England are somehow one game away from the Euro 2024 final – Football Daily podcast

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly, a semi-final pod then for Euro 2024.

England are there somehow, Gareth Southgate's third semi in four tournaments.

It feels the least planned, the most chaotic, perhaps the luckiest of them and yet we are still there we'll discuss the left side the immovable immobile harry kane we'll talk the good things saka menu eze parmatoni a relatively miserly defense the hopeful return of luke shaw five pounds to all of us if we avoid saying a team of moments and then there's the dutch big vout got trolled enough in england to want to troll us back is it darn to suggest targeting van dijke there's the classic goodies v baddies in spain versus France.

People have been begging for some Copper America.

So hopefully Wilson's been watching that.

All that.

Plus your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

From the look of your face, Jonathan Wilson, you haven't been watching it.

I mean,

two words, Salomon von Don.

There we are.

That's your Copper America for you.

Johnny Lou, welcome.

Hi.

Hello, Barney Ronnay.

Hello.

So, England so far played five.

They've won one in normal time, one in extra time, one on penalties, and two draws, four, five against three.

But South get into his third semi-final in four tournaments.

Barney, is the football as bad as we think it's been, or somewhere in the middle?

Is there now a sort of culture war over how this is all happening?

I mean, there has been for a long time.

Uh, it's weird, I feel like I'm I've been forced into a I've had to adopt a position here that I really want.

I've become this kind of Southgate truther.

I'm a sort of Joe Rogan of Southgate-ism.

Or I, I mean, actually, I'm not.

I'm more, I'm more of a marginalised figure than that.

I'm like Donald Sutherland in JFK.

I'm appearing on a bench saying, you know, look who stands to gain.

Actually, maybe I'm the Kevin Bacon figure in that film.

Right.

Just shouting out truths from a hotel room in Germany.

Or you're Kevin Bacon in tremors, just going, ah!

I don't care that much about Southgate.

Obviously, he's not the world's greatest manager, but I just hate the discourse around it.

I was thinking about it this morning.

It's really hard.

There are all these, like, this is cognitive dissonance between England been to 26 tournaments before Southgate and reached.

If you say a semi-final, is that you're in the final four days of the tournament, that's a sign of success.

They reached three in 26 tournaments.

They've now reached three in four.

So, can I just add a footnote?

No, we had this conversation already today.

We had this argument at breakfast.

Barney does not count 1968 Euros, which there are reasons.

Because you have to win the home championships to qualify for a semi-final.

I think that is a footnote that's worth adding.

That's all I'm saying.

Okay.

I've already adjusted to include the 1980 one at your, but that made it worse for England because they were terrible then.

It's just giving you facts.

I wasn't taking a side.

I was partying.

But no, you see, this is no logic in starting in 84, not 80 if you're saying it has to be a tournament of eight teams.

Anyway, carry on.

I'm giving facts.

Three in 26 and then three in four.

And this cognitive distance where you can look at that and say, well, the problem is Southgate's holding them back.

Obviously, he's not perfect.

Nobody's perfect.

But they had very good players before.

Stanley Matthews, Ballon d'Or.

Kevin Keegan, Ballon d'Or.

Michael Owen, Ballon d'Or.

Bobby Charlton, Ballon d'Or.

Now, if you say Ballon d'Or a lot, that means you must know something about football.

And that's now me.

But the point is, yes, he obviously makes mistakes, but he's kind of, there's two problems with England.

There's this culture stuff, the idiocy of being English, battling all that.

And then there's being good on the pitch.

And he is, he's kind of slain one of those dragons, but he's not a brilliant manager.

He's not going to work out how to make a slightly worse midfield, beat a better midfield.

Yes, we can see that.

But to go on and on about it, learn from what he's done, get a slightly better tactical manager, and maybe they'll win something.

But for now, it's pretty good.

And he's certainly not a deceitful, dishonest, corrupt person.

So the amount of abuse he's getting, the people throwing things at him, I find really sickening.

And I think it's really something that people should just stop doing.

Also, I would say,

probably disagreeing with your intro, that this is probably his greatest achievement, this current semifinal, because he's got over two things.

He's got over his own mistakes.

He's made a lot of mistakes with the team.

Midfield wasn't configured properly.

He forgot the things that made him good.

And the amount of background noise is just absolutely absurd.

And both of those things have been addressed face down and they've reached the semi-finals somehow while playing winning ugly football uh i just think how you can look at that and say this guy is the big problem you know we just get rid of southgate everything will be fine um management is a lot harder club international management is weird it's not like a you're playing fancy football league or or playing a club game where you've got endless money to spend and blah blah blah you have to compromise and do weird things and it's about feelings and emotions and culture and And they've done okay.

Sorry, I'm just going on about this.

I need to stop.

I've become one of these middle-aged obsessive.

He's my veganism.

I'm obsessed with Southgate.

He's my micro-brewery.

It's become the thing that I live for.

Okay, I'll let Jolly have a little go then.

I agree with a lot of that.

I mean, I thought, I think I've said many times on here that I thought Southgate should have gone after Qatar.

There is a kind of paradox here because, yes, there is a lot of noise, there is a huge amount of engagement, there is a huge discourse around it.

And that is partly

the kind of the reconnection that Southgate created between the public and the England team in 2018 and 2020.

That's why people care so more about this thing.

I think after Euro 2016, there was this huge disconnect, and it could have gone one of two ways.

And Southgate is part of the reason why people are so engaged with it now.

And the other thing is,

there is this idea that he's just just benefiting from this incredible wealth of talent.

He's just sort of, you know, sucking at the teeth of this incredible pipeline.

But, you know,

if you look back at his work with the FA before he became England manager, the building blocks that he put in, this is, you know, he does deserve some credit for creating that pipeline, nurturing that talent, you know, his work with the under-21s.

All this could be true.

All this could be true.

And,

you know, you can look at his tournament records and,

you know, is no there is no body of work in my lifetime as an England manager that stands up to that he is very clearly either England's greatest manager or his or their second greatest depending on whether you value things like winning a World Cup what I kind of don't

what I don't like really is this this this idea and and I think this kind of patronizing slightly patronizing patrician like condescension that you get from

I think a lot of people in the media I think a a lot of people who are sort of mates with Gareth and who just, who find this, who basically don't like England fans and don't, you know, find them a little bit vulgar and Philistine.

This idea that you can't

you can't dislike the way England are playing now.

That actually this thing is good.

This is the bad football is actually good football, but you've never had it so good that, you know,

you can't if you liked the previous Southgate teams, you are sort of duty bound to like this one as well because he's just a nice guy.

Who's saying that you need to like the football?

I've not seen anyone say that.

I think there's a general agreement that football's terrible.

No, no,

I think there's a lot of agreement that he's, you know, he's playing a

he's playing a long game here, that

this is actually really good, that

his fingerprints are all over this team.

When in fact, I think his fingerprints have never less been on this team.

I kind of wrote after the after the Switzerland game that it feels like this team has basically become an unward from him.

You know, 2018, 2020, those successes bore his his blueprint absolutely i think this is now a kind of it's a mess it's a mess being run on on incredible individual talent and you know and yet we're being told that this is the final twist of his genius that you know this is the ultimate triumph who's saying that i've not i think every everybody thinks this awesome no i think this is this is definitely being sold on you know on social media and in the media as like this is southgate sticking all the gareth haters have now got one in the eye because look at what he's done here And

I think it's perfectly, it's perfectly possible to take the view that he has done, he did a really good job up until 2022.

The team and the system has become a little bit stale under him, and yet brilliant players are bailing him out this time.

And, you know,

I think it's kind of, it's weird that people say, you know,

that wanting a different kind of football, wanting to be entertained while also winning is some kind of, it's some sort of Vulgarianism.

The grown-ups are in the room now.

Another future is not possible.

Suck Suck on his 174-seat majority.

Tough choices now have to be made.

You know, I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that.

Well, I just don't think that argument exists.

I've not heard anyone saying that.

England are dreadful.

I mean, I think the best you can say for Southgate here is that maybe he created a culture that was good.

And so if there's luck, maybe he deserves that luck.

I think that's the best you can say about Southgate in this tournament.

I've not seen anyone say you've just got to suck this up.

It's awful, obviously.

I mean, maybe it's a reaction to the BBC were very positive after the last game on TV, and that is 18 million people watching that going, sort of almost feeling like, and we had a lot of reaction after our pod, because I had people who listened to us and then listened to their pod going, the difference between the two is so marked.

I definitely Wilson am a sort of Southgate apologist who slightly jumped off the Southgate train this tournament.

Yeah, I mean, I think...

I mean, there's so many problems with the discourse around this.

So the people who hate the style of football, look, England are not playing well, but there's a point beyond that.

What are they trying to do?

And it is true that Southgate, his aim is a slightly more conservative form of football, small C conservative form of football than a lot of people would like.

But

how do you create attacking beautiful football?

You actually often have to create it by playing fewer attacking players.

And the paradox of this England side is one of their problems is they've tried to put too many attacking players in.

It's the same thing Argentina did for years.

We've got this incredible clutch of attacker and creative players, which certainly more than England have had before.

And suddenly, rather than playing the 4-3-3,

where you'd have Declan Rice alongside a fairly defensive, fairly solid figure, and who would occasionally get forward, or Declan Rice would occasionally get forward with a slightly more creative player in there.

Now it's suddenly a 4-2-3-1, or started tournament it was, with Bellingham, and that he was then playing slightly further forward than he had been at the World Cup, and that meant he was getting in the way of Foden and getting in the way of Kane.

There was a lack of balance there because there was nobody to go beyond Kane, partly because of Rashford not being anywhere near good enough form.

So I sort of think the complaints about how England are playing are clearly legitimate in that the football is not good.

I think the solution people are proposing, oh, take the handbrake off.

No, put the handbrake on more.

That's how you make them more creative by

creating a firmer base.

You know, it's the same as, I don't know, look at, say, the 2005 Champions League final.

How did Liverpool become more attacking?

It's by bringing on Diddy Haman and showing up in midfield to create

the foundations for it.

I don't think the complaints are legitimate.

I just think the solutions are proposed aren't really possible or relevant.

I also think people's expectations of international football are often slightly fanciful.

It's not club football.

We're used to seeing at club level incredibly finely tuned machines that have been put together over a period of years by people selecting the right parts and then honing those parts within a system every day looking at data analysing it working how you can tweak it to make it better they're incredibly efficient machines international football by its nature cannot be that should not be that and it's always going to be a bit of a bodge job and a lot of that means just sort of scrambling through when you can and even the very best teams in a seven in a seven game span of a tournament maybe play well like really well twice

um england haven't had that twice yet but were they to play well in the semi-in-the-final, we would think, oh, you know, time to run perfectly, and you back-project the narrative onto it.

So I think what we're seeing so far is

what never seemed to happen to England before.

You'd see other teams be terrible in the creep stage and somehow bundle away through it.

Look at Portugal in 2016, whose Southgate is sort of said as a model.

They drew all three games.

They were then terrible in...

I can't even remember which way around the Croatian Poland games were, but one was on penalties, one was a 1-0 win, and suddenly they've been a semi-final against Wales.

That's almost the position England finds themselves.

England probably played better in this tournament than Portugal in 2016.

Terry says, Is Kane untouchable?

He shouldn't be, should he?

I mean, he's he's not been

really bad for five games in a row.

I mean, he scored twice, but yeah, he's looked so immobile.

I wonder if anyone's ever been previously so bad in five tournament games and played every minute.

It could be a world record, he could go through the entire tournament.

Um, I'm sure that has happened before, but normally you'd get knocked out by now.

But, like, uh, I don't know, I think I'd like to see him probably have a rest.

But managers, again, don't do that because this is everything, isn't it?

This could be Gareth Southgate's last game in charge, hopefully.

I mean, what I mean is hopefully he's going to leave after this tournament because I really don't want him to stay on.

But it won't happen.

But yeah, I'd like to see Ivan Tony because I really like him,

Ivan Tony.

I think he's really fun and he's a good player and it would just be nice to see some different energy in there because Kane isn't causing any problems.

When he drops off, when his physical levels drop off, he doesn't really have much.

You forget that his achievements are not based in any particularly outrageous talent.

He's a really clever player.

He's brilliant at striking a ball.

He's got good movement, good passing.

But, you know, it's always been a stretch.

He's really overachieved.

And so when his physicals levels drop a bit, I think he's been confused by the Bundesliga as well.

He did play a much reduced role there.

And Bellingham and Foden getting in the spaces he likes.

He's not been able to adapt.

It's his failing.

But no,

he won't be dropped.

I'm sure of it.

No, because

I can't think of anything worse, Johnny, than England winning and Harry Kane not being on the pitch, but just sitting on the end and just like,

what that would do?

It would just be like the memes would be too much.

It'd be better to go out of the semi-final.

But maybe his best chance is coming on late.

I mean, I agree.

Maybe this is a futile conversation because he will start.

But you can see, like, even simple things are not working because he's just not right.

No, and the touch is heavy, the gate is leaden.

He's not challenging for

the aerial ball in the same kind of physical way that

we've been used to him doing.

I think England are

quite blessed, in fact, that they've got three strikers who have got very different

profiles, they've got very different capabilities.

They're suitable for almost for different phases of a game.

You wonder that, you know, with a squad of 26 with...

five subs available, I think they get a sixth sub in extra time, but whether, you know, it'll never happen, but whether you have Ollie Watkins on for the first half, you know, using his pace and movement to stretch defences and try and give him a fast start, then you bring on Kane for the second half, because you do still want 45 minutes of Kane.

And if it's looking like it's going to extra time, you bring on Tony just before the

goal on 85 minutes, you bring on Tony for his aerial presence and you bring him on for penalties.

That is possible.

These kind of combinations with the way that squats are configured these days, you could do that.

I think we know that that's not going to happen, but it is just worth thinking about all the different attacking combinations that england have that that they could if they didn't see kane as this kind of sacred cow that needed to play from the start and play basically until his legs fall off wilson uh the left side i mean i i i'm now starting to quite like watching kieran trippier cut back and play a fast back to a centre back you know sort of like stockholm syndrome but it seems almost during that second half when the swiss were getting better i was like this feels so obvious to me that i must be missing something Well, I think one of the reasons Southgate likes Trippier is he's very vocal.

And I think there's a sense that without Maguire and without Henderson, England lacks an organising voice, and Trippier does give you that.

Whether that's enough to compensate for the bluntness that caused on left-hand side, I'm not sure.

But if England do go to a back three

long term, I mean long term, as in the next two games,

my guess Saka does take the right side of Real, doesn't he, rather than Trippier?

Whether you can sort of fiddle that round somehow to make it more of a 3-4-3 with Saka still playing on the right.

I mean, that would mean probably sacrificing one of Fogen or Bellingham, and you have Trippier on one side, Shaw on the other.

I don't know, that's a possibility.

There was a moment when Shaw came on against Switzerland,

he'd been on about 30 seconds and he suddenly pings his left foot at 70-yard pass cross-field.

And you still think, oh, yeah, people can do that with a left foot.

That's great.

I think Trippier defensively is probably better than Shaw.

But it's, I mean, I don't know who the Dutch are going to play on the right, because if it's Stephen Bergvine,

he's been so bad

the twice I've seen him in this tournament that I'm not really sure that it matters what you have on the left defensively.

But I sort of presume Bergvine won't play.

Whether that means Zavi Simmons pushing the forward line, whether they start their course, I don't know.

I thought at the start of this game, the Switzerland game, Barney, that Foden and Bellingham did start to look like they were working together a bit.

They both faded, I think.

But again, I guess it's like the Kane question, like they will both play.

Yeah, I mean, there was a couple of moments, really briefly in the first half, where Foden and Saka combined on the right.

And that was just like, oh, wow, you know, that's great.

That's what English football has, these two really good players.

Seeing them play together was really, you know, it was really interesting.

But it didn't really work.

I mean, to be fair to...

To be fair to South Goat, as I'm trying to get people to call him, when I saw that thing about, you know, Saka playing on the right, he was like, great, he's going to play Wimback, he's going to have balance.

Maybe Saka, you know, and oh, he's playing Tripper on the left.

You know, I was furious.

And I just, what are you doing?

Why have you done this?

You're going to have balance, but no balance.

And oh, he's a he's worried about andoy, so he wants a more defensive player there.

And then in the first three minutes, Andoy just weaves past Trippier.

But I mean, to be fair to him, Saka was England's best player and scored the goal.

And that seemed to not really be the problem.

That weirdness problem seemed to be other stuff, mainly the sort of death after half-time.

So that part of it seemed to work okay.

But I think Luke Shaw will definitely start.

It makes a huge difference.

And I think he's a really good player, Luke Shaw.

Start on the left of a three or start as a wing back or...

Wing back, yeah.

Yeah, Mark Gahey will come back in on the left side.

He's left-footed.

He played well.

And he's a good player.

He's had a good tournament.

So then you've got two left-footed defenders on that side and it starts to look a bit better.

Suddenly I think it's...

That sounds nice, Johnny, doesn't it?

It's on.

I mean, England

could

win

the,

I still don't think, I still don't see how they beat France or Spain, but like weirder things have happened.

I mean, Barney was saying the other day that he thinks that

England are sort of on for a bellow horizon style, you know, an absolute, an absolute pacing at some point, a total systems collapse.

But I, I, you know, I think 7-1 against Spain.

I don't think they're that bad.

I mean, as long as they have this,

you know, this fairly solid base, and to be fair, they have managed to restrict teams to only a few chances.

It's not like the defence is just going to suddenly subside in five minutes.

Like, they might have a bit of a freak out.

They might have the odd freak out.

But yeah,

the thing about the thing about Bellingham, because I mean, I think we mentioned Bellingham earlier, is that when he plays at Madrid, he needs width.

The paradox that

Bellingham roams around all over this, you need players to stretch the pitch who are really disciplined.

And so, you know, he has Rodrigo and he has Vinicius at Real Madrid who stretch defenses for him.

That's the whole idea of balance, you know, that when

they bring on Luke Shaw, it creates space for Saka on the right.

And almost immediately, he gets that space because the defence is stretched further across the pitch because they're not having to defend 70% of the pitch like they were with Trippier.

So you need players who are going to basically do what they're told,

stay wide, carry carry the water if they if they have to and and create that space for um for the creative players whether whether that's whether that's bellingham and foden in tandem or whether it's just bellingham the the tests are only going to get harder from here they're reaching sort of the boss level stage of the tournament now and

you do kind of

you do fear for them if if they are just going to to carry on just have a football lads and and try and do some think some things with it here's a football um they are going to need something approaching tactical integrity.

It'd be interesting to see, you know, because I think Palmer and Esday have both been great when they've they've come on, but you know, it's a step to start one of them, I guess.

Wilson, on the big boss levelometer, where are the Dutch?

I mean, really hard to tell.

I mean, that's been the thing about this sort of Spain have been good.

Everybody else has

not been that good.

So the Dutch were pretty average first half against Turkey.

Yeah, Turkey fully deserved that half-time lead.

Then Veykorst came on, and that changed the game.

That Turkey got deeper as it had done against Austria.

And basically, Veghorst

meant that when the Dutch were slinging crosses in, he was winning balls, he was dragging.

Well, I think he only actually won one ARGUL game, but his presence was causing problems in a way that

I doubt if it hadn't been for Austria.

I know Austria caused a few more problems when Gregoric came on.

Essentially,

that Turkish policy of allowing the opposition to cross the ball was no longer effective.

And the second half, I sort of felt pretty

you know, it felt that they were going to come back and win that game, whether they were going to do it in normal time or extra time.

You could sort of see Turkey sort of maybe it's just accumulated fatigue of the tournament, but you could see them sort of diminishing as the half went on.

And you know, I was sort of, I was in a Turkish bit of the press box and the first half, they were incredibly sort of buoyant and the bullions and noisy, which is not ideal for journalists.

And certainly not something you'd see from a British press box.

And they were pretty cowed by the end.

I think they'd accepted the inevitable.

So,

yeah, the Dutch are they're fine, but they're not brilliant.

I'd like to introduce a new feature to the podcast where.

Oh, good.

We don't have enough features to do.

Yeah, a theme tune or anything.

Does it have production behind it?

Well, it could have, I guess.

The theme tune is my sort of droning voice

saying.

It's a very popular, very popular part of the podcast.

Yes, that I have to go and catch a train to Munich now.

So, but I can, if there's any rapid fire take, you want me to give really quick, rapid fire before I'm running for a train, this one Keith, I've always wondered what does he think about Adam Walton?

No, my question is: I saw you call out Barry Glendenning for not appearing on this podcast, and he hasn't reacted.

And he has he's called you out on this podcast, but he wasn't brave enough to do it when you weren't there.

So, I wonder if you wanted to.

We're building up to a Ron A.

V.

Glendenning moment.

I mean, my first thought about that is Barry who.

Oh, good.

You know, I don't know.

You know,

he makes a lot of noise, but I'm here.

Where's he?

I will be releasing a full call-out video, stripped to the waist, ranting into an iPhone in due course.

But, you know, it's just sad because people want these big fights.

The public want these big, colossal, vast generational comings together.

And it's just going to happen when we're both too old.

We've lost it.

In reality.

We're just doing it for the money.

Yeah, with Jake Paul on the bill.

And nobody wants that.

When we're in our prime now yeah when we're we're champions that's what people want to see but sadly barry didn't see it like that uh which you know also doesn't really surprise me but you know i'm here enjoy your train journey barney thank you mate thank you very much bye that'll do for part one part two uh the remaining panelists will look ahead to spain france

Hi pod fans of America.

Max here.

Barry's here too.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Spain v France, then, Wilson.

How do you see it?

Was Spain have been better than anybody in this tournament?

I don't know.

I think it's still not entirely 100% convincing.

This idea that there is suddenly new Spain, and as well as

the nice patterns in the possession of midfield, that they suddenly have this directness given them by Leminia Marl and Nico Williams.

I remember, I was sort of watching the game against Italy.

They absolutely battered Italy in that game, and yet the only goal was an own goal.

And then, okay, I know it was a much changed team against Albania and they're already three, so to an extent,

who cares?

But the fact that having been broadly dominant in that game, they only won 1-0.

Then the Georgia game, I mean, yes, they win 4-1,

but

three of those goals came in the second half when Georgia were clearly exhausted.

And the fact that they somehow, I think, think Spain had nine shots and Georgian none when Georgia took the lead.

So you start to think,

is actually the old Spain of being really good but not being able to score goals, is that entirely banished?

So that would be my one doubt.

Obviously,

Pedri's now out and he's a big loss.

Although maybe that does allow Daniel Mo in and Danielmo probably was the key figure

in the quarterfinal.

So, you know, they have been the best team in the tournament so far.

France have been like a sort of seeped up version of England.

They've been terrible but have got three.

Johnny?

Yeah, I think, you know, Spain,

it's been interesting.

They have clearly been the best team in the tournament.

I still feel like they're not as good as they were four years ago.

I just think it's a slightly lower quality field all round.

And they have been the best of what has largely been a disappointing bunch of favourites.

But yeah,

everyone's talked about the wingers.

I think the fact that they've pretty much rebooted that midfield is also the biggest change, you know, that they now have a much more kind of, it's a much more vertical, energetic midfield.

They're trying to get the ball in get the ball out uh in a way that i think a lot of the spanish teams at recent tournaments were sort of hamstrung by the legacy of of those those those great spanish teams from 10 15 years ago that they felt they kind of had to pass pass their way through and

and the game has sort of changed it kind of changed under their feet a little bit you saw this when um when italy put them out in 2016 and then again you know in in in russia that they'd sort of the game had changed under them and now they finally kind of

you know they've rebooted it you know you have you know roderie at the the base you have fabian ruiz marino came on and actually providing a goal threat as well um so i i think it's it's it's going to be a really interesting i i in terms of the mentality i don't i still don't think you know like um like wilson said you know spanish teams sort of under under overachieving no overperforming and underachieving in tournaments i still don't think they've kind of shed that uh i still feel like i've got a soft underbelly it's that better than the england underperforming and underachieving

england are overachieving.

That's true.

Nobody thought they were capable of this.

The thing we didn't say about England, where Southgate clearly deserves enormous credit, is he's slain the penalty dragon.

Yeah.

Yeah, that, that's as soon as the first, as soon as Akanjia missed the penalty, as soon as Pickford had saved it, I don't think anybody in the press room I was watching it had any doubt England were going to win.

They looked so in control of that.

And you think of the panic that penalties have introduced before.

And so, you know, that's where you see the benefit of a cautious, research-driven, hard preparation, very mechanical

style of management that Southgate supports.

That leads us to Didier Deschamp quite well, doesn't it?

In a way, who is,

I mean, would it be great, Johnny, if France didn't won the Euros without scoring a goal for Moses?

There's part of me that would absolutely love that.

Yeah, and ironically, given how many generationally great attacking players they have in that squad,

this isn't my formulation of words.

It was someone on Twitter, so I can't take any credit for this, but somebody said it should be illegal

for this France team to be so boring.

I was at the Portugal game, which I think about 15 minutes in, maybe 10, 15 minutes in, I just wrote on a WhatsApp group Simulator Penalties.

I don't think there was any doubt that that game was just going to get dragged out.

And

there is a really solid base there.

This France team were really hard to score against.

And the ease with which

you know pamicano but especially saliba just dealt with cristiano ronaldo it was almost you know it was almost embarrassing but spain are going to provide a very different kind of a very different kind of threat they're they are they're going to have a lot more movement just by by dint of not having a 39 year old ronaldo up front well they have got a man in kilian mbappe who can't breathe yeah or sleep right or run like he wasn't you know there was a game like yeah sorry uh

an incident early on in the game where Cancello just sprinted him down.

I don't know, Cancello's quick, but you know, when Mbappe really put the boners on and he just couldn't out sprint, he just couldn't get away from Cancello.

And, you know, surely that doesn't have anything to do with his nose, right?

I just wonder whether he's, you know, he's all there at the moment.

I reckon it could.

I reckon if I had a broken nose, if you felt it every time, you'd feel it if it was really bad, you'd feel it every time you put your foot down and it would just jar a bit.

Yeah, I think it would affect it would affect my game.

Are we underappreciating defending Wilson in this whole tournament, actually, from these mechanical, slightly uninteresting teams.

Possibly to an extent.

The thing is, I'm not even sure

how good some of the defending has been.

I sort of feel with France, it's a bit like Real Madrid, they've got this tremendous capacity to induce the opposition to not take chances.

I don't quite know how that works.

Manion's clearly a very good keeper as well.

I think a lot more commanding than Luis was.

But yeah,

I think generally defending is underappreciated.

And yeah, the thing we didn't say about Spain is obviously the roddery factor that, yeah, apart from games when Scott McTominay has been on the other side, he hasn't lost a game for 17 months now, which is against Tottenham at

whatever landscape called these.

So Tottenham Hotsaw Sadium.

So I don't know if England could get McTominay naturalised by the final.

Is that something that a new Labour government could do?

That is ludicrous, isn't it?

Well, it feels to me that that midfield is the most balanced.

It'd be interesting to see what France did in a midfield, Johnny, because Camervinga played really well.

And I just think everybody senses he's better than Rabio.

And maybe Filippo Claire has done that to us.

But it looks like Rabio would come back in.

Yeah.

I mean, I think

it is a slightly different...

You look at that midfield, you know, when

they're capable of putting out Kamavinga and Tremini and Cante, and you think, you know, how is anyone going to score through that?

But, you know, it is a...

It is a slightly different Kante, obviously.

Kante's had a great tournament, but he is a slightly different player to the one we saw, you know, ripping it it up four, six years ago.

His coverage obviously isn't what it was.

He does a lot more sort of pointing at the spaces where other players should be

rather than actually going to cover it

himself these days.

He maybe covers like 10%, 10, 15% of the planet rather than

the 25, 30 that he used to do in his prime.

And then, of course, you have Rabio, who is just a fantastic scurrier.

And he's just one of those players that helps you win tournaments and you don't notice a thing that he's done like you know he'll he'll have 60 70 touches and you won't be able to recall a single one of them and then you of course you have the you know you have the athleticism of camervinga you know trimini who is incredibly smart griezman i think has been slightly disappointing i've been slightly disappointed by griezman this tournament and i i don't know i don't know why i don't know whether he he sort of he's not he's not been played in that role like in Qatar he was there always he was like holding midfield sort of and we're like oh this is he was amazing but yeah and i wonder whether that's because he had the legs to do it because he barely played.

He played that season for Artatico because of the claws,

the minutes claws.

He just hasn't been able to do that role here.

But I think also he had three players in front of him then, whereas here is he's got two.

So there's not that width

because they're playing that 4-3-1-2,

which sort of makes sense because then Mbappe can cut in from the left still, but he's not got the defensive response when he picked up the opposing right back that he had at the World Cup that he really struggled with the semi-final and the final.

So maybe it's just that the options

or the forward-passing options are

less varied for him in this tournament.

What's the final going to be, Wilson?

England, France?

Johnny?

I was going to say the same.

Yeah,

France.

And is that penalties?

No, I think it might.

No, I think it might be France, Holland.

I think it might be France-Holland.

Right, okay.

And who wins the whole thing?

France.

Wilson.

But they do have a shot on Targ.

Okay.

They do have that.

The goal goal from open play.

The header from Williams Saliba as their only goal from open play.

Actually, it'll be from a set piece, that, won't it?

Wilson, you're still thinking.

France.

I mean,

I don't know.

I just sort of think the.

There's a lot of narrative reasons to say England, but I don't think any reasonable footballing reasons.

No.

But there are no reasonable football reasons for them to be in the semifinal, I guess.

Which is the narrative, right?

That's the narrative.

Anyway, that'll do for part two.

We'll do any other business in part three.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Can I ask you just about generally how you've found it all?

There is a view, Johnny, that it's that the tournament has been slightly underwhelming.

I felt like it started really well in my mind, and I can't really remember what happened yesterday, let alone two weeks ago, that we were like, oh, and maybe this just happens because there's loads of games in group stages, but we were like, ah, this is great.

There are some young, exciting, new teams, and we've got all the big guns.

And it's sort of flattened out a bit.

Yeah, I think this is

one of the consequences of having 24 teams is that

there's been a lot talked about the format, but I think towards the end of the group stage, the various different experiences, like

the range of experiences

widens a lot.

So you get some teams which basically are peddling down.

They're already qualified and they sort of get embroiled in in their own kind of selection dilemmas or whatever.

And you get teams for which this is absolutely everything.

And I think

that that sort of difference, that divergence, disparity in what everyone's thinking and feeling about the tournament has, I think, the consequence for how

we all kind of experience it collectively.

I don't think we're...

I'm not making much sense here, but I think that...

With the 16-team Euros, everyone's attention is focused, I think, in one direction, or mostly in one direction at a time.

And I think here it's been a lot more

dispersed in in a way that you know it's just kind of inevitable because you have teams with on such different paths and such different tracks do you think you're better off having 32 rather than 24 wilson i mean the sense that the group stages would have that jeopardy even if obviously you you're adding lower quality teams i yeah i hate 24.

uh so it's my my my preferred range of options would be 16 would be best 32 would be second best 24 is 10 you'd like eight really or you'd probably just no 16 is good 16 is good like yeah four groups of four is it's the thing.

I think the thing the Euros had, it's sort of

it's a point of difference from the World Cup.

Was it was it was sort of compact,

every game mattered, there was a high level of quality.

Um, the expansion to 24, yeah, I know people say, oh, yeah, but what about Georgia?

They were one of the, yeah, they were one of the soys, but they went out in the last 16.

Everybody thought they'd go out in the last 16.

So great for them, but is that enough?

Maybe if we just watched this qualifying a bit more seriously, those teams would forget their moment anyway.

But yeah, I think it's sort of the difference between a European weekend mini-break where you're only away for 72 hours, but

you go out for three really nice meals and you've really planned it and targeted it.

And a sort of sprawling two weeks where...

Where one evening you would just watch a box set because you're just tired.

Exactly.

And it's, yeah, with the World Cup, because you've got teams from everywhere

and with sort of less familiar with a lot of the sides and the players.

I think that justifies the bigger scale.

But 24 teams is just massively problematic.

For the reason Johnny says that that last round of group games,

I mean, the obviously the thing UEFA does, which is stupid, is to have a head-to-head record being the determinant who finishes above, because it meant that you knew categorically that Portugal and I think Spain had definitely topped their groups.

Whereas at least if it was goal difference, there's a chance that they might slip down to second.

So they've actually got something to play for and not just...

I mean, I know Georgia beat Portugal and looked brilliant, and that was one of the games of the tournament.

It maybe would have meant more if Portugal had feared, oh, actually, maybe we might slip down to second in the group, and that's not such a good thing.

But I also just think it's fundamentally unfair that the teams later on, they know exactly what they need

to get through as a best third-place team.

Whereas if you're in groups A or B,

you don't.

You're playing blind.

Yeah, Hungary got done dirty by that.

Yeah, I mean, they'd lost their first two games, so I guess it's kind of their fault.

But yes,

if they'd known that they needed to beat Scotland by, say, three goals, then maybe that would have been a more open, better game.

So, yeah, I just think there's a fundamental unfairness in that format.

And I think, yeah, the round of 16, you lose a bit of momentum because there's a lot of games that feel a bit like foregone conclusions.

I think there has been a definite sense of momentum lost.

On the other side, being here, it's been great.

It's been the most fun tournament for me since Russia.

I think actually probably my favourite Euro since 2008 in terms of covering it.

Is that just the Wi-Fi or could we add it to a sort of fan experience?

Actually, the Wi-Fi has not been good.

Oh, interesting.

I mean,

if German trains weren't so dreadful, everybody talking about German Wi-Fi.

In Berlin, especially, I don't know how you cope, Johnny, but there's no phone signal in Berlin.

It's terrible.

They didn't invest.

Deutsche Telekom, basically.

This goes back to the trains as well.

They didn't invest in the mid-2000s when they could have built a fiber network, like a world-class fibre network.

They're like, oh, no, phones are fine.

We are the leading, you know, we are the leading telecoms provider in in Europe.

And so they just didn't invest.

And now, yeah, internet is is almost high-speed internet is almost non-existent.

But it's it's it's but it's just a so it's just a weird thing that you you you um you know the name of the restaurant in Berlin you're going to, you walk out of your hotel and you put it in your phone and you have to go back into the hotel to use the creaking Wi-Fi to get your Google Maps up to work it out because you can't get enough phone signal to get your maps to work on on the phone.

It's astonishing in a capital as of a country as as clearly advanced and rich as Germany that that should be the case.

Anyway, so yeah, a lot of that is

personal as to what choices you make or which games to go to, which cities to be in.

And yeah, I sort of messed up France by spending too much time in Paris, where I think it was a lot more fun to be had going to Lyon, Bordeaux.

But that was my fault in terms of planning.

Whereas this tournament, I think I got the balance of travel and sitting in one place about right.

But just having, and it's such a simple thing, fans from all over Europe coming together in a way that just wasn't really possible in Qatar, wasn't possible last year, it was partly because because of COVID, partly because of the dispersed nature.

That's just nice, it just sort of feels good.

At the same time, that does bring problems because everybody brings their own nationalisms.

And I've had to learn far more than I wanted to learn about grey wolves and o what autochtonous means and double-headed eagles.

So has the fan behavior, I mean, it's like you obviously see the odd video, right?

And it like you have to be really careful about just watching it one, you know, twenty England fans singing 10 gems.

It's like, well, that's obviously depressing.

But actually, you get the sense, Johnny, that I haven't really heard any big stories of any fans from anywhere being sort of, they've all been good, as far as I can tell.

Yeah, you can tell right at the start, there was,

and for months beforehand, there was this narrative that almost demanded that England fans come over and

set fire to the place.

And then it didn't happen.

There was, you know, there was some kind of

scuffle with some Serbian fans and Gerlsenkirken, and then there were some air kicks thrown at some some Germans a couple of days ago and literally that's been it and this is

a triumph I think for you know

the security services or you know the police back in the UK I think the security you know here has been

not heavy-handed I think it's been firm without without being as brutal or as heavy-handed as it could have been

and yeah generally

any trouble has been of the political sort.

Obviously, yeah, there have been sort of unsavoury incidents.

You know, there was a lot of talk about Spanish fans in the fan zone

in Berlin getting some abuse from Germans.

You know, there are always little

outcrops of trouble.

But I think, on the whole, given how febrile a state Europe is in right now, and given how different we all are, basically, and the sort of climate that we're in, and bringing all these people

into one place, it's kind of gone about as unproblematically as it is realistically possible to expect.

That's good, isn't it?

Any other thoughts

before we tie things up and get ready for the semi-finals, Wilson?

Did you want to do something on Copper America?

Oh, well, yeah.

I mean, if you've got enough in your locker, Andy says, hello, everyone.

I know it's a Euros podcast.

I just wanted to wish Team Canada the very best of luck against Argentina in the semi-final of the Copper America.

I went back to back days of penalty dramas.

First with my adopted Canadians beating Venezuela, then England.

And that's where the similarities end.

Canada now have Jesse Marsh as coach, and he's installed his style of all-out attack all the time onto the Canadians.

If you ever wanted to see the absolute antithesis of England, seek out Canada-Venezuela quarter-final.

It was pure stress as Canada continued to throw men forward, even when one and up.

I found myself calling for some caution, structure, and control.

The rondon goal was pure kamikaze by Canada, so they threw every man forward for a corner, even their goalie playing sweeper keeper close to the halfway line.

Be careful what you wish for, England fans.

And yes, Wilson, what can you tell us?

Well,

I have not seen a single minute of this tournament live because it happens in the middle of the night.

night and I

think

I mean I don't maybe this is me being selfish but I don't really understand why Common Ball decided to move a tournament to be in the same year as the Euros because it just seems to me it disappears or certainly to a European audience.

Maybe they don't care about that.

But

actually one of my other complaints about Joe, this has been a great tournament, I'm not complaining really, but German curtains are terrible.

I've woken up at five o'clock every morning because the light streams in.

Why can't they make curtains properly?

What's that about?

So anyway, my point being that I couldn't sit up and watch a Copper America game because you can't sleep past 5 a.m.

Right.

And so, when you're getting in for matches, going to bed at 2-3 in the morning and then waking up at 5 because of the curtains.

Die Schlechte Fohranger, I think.

Yeah, oh, the Fohenger is in Zinfuchba.

Yeah.

So good.

So, Salomon Rondon, you were talking about Copper America.

Oh, Salim Rondon's goal against Canada is a brilliant, brilliant goal.

All the haters, all the people who said I didn't know what I was talking about, that goal.

So basically, it's a corner that's cleared.

He takes it down, and then from, I don't know, 50 yards, 45 yards, just whacks it over the keeper.

It's sort of two touches from one box to the other back of the other net.

It's a brilliant goal for Solomon Rondon.

And Venezuela, I think, judging from what I've read and the highlights I've seen, have been really good in this tournament.

Go out to Canada, who've also been really good.

We now have the amazing prospect of a final being Marcelo Bielso against Jesse Marsh, back-to-back leads managers,

which is such an odd thing.

David Hockaday is expirious.

But yeah, Uruguay have been very good.

They put out Brazil in the quarterfinal on penalties.

I think Uruguay have generally been very good since Bielso took over.

But I mean, the reason they were playing Uruguay in the quarterfinal was that they come second in the group because they'd drawn against Colombia.

And Colombia have been really good.

They beat the Hammer the US, the first ever US team to feature 11 Euro based players in a friendly back in March.

Hamas Roniga still pulling the strings for them.

So Colombia in the semi-final against Uruguay.

Canada Argentina in the other semi.

But yeah,

the former leads managers, Darvi, in the final is what we all want to see.

Did you see Bielsa's?

Did you see Bielsa's speech?

Oh yeah, about the future of football.

About the future of football after the Brazil game.

Can you summarise it?

Well, basically, he was saying that

football, while it's more popular than ever, while there are more eyes on it than ever before, is losing the things that made it the world's greatest sport.

And so,

you know, he talked about football being an expression of cultural identity, an expression of

who nations are.

And

we're losing that because the players that people want to watch are becoming fewer and fewer.

And that any kind of short-term gain, the business-driven gain in the viewership now is

temporary, it's quite fleeting because

football has become, I think he didn't say this, but football has basically become a kind of entertainment product

and it's become obsessed with what he calls polemicus and controversies and blame blaming individuals and things and at that point I thought he's clearly watched Mark Goldbridge at some point because that's that's the only you know he'd be able to sit there at 3 a.m.

in La Paz

watching Goldbridge's latest rant going like this this is and and who would not come to that very same conclusion uh having watched that um Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know how, you know, to the extent to which I agree with it, or, you know, as a lot of people have pointed out, Belf's own,

you know, not complicity, but, you know, his almost his compliance with these same trends.

You know, he's

whether,

I don't know what I think about it, but it is incredibly thought-provoking, like

a lot of people have said.

But I thought it's interesting, isn't it?

Because you can't, for example, do this podcast without talking about the controversies.

And even if you're trying to talk about the controversies in sort of a non-ranty way, I guess.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, I guess it's just the way discourse in sport and politics in everything has gone.

Everything is about the generation of clicks.

Clicks are generated by controversy, and therefore maybe people take up more extreme positions to try and generate that controversy.

Or people feel that

don't be ridiculous, you idiot.

Yeah, maybe people feel that that sort of, on the one hand, on the other, just doesn't doesn't cut it anymore, which is sad.

But I think, yeah, I think

whenever anybody involved in football talks about football,

you inevitably notice the compromises and the hypocrisies of it.

That's just the nature of it.

But I think with Bielsa, the fact he's conscious of it and he's trying to work it out in his own mind, he's talking about it, is just a very positive thing.

And in terms of the style of football, the fact that his very high-octane, hard-pressing football

mitigates against the militates against the sort of creative players he seems to be talking about having gone out of the game, I think that is interesting.

And I know that when I was in Argentina researching Angels of Dirty Faces, I talked to Pancho Sar,

who was the head of coaching at the Argentinian Football Association.

And he was saying that he thinks that the quality of the Argentinian league in terms of a spectacle has gone down because everybody tries to play BLC football, so everything's done at 100 miles an hour.

And so you don't have the creativity and the skill.

And whereas the Argentinian ideal of a player is still

the Riquel, may forget the sort of graceful number 10, they're just battered out of the game by this sort of sub-BLC to coaches who just want everything done incredibly quickly.

Having said that, Argentinian coaching is clearly in a very healthy state because every group of the COP America was won by an Argentinian coach.

Interesting stuff.

Thought-provoking.

We'll end on that.

Thanks, chaps.

Thanks, Johnny.

Thanks.

Thanks, Wilson.

Cheers.

Thank you.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Christian Bennett.

We'll be back on Tuesday nights after Spain versus France.

This is The Guardian.