke controversy and generate perverse decisions.

 

That isn’t to say there wasn’t any controversy at Euro 2020. If anything, it has made me doubt whether I know what is and isn’t a foul any more, especially after some commentators called into question the correctness of the referee awarding a penalty when French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris as near as damn-it decapitated Portugal’s Danilo, but were certain that the minimal contact on Raheem Sterling in England’s Semi-Final against Denmark was a nailed-on penalty.

Some commentators had some doubt about this being a penalty...

...but no doubt about this one.

I have read and re-read football’s Law 12, which deals with Fouls and Misconduct, and have reached the conclusion that it is not a law at all (football is very precious about the fact that it has laws, not rules), but rather a set of very loose guidelines that are within the gift of the referee to interpret as they see fit. I guess that anyone who has, like me, watched football for more than half a century, thinks they know a foul when they see one, but sometimes it can be very hard to explain why when there are a series of very similar challenges, some are fouls and some are not; it’s all highly subjective.

There were two things that rather got on my nerves during Euro 2020. Firstly, the trend for treading on an opponent’s foot, which – if you will pardon the pun – really needs stamping out. The other thing – and why this is so prevalent baffles me – is the foul throw.

 

At the top of the game, players spend hours honing their skills at free-kicks, penalties and other set pieces. They practice pinging passes with unerring accuracy over long distances, but when it comes to taking throw ins it often looks like some of them are doing so for the first time. I lost track of the number of foul throws that were taken, yet not one that I saw was flagged by an assistant referee.

 

The foul throw is somewhat like a victimless crime; it’s rarely more advantageous for the player taking it and his team than a proper throw, and in that respect one might say it’s not worth worrying about. Except of course, football will maintain that it has laws, and unlike rules, with which one might allow a degree of discretion, laws have a more rigid structure. If the ‘law’ on foul throws is not going to be enforced then it should be changed.

  

Now that the dust has settled after Euro 2020, it seems that once again, football has failed to come home; instead, it went to Rome. Maybe next year in Qatar, eh?