Portugal win Group F and Belgium get off the mark – Football Daily

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Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly, a tearful farewell to three game days at the Euros.

Belgium get the job done, but will Romela Lukaku ever score another goal?

All three goals netted this tournament have been disallowed.

Romania put up a good fight but failed to finish their chances.

And we have our wish.

All four teams in Group E are on three points going into the final round of fixtures.

Elsewhere, Turkey score the comedy goal of the tournament.

A no-look pass from Samit Akaden sets Portugal on their way to the last 16 and then the surprise of the Euros as Ronaldo passes the football when through on goal before normal service is resumed with a Jao Poligni at yellow card.

Saba Lobzanice lives up to his name and misses a golden chance to give Georgia a classic smash and grab win over the Czech Republic.

We'll discuss all of that, preview the final round of green fixtures, a must-win for Scotland against Hungary, how Barry got his name, and a worse place to vomit than in a crash helmet.

All that, plush your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glendenning.

Hello.

Hi, Robin.

Hello, Jonathan Wilson.

Evening.

How are you doing?

And Lars Simmerson, good evening.

Come on, Joba, everyone, which is one for our Georgian listener, I guess.

It's probably only one of him, and he's probably a bit knackered after that game.

But I hope you're still listening.

Good stuff.

That's why we love it.

The detail from Lars there, bringing the

continental.

Yeah, let's say that.

That'll work.

All right.

So let's start in group F, Turkey Nil, Portugal 3.

You're on the minute by minute for this one, Barry, and some

memorable events and moments in this one.

Yeah, it was really another really good game.

And I think the third goal sort of ended it as a contest.

But up until then, I'd really enjoyed it.

Bernardo Silva scored what was his first tournament goal in 15 tournament appearances.

He's never provided an assist before and had never scored, so I was quite amazed by that statistic.

But that shot he hit, it stayed hit.

He nearly took the net off the goal or the stanchion, such was the power when the ball was deflected his way.

Then you had that quite comical

own goal from Samit Akkadin, who his no-look back pass to Alte Binder, went over the net or went over the line despite the best attempts of a defender and the goalkeeper.

And then Turkey gifted Portugal another goal.

I think it might have been Akkadine again who played, but I apologize, Samit, if I'm wrong, who played Ronaldo on side as he ran onto a long ball over the top.

And then Ronaldo, showing uncharacteristic unselfishness, squared it for Bruno Fernandez.

He tapped into an empty goal.

So that was that.

And then there was a series of pitch invaders.

The first of which was, I believe, a small child.

It wasn't shown on TV.

So he got loads of cheers from fans of both teams and then there were pantomime booze for the security staff as he was ushered away when they finally caught him after he'd taken a selfie with Ronaldo.

And I think the warm reception he got prompted three more pitch invaders to interrupt the game at various points.

So

that's a problem UEFA are going to have to deal with because the players were getting understandably pissed off by the end of the game when they

kept

the game kept being interrupted by these idiots.

But yeah, an emphatic win for Portugal.

They topped the group and will probably now avoid France in the last 16, so that's good for them.

And it's also good news for our Georgian friends up to a point

who played Portugal in the last game.

The pitch invasor at the Champions League final turned out to have been paid like 300 grand or something, wasn't it?

I just wonder if

this kid's on the payroll somewhere.

But we'll have to see.

Lars, where do you want to go with this?

I mean, I I think it's been a tournament of belters and gaffes, and

this own goal was right up there.

Yeah, no, I mean,

I've not been able to stand this up, but I've heard rumors that the defender,

Mr.

Summit Akhayadin, just kind of ahead of the game, spent most of his morning just wantonly smashing mirrors and just kind of roadwalking under ladders.

He had his friends herd quite a lot of black cats across the road in front of him, which is quite a big operation.

You have to find the cats and then getting them to do anything is really difficult because he had this sort of no-look on goal.

And then he had like a ridiculously unfair yellow card not that long after.

Like it was a perfectly good tackle, it looked to me.

So he clearly had a weird one.

The no-look backpass is a big move.

I think you have to be very confident in your goalkeeper to have a no-look backpass on frame as well.

I'm old enough that we were taught never to hit a backpass on the frame of the goal.

Gary Neville was kind of poo-pooing that at halftime, making the point that people are so technically good now.

You should be able to trust your goalkeeper to trap the ball, which I suppose is true.

But the no-look back pass on the frame, I think that's a double negative here that shouldn't be attempted.

And Jonathan,

Barry rightly brought up that Ronaldo, I think we were all quite shocked, threw on goal and squared it.

I mean, he has now got the most assicily European championships.

Maybe we need to rethink our perception, or maybe it's just his longevity.

And yeah, I just wanted to put to you, I don't know if you've ever thought about writing a piece about, you know, know, if he's kind of having a negative impact on the team.

Well, that was an extraordinary moment until I realised it got him another record.

And then it suddenly all made sense.

I was genuinely thinking.

There's no selfless axe for another.

No, I mean, there isn't.

I'm quite keen to see what the other six looked like.

And my suspicion is they were miss-hit shots or shots that kind of were blocked and fell to somebody else.

But yeah, I mean, when that happened, I was thinking, I hope he's alright.

I hope we're not going to see him having a breakdown on the pitch.

This is like, this is so.

If you notice as well,

the older he gets, the more he looks like a young Cliff Richard.

And I was thinking, it has to be in some terrible, you know, space-time mix.

And it's actually Cliff Richard in Ronaldo's body.

And

I think Cliff Richard, in that circumstance, would pass.

So.

But then I found out about the assists, and I think that's a much more rational thing.

He just wanted another record.

But it is a problem for Portugal.

I mean, I think today they were fine.

They were good.

They were the better side.

They deserved to win.

I'm not sure there were three goals better.

But I think the openness that we saw in Turkey against Georgia, where they gave Georgia chances and Georgia didn't take them,

Portugal good enough to take them.

And it's a problem for Turkey that they are so open.

And Portugal really didn't have to...

The first goal is a nice goal, obviously.

That move, getting to the line, cutting the ball back,

it's very familiar with modern football.

Portugal try and do it a lot.

They're clearly good at it.

People like Bernard Silver do it all the time for City.

The other two goals were pretty much gifted to them.

So it is a comfortable enough win, but 3-0 probably did flatten them a bit.

Yeah, and I'd like to, on that note, I would like to have a moment of praise, maybe not on a technical level, but on the spiritual level for Turkey, because as someone who's seen all the games so far, there has been a noticeable sort of the second round of games have, broadly speaking, been less thrilling than the first ones.

It's getting a little bit tighter, it's getting a little bit cagier.

So on behalf of all the neutrals, I'm very glad that Turkey approached these games the way they do.

Like this is a team that wants to attack and do things.

They clearly don't concern themselves that much with like what kind of structure they have off the ball, like how these things are meant to hang together.

This is clearly not a huge priority for the Turks.

And the result is that the game was much more fun than it otherwise would have been, especially coming off, you know, the Czechs, which we'll get to, who are sort of kind of good at what they do, but what they do is really joyless and kind of makes the games less interesting.

I don't think it's going to serve them very well in terms of getting far far in the tournament.

But as a neutral who likes watching the football, I salute you, Turkey.

Please, more chaos.

Absolutely.

Yeah, there's been quite a few

enjoyably chaotic games.

It's like a lot of these players are relishing being away from these, you know,

blokes in turtleneck sweaters who micromanage their every move and just, you know, they're having a bit of a whale of a time.

I think we should give a shout out to Pepe.

He was brilliant.

41 years old.

I can, you know,

it's just incredible.

He's not fast, obviously, but he doesn't need to be because the way he reads the game is unbelievable.

And it was quite telling, actually.

He got a huge standing ovation from both sets of fans when he was substituted with seven minutes ago.

Interestingly, another Portugal substitution, that kid who ran on to get the selfie with Ronaldo, He did it as Nelson Semido was about to come on for Portugal.

And someone who was following my my minute by minute emailed in to say he was watching in Germany, and he didn't know there was a pitch invader.

So he thought, why is Nelson Semedo so popular?

Is he some sort of cult hero?

Why is he getting so much applause from both sides of fans?

I wonder if Semedo himself felt that.

I was like, oh, great.

Fantastic.

I'm soaking this up.

I was pretty happy with my hair this morning.

You know, I'm glad it's going down well with the crowd.

I feel like this might be going too...

is there is such a thing as being too guardian football weekly to like criticize ronaldo after a game in which he is assisted and and portugal has scored 3-0 but i do want to make the point because i don't know when i'm back on and if i'll have a chance to talk about this again having seen both of their two first games he looks fine but i think he needs to be more than fine for his inclusion to make sense right because the big trade-off with cristiano ronaldo is that you're basically playing with 10 men when you don't have the ball and that he has this sort of gravitational pull that means all the the ball always has to go to him and it's kind of hard to play normal rational football.

And for that trade-off to be worth it, he has to be very good, which he was when he was younger.

And there are players who you, yeah, Kilian and Bappe also doesn't do much off the ball, and France have had to make some structural changes to allow for that.

But he's so good, you kind of go along with it.

And but for Ronaldo to for this to make sense, for this to be worth it, I think he needs to be more than kind of fine.

And he has so far been kind of fine, and he continued to be kind of fine in this game.

Is there someone you'd have instead of him, Laws?

Well,

Ramos, who didn't have an amazing season for PSG, but he runs around, he can kick the ball into the goal.

I'm expecting he'll play against Georgia.

And as much as I'm very heavily biased towards Georgia, as we'll go into later on the pod, I do think with their sort of occasionally nihilistic approach to sort of defensive organization, I do wonder if Gonzalo Ramos could possibly score a few goals there.

And then Roberto Martinez would have a pretty big decision to make in the game after that.

So he made a tactical change.

I actually did that Portugal's first game where

he had a sort of back three, back five, and Danny Murphy, who I was with, just was just saying up against the Czech Republic, like they don't need that extra defender.

So, Jonathan, he kind of made the switch to a back four.

I think, you know, people say Roberto Martinez is quite tactically flexible.

Just wondered sort of what you made of that and kind of maybe nailing down a system going forward.

Well, it got Polini into the side as well, didn't it?

Which

I think

obviously gives him more bite in midfield.

I don't know, I think it's really hard to work work out anything tactically against a team like Turkey who is just so open.

I didn't see enough of that first game to really know if if that felt like too much.

But it was also, you know, you you play so few international games that sometimes it makes sense to play the system you want to play against a good team against a weaker team just to kind of you know practice it.

So I I'm I'm sort of waffling here because I don't I don't didn't see enough of that first game.

I saw like the last twenty minutes of it, so I can't really give an answer on that.

But

I wouldn't be making too many conclusions after a game into Turkey anyway.

Turkey should actually have gone ahead in this game

very early out of the first couple of minutes.

Karem Aktragoglu like missed, I don't know how he missed it.

It was

an inch perfect cross to the far post.

All he had to do was get something on it, steer it in, and he somehow didn't.

But, you know, things could have been different if he had gone in.

Just on the pitch invaders.

I really hate it but

and it's it's it's the same as these kids who have their cardboard signs with oh it's my birthday please give me a shirt it's just the the neediness the the entitlement but

i mean i i think it's a lot worse than that is it is it worse or okay what do you think it is worse well it's less okay the the the cardboard things are obviously incredibly annoying uh and because they're also clearly made by their parents all the time uh so it's like kind of like uh but but the whole thing about pitch invaders i think is is actually, I don't want to go too like

grumpy and Grinchy here, but I think it's a serious problem.

I think if you can't, you have part, you have to guarantee like the physical safety of the players on the field.

Like the fact that we can buy tickets in good seats and get to sit really close to these athletes is a privilege, not a right.

And

it is a huge safety risk if you see time and time again that players can just run on and get close to the players and do whatever they want.

Like it's obviously when there's a small kid who's doing slalom runs and evading sort of stewards in varying degrees of fitness, that's obviously good sort of pantomime humor.

But the fact that they're completely like we had three of them, maybe almost four towards the end, signs that you have a huge problem there in terms of stewarding.

And not all of them are going to be kids.

Some of them are going to be people who are sort of attention seeking merchants related to influencers and stuff, as we've seen before.

But it could also be something more sinister.

And I think the punishments for this have to be much more stringent.

Like, I don't know what the punishments are.

I don't care.

They're clearly not harsh enough.

And you have to really look at if there's a problem.

A lifetime ban, a lifetime ban for a seven-year-old is

a proper punishment.

I'm all in favor of that.

Yeah, well, yeah, 10 years in jail.

It is a big problem because what you don't want is, I mean, fences, obviously, you don't want, but equally, you don't want a sort of semi-militarized situation with huge numbers of stewards or police.

You want it to be quite low-key, but that means there's a sense of responsibility on fans as well and

whether you blame the kid or whoever is supposed to be looking after them for letting them do that it you know it's just wrong it shouldn't happen so i mean i think as a short-term measure snipers with tranquilizer darts is probably a proportionate response uh i i'd very much be in favor of that um

just darts to start with yeah yeah yeah okay um

just a standard it's got to be

drag you drag the body out and then they'll wake up somewhere in another room and it's all, you know, it's all alright.

I'm sort of in the blank because I'm tempted to be flippant and serious about it at the same time.

And I'm not quite sure how I do that because I think it's genuinely something that you kind of have to mock because it's so easy to mock it.

Like we can have snipers with darts and also release the hounds, maybe.

I don't know.

Like there's things we can do.

But I also genuinely think it is a problem that we need to address because like Wilson says, there is a...

bond of there's an unspoken rule like we we let you sit here without fences or anything on the condition that you do not under any circumstance, even think of running onto the field.

And people are now thinking of that, which means the other option is that you put a ton of stewards and a moat and all this sort of stuff in the way, which would be less good for everyone.

Well, I mean, I remember, and obviously, this is

an escalation of the conversation.

I recognise this is not an easy link.

But

when the fences came down, post-Hillsbury, there was overnight a change of mood in stadiums, certainly in England, that going on the pitch became this great taboo.

You just didn't do it because

we understood that contract that, okay, the fences have to come down because they're clearly incredibly dangerous.

They're a bad thing.

But

in order for them to come down, we the fans have to behave properly in that regard.

And that seems, I mean, it's not just these kids looking for selfies.

Pitch invaders have become a bigger thing again, and we need to find a way to stop it.

I think it's a good point you raised, Lars, because I can't remember exactly which, but post-COVID there was quite a few, and I think a goalkeeper was assaulted, weren't they, in the Premier League?

Someone was punched.

I think I can't remember.

There was a Bernie Greevilla game, yeah.

It was Greelish, yeah.

Greaves won a cop match.

That was a while back, but there was, was it the Everton goalkeeper, maybe?

I can't remember.

Oh, actually, was it when Forrest got to the playoff final, you know, and there was a lot of shenanigans there.

So I think, no, you're right.

I mean, I think it is a serious point

that needs to be raised.

And I guess, is that sort of,

whose sort of responsibility is that, do we think?

Like,

is it UEFA?

Is it the...

Well, that's why I would say that in a tournament, it's more challenging.

Because in a league match, you can just make rules that say the home team is responsible for the safety and the ability of the players to do their job uninterrupted.

And you can impose, you know, a stadium ban for a certain period of time for the club if they're not able to ensure that and stuff like this.

But in a tournament, like, what do you do?

Like, it's

you blame the Germans?

That doesn't seem right.

There is clearly an issue with UEFA now.

And I don't know why COVID

is the dividing line, but post-COVID, every major UEFA final has had a problem.

So you think of what happened at Wembley.

You think of what happened in Paris and what very nearly happened in Paris.

You think of the chaos in Istanbul.

I mean, Wembley this year, I think, was not problematic.

In Seville for the Europa League final, there was,

I mean, it was nowhere near as bad as Paris, but it was not well organised.

And we've seen loads of points of tension in this tournament between local organisers and UEFA.

And, you know,

how is the transport so bad to so many games?

Because Bundesliga games get big crowds.

It's not that the local infrastructure can't cope with it.

When Schalker play at home, they get...

70, 80,000.

And that's not a problem.

But now, every game in Gelsengirk is a massive problem.

Presumably, if Schalker are playing at home, most of the crowd live locally.

They're not

all common.

They don't live in the ground, though.

They've still got to get out of the ground into the city.

On a more positive note, if we talk about supporters that have behaved themselves, and Jonathan, you've been out for a while now.

I mean, I can still hear outside my window Turkey fans beeping their horns and having a great time.

I get a trackwise dice out for that.

Like, shooting your horns at night.

Yeah,

it's a big thing.

The Albanians do it,

the Turkish fans do it.

Yeah,

please stop.

I just self-one of these.

Get yourself ah, super soaker.

Barry, super soaker.

I think you should brand that, Barry.

Make a few quids.

That is humongous.

An impressive, impressive super soaker there from Barry.

It's not how big your super soaker is, Robin.

What you do with it, the count.

Oh, God, someone's going to bring up a sock again.

We'll draw a line after that.

Jonathan, just because you've got to go to the bottom of the game.

I have thought a lot about this because we're kind of pivoting to the Georgia game, I'm hoping.

And the extraordinary news that their captain Guram Kashia is a Football Weekly listener, that does mean that at least one of the players at the tournament has spent quite some time in the tournament thinking about Barry's sock story.

And I really have, it's been on my mind, like, how much has that affected his performance?

You know, maybe, maybe he's.

He may have contributed to his miss this afternoon.

He missed, yeah, missed quite the mistake.

But this is the thing.

I don't want to.

Maybe Barry's sock was was on his mind at just that moment.

I really hope I'm not causing a distraction to Georgia.

The Georgia team.

We'll have to get answers.

We'll have to get answers to that.

Just before we move on to Georgia, Czech Republic.

Jonathan, I mean, as I've said, you've been around in Germany for a little bit.

Highlights, low lights.

Oh, and how was the schnitzel yesterday?

That was what we need to laugh.

I ended up not getting a schnitzel because

it was really wet.

And so people who'd normally be drinking on the streets were drinking in bars and restaurants.

so everywhere was rammed so to to to get a seat to be able to sit down to eat was impossible so i ended up a long way from a screen seeing the end of austria poland with a pizza and a beer and then went back to my hotel which didn't have a screen and so i had to watch it uh on my laptop uh in the lobby of the hotel um

have there been happier times i don't know that was the best night of a tournament i really really enjoyed that

there were no other people around you didn't have to talk to anyone.

I've had a very good.

It's been a bit like lockdown this tournament.

I've barely spoken to anybody.

I've lived really healthily.

I've watched a lot of football.

I've been for a lot of runs.

I've quite enjoyed it.

Oh, superb.

Excellent.

Reliving 2020.

Like lockdown, I quite enjoyed it.

It's not a sentence I've heard for a while.

It's a take.

It is a take.

So, Portugal go through as group winners, and we'll discuss the other gaming group, F.

Georgia against the Czech Republic, in part two.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Georgia won, Czech Republic won at the Volkspark Stadion.

And once again, I think it wasn't quite as full throttle for the 90 minutes, but large Georgia.

The entertainers.

Yeah,

they nearly got something in the end, which

would have been wholly undeserved.

Like, I come into this with a massive pro-Georgia bias.

They're a fun team.

They got some fun players.

It's a great place.

You know, couldn't be more positive about Georgia.

But this was a difficult game for them.

And I've actually got that.

They ended up losing the shot count 5 to 27, which is not ideal.

You've not had a great day when that happens.

And I think the big thing is that the Czech team is so much better organized than Turkey were.

They were openings all over the gaff against Turkey.

Whereas this Czech team are basically Scandinavians in disguise, I think, because they're all over six foot and they're quite well organized off the ball.

And there's very little creativity in there, but they're physically aggressive and dangerous from set pieces.

It's like you might miss the Swedes.

They're not here.

Norway aren't there.

Don't worry, go watch Czech.

Yeah, it's the same thing.

And I just think that in the way that Turkey's sort of slightly wild approach contributes to games being fun, this made it hard for the lovable funsters of Georgia to kind of do their stuff because those massive gaps that they were playing into all the time against Turkey, they just weren't there.

Like, because people were standing in the right place all the time.

Which is, maybe Jonathan enjoyed this.

I mean, this is the kind of thing that gets Jonathan excited.

But for me, I just kind of thought there was a little bit sad.

I'll tell you, you did enjoy it.

We had David Moyes in the studio.

Oh, yes.

It's like, yes.

I like this.

Same Moyes is like, whichever club I'm in charge of next, I'm signing all of these Czech players.

Like, bring them on.

Everyone else is going, oh, look at the amazing attacking foot from George.

And he was like, no.

Long throwings from the Czechs, 46 crosses.

Yeah, David Moyes was quite annoyed with

Vladimir Soufal's long throws.

He said he never threw it that far for me.

Maybe I'd still be in the job if you told me I had a long throw on you, Vladimir.

Yeah, Jonathan, I think

just Czech Republic, maybe, you know, again, they're just a bit lacking.

up front because they really should have they should have won this game.

Yeah, and the Georgia keeper,

Mamadashvali, dashvali i think he made as as many saves by half-time as any other goalkeeper made in a full game previous in the tournament uh

but you know while while robin hranach is there the other team always has a chance uh see he's had a he had a nightmare tournament hasn't he poor lads that um scored no goal against portugal gave away the other goal against portugal and then uh gave away the penalty today so yeah he's he's the equivalent of a turkish lad who scored the own goal who's his name i've already got alkenday is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah,

not his best tournament.

Yeah, not been great.

So actually, yeah, Czech Republic were on the end of a couple of decisions, didn't go their way.

I think nothing really controversial about it.

They scored

and it was given for a hand ball.

I mean, even though he definitely didn't know what was happening, it kind of came off his face and onto his arm.

But that was always going to be given.

And then, well, yes, our friend Cashia, who drew a good save, but actually, I don't think anyone noticed.

Then suddenly it said said penalty check, and lo and behold, a hand ball was given after the referee came over to the screen and watched it once, just once.

If that was our lads last night, Taylor and uh,

you know, Atwell, they'd be going, No, no, no, no, I need to see that a few more times.

Come on, rewind.

I think it probably is a handball by the letter of the law.

His arm was outstretched and it brushed his hand, but it was a harsh decision.

But, you know, I was delighted

because our mate,

he should have scored, shouldn't you?

Come on, Guram.

But,

yeah.

But no one appealed for a penalty, but they got one and they scored it.

And they dug in brilliantly and should have won it at the end of that.

Oh, wow.

Sabel Lobshanidzi,

that will haunt him to the grave, that miss.

He was clean through on goal and blasted over the bar with the very last kick of the game.

And if they'd won that game, if he'd scored, oh, what a result for Georgia.

But there was a wonderful moment in your commentary, Robin, when

Mat Edge Urasek came on for the Czech Republic and you said that he was the youngest player in their squad, aged 20.

And then there was this pause and Danny Murphy just said, I'd love to be 20 again.

I really would.

And then you just went, yeah, you're preaching to the choir, my friend.

But the way he said it, you just...

Yeah, no, we've been on his mind recently.

Were you attempted to sort of.

I forget how exciting or not the game was at that time.

Or were you attempting to explore the subject?

Have you been thinking about this a lot recently, Danny?

Are you having some sort of crisis?

It's so heartfelt.

Yeah, no, it was slightly disconcerting, but

we'll go and check on him.

We'll go and check on him a bit later.

Yeah, I mean, that final passage of play, because actually the second half was pretty much defense against attack.

Somehow, Georgia have a three against one.

And yeah, as Barry said, Lars, I mean, I think you just want like that, is it that mind-wiping device from men in black?

Because he's just, I would just never sleep again

if I'd done that.

No, and it's just, you know, how it means an awful lot to the Georgians that they're here.

They're very proud people who are very proud of their country and are very excited to be making an impact on the European stage, which is a big thing for them because, like, the political situation in the country, which we don't really have time to get into, but it's very much a case of a country that wants to be aligned with Europe, wants to join the EU, wants to be a part of the European bloc, but their current rather unpopular government is kind of aligning them a little bit more with Russia at the moment, which is very unpopular.

So there's a whole sort of thing of them having a very visible and huge experience of being part of Europe.

This is a whole European festival, and we are part of it.

That means a lot for a lot of them.

And so

having this sort of great victorious moment in this game would have been quite good.

I think, again, I think the entire country would have stopped functioning for several days.

So yeah, it is a real shame.

It would have been a complete robbery, but I would have been massively in favor of it.

Yeah, I think that's the general feeling, isn't it?

It would have been very unjust, but, you know, brilliant.

So they play Portugal now in their final group game, and it's a Portugal team that have nothing to play for, technically.

And they could feel the second string side, but Portugal's second string side is going to take some beat.

This team is is the problem.

It's very scary, isn't it?

They did that on the coverage, like they sort of brought up like they could feel these are the guys who haven't played yet.

This is what an 11 looks like.

And you'll go, yeah, okay.

That team would definitely get to the quarterfinals on their own.

So it's like, yeah, this is slightly worrying

for everyone who's coming up against Portugal, really.

I think they're quite good.

Yeah.

So the group as it stands, Group F, so Portugal win the group

after their win over Turkey.

Second and third place are still up for grabs with the Czech Republic facing Turkey and Georgia up against Portugal on Wednesday night.

I mean, John, can you see anything else happening?

I mean, Czech Republic may be usurping Turkey, perhaps?

That could happen, yeah, because I mean,

they are well organised, they are big and physical.

You know, it's very much,

you know, the wild openness of Turkey against the absolute dour solidity of the Czechs.

And you've got to think that Lorn Khanic is going to have a good game, right?

He's due a good game he's due a bit of love

so please

and I think Turkey have been more impressive

but yeah

I think I think that's almost a 50-50 call

some tweets from the game this is genius Liam says was it hard not to preface Shaq Vedatsa with Hold Me Closer

that is brilliant isn't it hold me closer Shaq Vedatsa beautiful stuff I mean if they haven't got a chant for that I don't get it no I don't tiny dancer

No, no Alton John fans.

He plays for Watford.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, make love.

Come on, guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There we go.

Thanks for helping us out there, Ryan.

That'll do for part two.

In part three, we'll discuss Belgium against Romania, preview tomorrow's games, and do any other business.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Belgium 2, Romania-another quite fun game.

Belgium scored after just 75 seconds.

Yuri Thieleman's finishing a good move.

Took them a while to get their second.

Kevin De Bruyne finally taking matters into his own hands.

In between, Jonathan, Romania had some pretty good chances.

Yeah, it was another one of these games that was incredibly stretched.

And I sort of always felt Belgium had enough.

But

I guess the point is, Romania had a lot of chances of chances rather than chances.

They kept on getting runs at the Belgian defence and didn't really get the shot away as often as they probably should have done.

There were a couple of opportunities.

Mann had a decent chance running onto a backheader.

Castell's looked quite good, made two or three good saves.

But I think, really, Vistori's Lukaku.

What's the point that's cursed?

He's cursed.

I mean, I saw that goal and thought, oh, yeah, he's taking that really well.

Kevin did get a handle, but I thought, you know, when he was running through, I thought there's so many ways I could go wrong.

And he finishes it.

And it's one of those nice goals where the momentum of a finish sort of goes into a celebration.

You can see the relief.

And there's this sort of tiny voice in the back of my head going,

it might have been quite close.

And then you see it's like, oh, God, it's off.

Even though it doesn't look off to the naked eye, it will be off because it's like Aku.

And sure enough,

by a tiny fraction, it is.

Sorry, it wasn't offside.

It was the handball prior in the build-up.

It was like fast hand ball, yes.

Are we sure?

I was thinking, there's no way he's offside.

Are you sure?

They keep showing the image of the automatic off-side thing.

I was watching it with the sound off because I had German commentary, which turned out to be quite distracting.

Well,

I think there was a Woutfast hand ball.

A second infringement

behind the grassy knoll.

Before, yeah, Voutfass was behind the grassy knoll with the lead piping.

I believe he handled the ball before it went to Kevin De Bruyne.

And then Kevin De Bruyne played that delightful pass, perfectly weighted.

And so I think Lukaku was on side, but it was a

sideshow Bob's fault that the goal was ruled out.

No,

the image showed his knee and his toe off.

Okay, right.

Well, look, it doesn't matter, really, but I originally thought it was off-site, and then someone on a WhatsApp group pointed out the voute fast hand ball, and then I rewound it and saw the vouch fast hand ball.

So I thought that was why

I mean we're splitting hairs here.

It was ruled out.

I'm pretty sure they restarted with an indoctrination.

I will happily stand corrected.

I enjoyed the conspiracy theory.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll go into that.

Because I was going to do a whole lot of...

Both things can be true.

Yeah, it's true.

Even if he had been on side, even if he had time to run fractionally better, it wouldn't have mattered.

Something would have happened.

There's a little point I was going to make.

In last season, this would have stood in the Premier League because they've introduced this sort of margin of error thing, which means you are actually allowed to be a little bit offside in the Premier League now, which I always thought would just be not work.

But it turns out people are fine with that.

But now with the automatic offside coming in, I think the margin of error is going away again.

So

if I've understood this correctly,

it wouldn't have been offside in the Premier League last season.

It will have been next season.

There is still a margin of error, but it's much smaller.

And the reason is that the margin of error in the Premier League was done on somebody looking at when the ball was kicked,

which, because there's only 50 frames a second, means

a player can run 15 centimetres in that fraction of a second.

So they introduced the margin of error to take out that.

There's a sensor in the ball which is much more accurate in terms of when the ball is kicked, because when the sensor feels itself being kicked, it registers.

So that's why the margin of errors come down.

We're really getting stuck in the weeds here.

Can we talk about a witch's curse for Roman Lukaku?

I think that's more our style.

I mean, Barry, it's a bit, he's becoming like the new Alvaro Murato, you kind of have that just that horrible sort of Eeyore style look.

Going, oh, again, again, this has happened to me.

Yeah, I mean, he'd be joined top scorer, but for these narrow upsides and the spurious hand ball decision that

caused one of his goals to be cancelled or ruled out.

And

I mean, I've been a huge fan of Lukaku's since his days on loan at West Brom when

he used to be brought on as a sort of 20, a substitute in the 70th minute when the opposition centre halves were knackered and he just bullied them into submission.

And his numbers are brilliant.

And yet he seems to be possibly, he's only 31, but there's this possibility that he will retire as not a joke figure, but you know, sort of someone we pity a bit because he's on the basis of a few stinkers for Belgium.

Because I don't watch a great deal of Italian football, so I don't really see him play anymore.

So I only ever see him playing when he's representing Belgium.

And his last few performances have, you know, either been dreadful or desperately unlucky.

But I mean, it was a real tidy finish, that goal, whether it was whatever, for whatever reason it was ruled out.

And he set up the first goal with a brilliant layoff to Yuri Tulemans, whose shot was superb.

I wouldn't say he played badly in this game, but yeah,

he's really unlucky.

Lars, are we convinced by Belgium?

Not at all.

But I thought this game was

a little bit more stretched than their first game.

But in terms of the broader storylines, I kind of thought it was aerially similar.

I thought Belgium had periods where they put some nice passing moves together.

They created more than enough chances to win win the game.

They missed most of those chances and they've looked occasionally more vulnerable at the back than a tournament, you know, a team that wants to go far in the tournament should look.

So I think that the only really big difference between this and the Slovakia game was that they did actually manage to kick the ball into the goal twice, which is a big part of football.

But I think there are periods when they put some moves together when they look really good.

I think like the twin wingers of Doku and Lukibakio are, you know, both guys who can run at opponents and cause some chaos.

There were periods where they were really easy on the eye, but then when the ball goes down the other end, it's like Vaud Fass and 105-year-old Jan Vertongen trying to stop things, and that's not good.

So, like, I kind of feel like they can

this combination of missing a lot of chances and always giving your opponent a certain number of chances just doesn't really bode well for their tournament prospects.

I feel.

And also, I'm failing to follow my own principles here in a big way because I tend to not want a lot of ref chat.

But the De Bruyne goal should have been ruled out.

That's a foul on the goalkeeper.

The way it takes out the goalkeeper following through, you're not actually allowed to do that just because you're a forward.

As far as I'm concerned, that's a foul.

Any other thoughts on that?

Yeah,

I think,

I mean, it was as bad as, if not worse, if not worse, than the Ryan Corteus challenge that got him a red card in Scotland's opening game.

His leg is out, studs are up and he goes straight into the goalkeeper's shin.

So I think it's a red card, but I don't know if that also means the goal should be ruled out because Seb Stafford Bloor from the Athletic

put on Twitter that some journalists were told before the tournament that

say in this instant the Bruin's contact with the opponent needs to be judged independently from his action on the ball.

So, assuming Seb is correct, and I have no reason to doubt him, that would suggest the goal stands, but De Bruyne also at least gets booked, if not sent off.

I think what that directive means is that it doesn't matter if you get the ball or not, if you follow through and pattern the player, you should get fouled.

Without wanting to top trump you on the Seb Stafford Bloorfront, who's a lovely bloke,

I did ask a a former international level referee what he thought, and he thought that was an obvious foul and a yellow for more

reckless than dangerous from De Bruynen.

But the point is, like, that there is a foul there that should have been picked up, I think.

But again, I'm generally the one who complains about too much ref chat, so I've completely driven this in a direction I normally wouldn't want it to go.

I just thought it was worth, because I haven't heard a lot of other people making the point.

Can I ask, is De Bruynen not perfectly entitled to go for that ball and if he has to stretch out his foot with his studs up then you know what what else can he do he can not hit an opponent with uh his studs and a straight leg which is like you are basically you have a duty of care to your fellow pros on the football field like if you're stud and if you end up like two-footing someone or studding someone in the the shin or thigh or whatever it doesn't really matter anymore what you were trying to do you've still committed

but if he pulls out of the let's call it a challenge because the goalkeeper is going for the same ball, he's just going to look like a massive coward.

Well, it's a similar logic to when goalkeepers come for the ball and they punch a player in the face as well, which refs have actually started giving penalties for, which is very good.

You're not allowed to do, like, if you end up causing harm or

committing fouls in doing things on the pitch, that's still a foul if you were trying to do something else.

Yeah, I'm not trying to be contrary.

I just genuinely no, no,

it's a fair point.

But like, the best explanation I got from again a very sort of high-level ref was that you are responsible for where your limbs end up when you are on the football field so if you end up like smashing someone with your studs and a straight leg at a high tempo it's like you're not allowed to do that even if you were trying to do something else have you got Roger Milford in your contacts on your phone no no one's so exciting the only thing I'd say where it is slightly different to the Porteus one is the Porteus just sort of lunges for the ball whereas De Bruner is he sort of has to rest himself free of a defender, so he's not entirely kind of balanced.

Which I

mean,

that I think maybe is why it's a yellow, not a red.

Because

I sort of felt that a bit with the

previous Belgian

game,

the hand ball that led to the Kaku's goal being ruled out.

He only handles it because he gets a shove in the back.

And the shove in the back is not enough to be a foul, but equally, he wouldn't have handled the ball if he hadn't been shoved in the back.

So it's odd that you're allowed to get away with a half foul,

but you get penalised for like an eighth of a hand ball.

There's a grey area there, and I'm not really sure what you do with.

And so concludes Ref chat.

Just before we move on, a word on Romania, Jonathan.

I mean, again,

it's kind of like it's quite a few teams that you want to root for because they're really playing quite exciting stuff.

And

they really do want to get forward, don't they?

Yeah, I mean, it's too stretched to be real.

Like, you can't play like that i i like turkey you will get picked off by better teams but i i'd rather they did that than played like you know whales don't say it oh i'm not going to say english

we have check listeners as well i guess we've insulted them um but i'd rather they did that than just sitting deep and being dull um

and and and now we've got uh

sorry who is who's remaining his last game against against slovakia is that right yes so a battle of two countries who nicked Landoff-Hungary with the Treaty of Trianon, which has been

discussed a lot by Hungarians in the past week, and I think probably over the last 105 years.

What a derby that is.

That's going to be that's how it's going to be billed across all the television channels.

So, yeah, but that does mean in Group E, Belgium, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine are all on three points.

So, yeah, very exciting final round there.

To tomorrow's games, so the simultaneous games start,

final group stage game, starting with the hosts Germany and Scotland's Group A.

So Switzerland against Germany and Scotland versus Hungary.

Barry, I'm not sure if we have an update.

Is it still possible for Scotland to go through on two points?

Is that still the case?

I think it...

No, I think they needed...

Or no, it is, yes.

But

they...

For that to happen, they need to draw with Hungary.

I hope they beat Hungary.

Obviously, Kieran Tierney's, he's gone home with another bad injury, which is, you know, gutting for him and gutting for Scotland because, you know, him and

Robertson working together down that left side is

probably their main weapon.

But

yeah, so it's really unfortunate for Kieran Tierney, who doesn't seem to have any luck at all with injuries.

So they could conceivably go through with two points or they could just make their lives a whole lot easier by beating Hungary and it's a it's a very winnable game and

I wouldn't be hugely confident I got a load of grief for criticizing certain aspects of the performance against Switzerland but I think it was justified but if they play

if they play as well as they can

I'm judging them by quite high standards.

I watched them beat Spain.

You know, they were brilliant.

So they're the standards I'm judging them against.

So if they can play to that level or anything approaching that level, I can see no reason why they shouldn't beat Hungary.

It's just Hungary actually look quite good against Germany.

That's my only concern.

Yeah, yeah.

No, they're no mugs.

So, but, you know, it is a winnable game.

Wilson, you're our Hungary correspondent.

Yeah, and I'm going to that game, so I'm which I'm very much looking forward to.

Yeah, Hungary were dreadful dreadful against Switzerland.

I would certainly the first half against Switzerland.

Second half, it went too bad.

It's so slow that first half.

I mean, basically, that defeat in Dublin has really got to them.

They were 13 games unbeaten till then, and understandably, it's led to a crisis of faith.

And then, yeah, they did improve the second half against Switzerland, but yeah, when you tune them down, it makes things difficult.

And they played all right against Germany, just were beaten by a better side.

So I think they feel that they haven't produced anything like their best yet.

And I think Scotland, with Tierney being out, I think that, well, you know, losing with two right-backs before the tournament, losing Portuguese during the tournament, losing Tierney during the tournament defensively, that's a lot to try and make up.

Onto any other business, as reported by Ed Ahrens and The Guardian this morning, Bayern Munich are closing in on the signing of Michael Elise from Crystal Palace for £55 million.

And

I would like to echo Max's sentiment from a few weeks ago that you shouldn't be allowed to buy Michael Elise unless you buy Eberici Eze as well.

They haven't been sold as a package.

Are we going to throw a Mateta as well?

Just for discussion?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why not?

Buy the two and get Mateta free.

It's quite sad.

I would have liked to see the three of them have a full season under, you know, the new coach

Palace.

It is a shame, but yeah, probably inevitable.

And Sunderland have a new manager.

It's taken a while.

anyone I don't really you know Philippe's not here anyone Jonathan Dunard pronounce his name well people seem to be pronouncing the yes uh so Regis LeBris seems to be I'd have thought it was Reggie LeBris but but I was talking to somebody based in Paris he's a Scottish bloke he's based in Paris yesterday and he was pronouncing the S, Reggie's LeBris.

So he's had two seasons, he's been long-on for 12 years, I think, which two he's been head coach,

took them to their second highest ever finish two years ago.

I think they've got quite a lot of money.

So I think it's sort of the eighth or ninth best budget in Ligo.

So yeah, they should be doing well.

And then they sold the two best players and got relegated this season.

So that seems to me like perfect preparation for managing Sunderland Championship.

You've got money, you've got kids, and it's probably going to go wrong.

I have two Sunderland supporting friends called Jonathan, and the other one texted me yesterday saying, Can you ask Philippe about this

Regis Le Bris character.

So I whatsapped Philippe and he said that

he is actually a very good manager who is very good at nurturing young players and bringing youth through.

So it sounds a bit like

a French Tony Mowbray.

So yeah, I'll take that.

We'll see what sort of get up he uses.

Also, if it is pronounced Le Bris,

I don't know.

You're the journalists, maybe headline writers.

I don't know how you like a a circumcision.

I'm thinking of Hillary Brist,

the sinister butcher from the League of Gentlemen.

Oh, I was thinking the Jewish ceremony of circumcision, so that's just.

Ah, right, yeah.

I was thinking

those two things are unrelated, though, are they?

I think that's why the butcher is called that.

I think

joining the dots.

There we go.

I'm going to have to go back and watch all of the League of Gentlemen again.

I'm currently working my way through all, I think it's 55 episodes of Inside Number Nine.

What a TV show!

Yeah, that's on my list.

It's on my list.

How are you managing that whilst watching the Euros?

Because I'm really sort of like, where are the hours and the day?

They're only 30 minutes long, so you can, you know.

How's it between?

Yeah.

Do a quick one.

You can miss out the punditry.

I was about to say you can knock out a quick one, but given recent events,

I've dared go there.

The socks are a curring character at this.

Also, I don't think we've mentioned on the pod that Enzo Mareska has been replaced by former Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper at Leicester.

More on that so when we don't have too much Euro stuff to get through.

And Jonathan, you wanted to mention AFCON.

Yeah, so they've had huge problems trying to work out when to play the 2025 tournament.

So basically the the tournament was always January, February.

Then when Ahmed Ahmed took over from Hayatu,

he had this huge

symposium in Rabat, which is a very good idea to discuss what are the big issues in African football.

And one of the things that was said was by having the tournament in January, February, that annoys a lot of European clubs.

Maybe if we move it to June, July, that's a way of sort of integrating ourselves more into the calendar.

It's a terrible idea because it means that you've been playing tournaments in the West African rainy season.

But they ignored that until they got to Abijah and had to move it again.

And then their reward for doing that, for saying, right, we'll play it in the European summer, is for Jani Fentino to go, I've just invented a new tournament, and we're going to put it in the summer, in June, July, 2025, when you'd plan to have your Cup of Nations in Morocco.

So they haven't been able to find a date.

They don't like having it in the same year as a World Cup for obvious reasons.

Partly because the FIFA regulation, which says that clubs don't have to release players for two tournaments.

And partly, they just think that if it's played in the January, February ones, the World Cup starting in June, it just sort of becomes a warm-up tournament.

It loses, it is diminished.

But also, you now have the expanded Champions League, which is eaten into the end of that window.

So they're starting it on the 18th of December 2025.

It will run over Christmas New Year and will finish on the

sorry, starting on the 21st of December and it finishes on the 18th of January.

So I don't know if they're actually going to be playing games on Christmas Day.

But that is an interesting conversation with the in-laws.

Do you mind if we have Togo V.

Benin on while we have the turkey?

I'm sure it'll be fine.

Sure will be fine.

Would you allow it to go on mute while the king makes his speech, or is that non-negotiable?

I mean, I'm not having the king on.

So they'll.

I don't believe in any of that non-negotiable.

Okay, so they can have they can have that on the phone.

Sunday was a proud Republican city in the Civil War, and those are the values which I've been brought up.

Merry Christmas to

Wilson's in-laws.

We also cancelled Christmas, I guess.

So maybe that's not the

completed argument at all.

That's the obvious outcome, I think.

Finally, Johan got in touch on the subject of Barry's dad's broken nose.

He says, Hearing Barry recount the trauma of seeing his father come off the rugby field with a broken nose reminds me of a somewhat interesting fact.

Barry is named after Welsh rugby legend Barry John.

Excellent.

How do I know this?

He goes on.

Well, I started listening to the pod in 2018 during the World Cup and showed Dad this gas Irish lad who would read pop lyrics in a dour voice.

Dad heard, and no kidding, about two words, and he says, Jesus, sure, that's Barry Glendenning.

I used to kick the ball around with him in his garden.

Lovely lad with glasses, supported Sunderland, named after Barry John, the Welsh rugby player.

So it turns out my dad, Corell, trained to be a vet with the late, great Sam Glendenning in Burr.

Small world, love the pod, and Barry.

Do you reckon?

That Carl is not Corell, it's Carl, is oh, is it Carl?

Carl Verbruggen, who's, I presume, not named after the Netherlands goalkeeper Bert.

So, yes, and I believe he now works in Loch Ray.

And

one of my mates from the local pub in Brixton that I keep banging on about, he brought his Alsatian to see Carl recently, and my name also cropped up in conversation.

So, yes.

Hello, Carl, and hello, Carl's son.

Oh, thanks so much for that, Johan.

That's brilliant.

Um, Pat in Nottingham, I think Carl's parents are Belgian, not Dutch, but uh, yeah, so Bart, Carl, uh, Johan, all the Verbruggens.

Hello, it is spelt the same as yeah, Bart Verbruggin, so yeah,

I'm sure they've got, um, sure, they're cheering him on as well.

Uh, Pat in Nottingham got in touch on the subject of the worst places to vomit after Barry said one of his.

This is a football podcast, by the way,

after Barry said one of his mates vomited in in his helmet at go-karting on a stag do.

So Pat says, I can confirm there is, in fact, a much worse time and place to throw up than in a go-kart helmet.

My good friend Hamza threw up whilst paintballing on my stag.

He couldn't remove his helmet or mask without risking losing his eye or getting chucked out.

So the whole contents of the previous night got forced against the ventilation mesh at the front of the mask, causing an incredibly fine mist of vomit to aerosol across his teammates.

Understandably, they jumped up screaming.

Unfortunately for them, that meant from behind their cover, and they got promptly peppered by paintballs from all directions.

I hope this settles the matter.

We can get back to what has been an excellent tournament.

So, yeah, raising the stakes there.

I'm sure we'll get a few more correspondents on that.

Before we go, I just want to shout out to our good friend Ben Fisher, who I saw earlier in the press room at Georgia against Cheshire Republic with crutches.

He's broken his toe ahead of the tournament.

And apparently, Wilson, you're saying this is not the first time he's had a bit of a medical incident at a major tournament.

Well

as far as I'm aware, he's only done two tournaments for Guardian and in both of them he's been hospitalised within the first 24 hours.

So he's

he's he's he's a brave lad and

I I just hope he can find a car park where you can have some peace.

Here, here.

That'll do for today.

Max is back from his stag tomorrow.

Hopefully vomit in a helmet helmet-free.

I'm not sure what the helmet would be, maybe a lacrosse one or something, given the vibe.

But thank you very much, Barry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Cheers.

Thank you.

And thank you, Lars.

Thank you, Robin.

Football Weekly is produced by Jesse Howard.

Our executive producer is Josh Kelly.