Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 26

Harry Kane paradox leaves England talisman grasping to find his former self | Jonathan Liew

The captain is too good a passer to be left up front, too good a poacher to be a No 10 and not fit enough to do both

Around 48 minutes into this musty, vaguely icky game – a game that felt like it was a few weeks past its sell-by date, a game that came coated in a thin, unidentifiable layer of mildew – Bukayo Saka got the ball in England’s right channel and played a simple short pass into Harry Kane.

For all his current travails, the vagaries of form and fitness, Kane is nothing if not a fearsome striker of a football. When he really connects, as he did here, the ball simply explodes off his boot: all gunpowder and venom and pure, coiled power. Two problems. First, Kane was facing away from goal. Second, he wasn’t actually attempting a shot but, in fact, trying to bring the ball under control.

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Germany relieved to qualify top after Füllkrug denies Switzerland at the last

It was a humbler and wiser Germany that stepped from the turf here at full-time: euphoric after Niclas Füllkrug’s injury-time header, relieved at topping the group, but with perhaps a more realistic idea of where they are and what to expect from them. Like one of its mercurial intercity trains, Germany’s Euro 2024 journey stuttered and slowed here, even threatening an unscheduled diversion, but ultimately remaining raggedly on course.

And so in a way this was a kind of hazing: a stress test under laboratory conditions, with qualification already secure but a number of flaws that required the scrutiny of a strong Swiss side to expose. How would this team – which until recently was actually very bad – deal with its first big setback, its first indifferent crowd? How would that defence hold up against a team unafraid to run at them? And what happens if you really, really need a goal in the 91st minute?

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Thriving Saudi Pro League stars show wider fault lines around Euro 2024

Cristiano Ronaldo and N’Golo Kanté are among the players thriving in Germany after a season in gentler waters

It’s the 85th minute of Austria’s opening group game against France, and with Austria striving for a late equaliser, Patrick Wimmer runs through on goal. Wimmer is 23 years old, rapid, and plays his football for Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga under the count of counter-pressing, Ralph Hasenhüttl. But as Wimmer puts on the burners, he has reckoned without a 33-year-old midfielder from – according to Opta – the world’s 26th best league.

Like an action hero chasing down a runaway train, N’Golo Kanté steams in and eats up the ground between Wimmer and himself. He claims the ball with his whirring legs, bringing the France bench to its feet in applause. Kanté was the player of the match on Monday night, having lasted the full 90 minutes. He hit a top speed of 21.4mph – second only to Kylian Mbappé – and covered 11.8km, more than any France player. “That’s why we brought him,” the France coach, Didier Deschamps, said afterwards. “He was brilliant.”

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Nagelsmann out to balance solidity and style as Germany show rolls on

Hosts are riding a swell of optimism but final group game against Switzerland on a poor pitch still poses problems

In the months leading up to Euro 2024, we heard a lot about the German passion for “das Public Viewing”. Interviews with players would frequently lapse into nostalgic childhood memories of watching the 2006 World Cup in parks or town squares. Friends enthused about the way whole neighbourhoods would come to life in tournament summers, joined together in what was by now an authentically German cultural experience. You’d smile, and nod, but silently you’d think: “All right pal, we’ve all seen a big screen before.”

Then, around the start of June, the screens started to spring up. Not only the big set-piece screens outside the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, but smaller screens, everywhere. The local kebab place with three tables has a screen up. The local Italian restaurant that doesn’t take credit cards has somehow summoned the technological expertise to attach a 75-inch ultra HD television to the side of the building. The Spätis – basically off-licences – have screens outside with benches where you can sit with cans. The newspaper stand across the road has installed a screen and six deckchairs.

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Athing Mu: ‘Mentally I wasn’t present. I didn’t enjoy what was happening to me’

800m gold medallist from Tokyo took a break last year for her mental health but is back and focusing on Paris

‘Grace, gratitude, appreciation,” says Athing Mu of her approach to running, which by no small coincidence also happens to be her approach to life. We’re talking about learning and growth, about setbacks and what they can teach you, about expectations and when to let them go. About how to take joy from the process in this most brutally unequivocal of sports, where you win or you lose based on fractions of a second.

“Things are going to happen,” she says with a wisdom beyond her 22 years, via a video link from Los Angeles, where she lives and trains. “Say I run 10 more years. In those years, so many things will happen. It’s not going to be all smooth sailing. Problems that we have are lessons that we learn.”

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England hit new low with dire performance too bad to be boring | Jonathan Liew

Such was the amusing ineptitude on show, it felt like watching a Woolworths 1990s football bloopers video

So you probably already watched that, which means that if you’re still reading this you’re either a masochist, a sadist or a Scot. Is it really worth kicking this twitching corpse any further? Of course it is. We may have lost two hours of our lives, but in return we have gained five days of rich, delicious discourse. England: proudly taking with one hand and giving with the other since autumn 1966. Fingers on temples. Let the bloodletting begin.

And what was most immediately arresting about this performance was that it tasted a little different to the usual tournament gruel. Normally when England draw against a smaller nation in the group stage – think the United States in 2022, Scotland in 2021, Russia in 2016 – they are more guilty of being boring than bad, lacking in inspiration and invention rather than possessed of any particular malignance.

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Portugal leave it late and the future of football governance with Sir Keir Starmer – Football Daily

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Fadugba, Mark Langdon and Jonathan Liew to look over a classic between and Turkey and Georgia, Portugal’s escape act and the the Labour leader’s plans for football

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On the podcast today; game of the tournament in Dortmund as Turkey took on Georgia. Brilliant goals and brilliant performances from both sides – are Turkey, finally, actually the dark horses?

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Francisco Conceição comes off Portugal bench to break Czech Republic hearts

A night of mayhem and confusion, of futures and pasts dragging each other in different directions, and at its climax a goal of pure catharsis. Portugal, one of the tournament favourites, are away: a poacher’s goal by the 21-year-old Francisco Conceição sealing victory in the first minute of injury time and underlining the bench strength available to Roberto Martínez.

And this was a redemption of sorts for Martínez too, a coach who knows that he will need to shed Portugal’s past if he is to shed his own. Perhaps unfairly maligned as the man who inherited Belgium’s golden generation and won nothing, Martínez has now been bequeathed a new galaxy of bright and brilliant things. Ultimately, though, Portugal’s embarrassment of riches proved more latter than former.

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Southgate’s England in a microcosm: torn between optimism and caution

Win against Serbia showcased familiar strengths and failings as the victors started fast then began to drop back

A sudden gust of wind whips around the Arena AufSchalke, a light drizzle has begun to fall and with 32 minutes on the clock, the match between England and Serbia is about to change course. It doesn’t feel that way in the moment. To be honest, you need to rewind the tape quite a few times to work it out. But in tight tournament games, the shifts of momentum and supremacy can be subtle, fleeting and almost invisible. And this particular shift begins with England’s man of the match, Jude Bellingham.

First, a little recap. Bellingham has deservedly put England ahead with a 13th-minute header, and with a third of the game played everything is going his way. Serbia, who can’t really defend that well, are defending deep, and thus forcing themselves to defend more. Harry Kane isn’t getting the ball at all, but as he will later explain this is essentially by design, stretching the pitch as much as he can so Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and especially Bellingham can work their magic. The England press is hungry and organised, and even when they squander possession they invariably get it straight back.

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Fans left sidelined and with nowhere to go thanks to Uefa’s bumbling genius | Jonathan Liew

Transport system failed to cope and supporters were left walking in the rain to get to England’s game against Serbia

The No 107 tram pulls up next to a racecourse just outside Gelsenkirchen and judders to a halt. We wait. And wait a little more. Five minutes become 10, and then 15. Songs and idle chat gradually turn to sighs and anxious hubbub. One England fan thinks this tram might be getting diverted back to Essen. Another thinks it might be going straight to the stadium. In fact, its final destination is Gelsenkirchen railway station, where – as one of the few passengers with working phone signal confirms – the crowds are “utter carnage”.

Which is also a pretty decent description of the tableau unfolding outside the windows. Here thousands of England fans in various states of distress and confusion, some in shirts and some not, are swarming in all directions across the pasture: some staggering, some running, some trying to clamber over the metal crash barriers in an attempt to reach the tram, some succeeding and some failing comically.

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