Euro 2024 – Middle Age Fanclub

Euro 2024 Final Preview: Some people are on the pitch…

They say that it’s the hope that kills you, don’t they? But sometimes as a football fan, hope is all you’ve got. Certainly, as an England and a Newcastle United fan, well I’ve bought the t-shirt and the season ticket as far as hope is concerned! So, tonight, I’ll go with hope as a means to help me get through the final.

Being born just 6 years after we’d won the World Cup hasn’t helped. It’s meant that I’ve spent my entire life almost expecting that it’s only a matter of time before we win again. And yet, waiting is all I’ve done. Unless you include the holding of my head in my hands and the crying over the latest failure. So hopefully tonight can bring an end to the waiting and the tears.

I’ve always loved my country and always been very proud of being English, despite the fact that sometimes it can seem like there’s not a lot to take any pride in. Watching even a minority of England fans throw tables and chairs around any town that they’ve found themselves in over the years has been hard to take and can make you question your loyalty a bit at times. Throw in the weather, the years and years of awful governments and the right wing associations that are sometimes levelled against any form of patriotism and being a proud Englishman can feel a little awkward to say the least. Not to mention the sporting flops over the years.

All of that being said though, every tournament brings out the same sense of belonging in me. The house is decorated with flags, England tops are worn and life comes to a bit of standstill while we tailor everything around England games. It’s been exactly the same this tournament; hope, optimism, pride…and a huge dollop of frustration, given some of the performances! It doesn’t matter though. Tonight, we play in the final and fingers crossed we get the result we all want.

Having watched our cricket, rugby, athletics and even our women’s football team achieve varying types of glory over the years I can’t help feeling cheated as a football fan. Sure, it’s great when any England team wins a tournament and I’ve revelled in those successes as much as any of us. But I can’t say it’s been the same as the feeling I hope for if the England men’s team can win something in my lifetime. Having made the final a few years ago, I really believed that we’d win, especially on home soil. That we didn’t left me devastated. The exact same feeling as I’d had years before with the World Cups in 1986, 1990, 1998, 2018 and 2022. I’m hoping tonight that some sort of higher power – Harry Kane maybe? – will decide that enough’s enough.

Over the years it’s even felt like we’ve even had more success with our tunes than we’ve had on the pitch. In fact, sometimes our accompanying songs have made our failure even worse, given their quality. I mean, I still have my 7 inch vinyl copy of ‘This Time [We’ll Get It Right]’, but since then some of our songs have been more than memorable. If we could have matched our performances to tunes like ‘World in Motion’ and ‘Three Lions’ we’d have won some silverware years ago! Sadly though, the music’s usually been one step ahead of the team.

I really hope it all changes tonight. We’ve not been great this tournament, yet still here we are in the final. I don’t buy the criticism of Southgate as frankly, his record speaks for itself. We tried proven ‘winners’ with managers like Capello and went with what you might call with the people’s choice in Keegan, Venables and even Sam Allardyce. It brought us precisely nothing. Meanwhile, Gareth Southgate has come within a hair’s breadth of leading us to our first trophy since 1966 and blooded some cracking players over the years. In fact, if we’re completely honest he’s changed the face of the England football team in his time in charge. Jesus, he’s even made us feel like we can win penalty shoot outs! I for one would rather we were fighting at the top end of tournaments than heading home ranting about a perceived injustice as we’ve done in the past.

There’s no doubt that we have a lot of potential matchwinners in the squad. Despite his evident lack of fitness, Harry Kane has scored goals in this tournament, like he always does. Bukayo Saka has done the same and also offers the hope that he can beat a full back and put over the kind of cross that’s begging to be rammed home. Then there’s Jude Bellingham. I can’t say that I’ve been particularly impressed with him, but can’t deny that when it’s mattered he’s turned up. Kobie Mainoo has really impressed me since breaking into the team and I feel like he’ll play a big role tonight. It also seems to me that Phil Foden is growing into the tournament and he was really unlucky not to score in the semi. Hopefully tonight could be his night.

Even our bench has match-winning talent. Palmer, Watkins, Toney and Eze feel like the obvious picks here, for obvious reasons, but as a Newcastle fan I still hope that Anthony Gordon can get on and give us a few moments of quality. He’s very much a big game player and that pace can create something for us, without a doubt.

Tonight, we face a Spain team that will really test us. But I only have eyes for England. Can we win it? Is it finally coming home? I really don’t know, but I hope so, even if it really might just be the hope that kills you.

The form isn’t great and actually a lot of the optimism seems to be based around some kind of ‘feeling’. Still though, some people are on the pitch…so, COME ON, ENGLAAAAAAAAND!

Euro 2024: Sometimes the bright side feels a bit harder to find!

I’d set out to try and stick to the positives when writing about these Euros. In my experience, when watching your country play at a major tournament – in any sport – the negatives are never far away and it can be hard to stay positive. I mean, I left work early last night in order to rush home and get a few things done before settling down to watch what I’d hoped would be a decent England performance. Look how that ended.

Anyway, here are my 5 positives from England’s latest effort…

Kieran Trippier won his 50th cap. I think Tripps has been the focus of far too much negative attention so far in these Euros. The notion that Phil Foden’s poor form is down to Trippier filling in as a right footed left back seems ridiculous, but it just keeps getting mentioned. Perhaps a look at Phil Foden or the manager’s tactics might reveal the truth on that particular matter? Anyway, Tripps earned his 50th cap and for me, has looked pretty solid while defending at this tournament so far…and I’m aware that I’ve probably just cursed him in saying that!

Jordan Pickford. The second positive and I’m already stretching things a bit. Hear me out though. Pickford is receiving a lot of back passes so far and although people say he’s good with his feet, I’d look more at the fact that he’s liable to drop a bollock at any moment without warning. So there’s my positive. Despite seeing a lot of the ball to his feet, so far there have been no attempted hospital balls to Declan Rice or Cruyff turns in his own six yard box. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

We’re almost out of the group! It looks to be a 99.9% certainty that we get out of the group from this point. Despite the disappointment of the performance and the result, we’re still top of the group. Knock out football awaits as long as we don’t do anything silly. What awaits when we enter knockout football might not be too positive, but we’ll come to that another time!

Anthony Gordon. He hasn’t played a single minute yet, despite half of the country crying out for it. However, I was partly pleased that he never got onto that terrible pitch on Thursday night because that pitch combined with being a Newcastle player added up to a surefire knee ligament injury as far as I could see! Gordon with both knees still intact? I’ll take that as a positive.

Harry Kane scored. So, he seems to be playing at half his capacity, might be injured, is dropping far too deep and his wayward pass from a position that he didn’t need to be in cost us a goal, but he scored. As any England fan knows, Kane scoring once often leads to Kane scoring more. Let’s hope he finds his groove soon!

So, there you have it. Five positives…sort of. What do you expect when we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel? Hopefully the next game makes this a bit easier to write!

Euro 2024: Five Positives from England v Serbia.

After much hype and excitement England finally got their Euro 2024 campaign underway last night. And in wanting to review things and write about the games, I decided to try to keep things positive. I’ve watched England at enough tournaments over the years to realise that the negatives are a far too easy to trap to fall into. So, positives it is! Oh, and I’ve tried to look beyond the blindingly obvious, so there’s no Jude Bellingham, despite how good he was!

A win and a clean sheet. The two warm up games had me slightly concerned about how we’d fare in Germany, so to start with a win is all that matters. Serbia were no mugs and had plenty of players that could have done us some damage. As a Newcastle fan, I couldn’t help but worry about the haunting figure of Alexander Mitrovic, but he had a fairly quiet game and was subdued well by our defence. In the end, despite not quite ever getting into top gear, we got the job done and that’s all that counts. If it’s true that successful sides often take their time to get up to full speed in tournament football, then we should be looking forwards, not backwards. Let’s be happy about the three points.

Marc Guehi. Although I’ve not seen a huge amount of Guehi, I wasn’t particularly impressed with what I’d seen before the Serbia game. He never really stood out. Last night, Guehi very quickly emerged as a key man though. His stats afterwards spoke volumes. 96% pass completion, 3 clearances, 1 block and all ‘duels’ won. I thought he looked like a seasoned international, despite not having that many caps. He dominated the Serbian forwards, intercepted well when needed and just gave me confidence that the much needed clean sheet would come. Keep up the good work, Marc.

A cameo performance from Jarrod Bowen. I’ll be honest, I wanted to see Anthony Gordon coming on, but sadly that never happened. I like Bowen as a player though; his work rate is superb, there’s no lack of skill, he’s got an eye for goal and is always keen to take his man on. I really thought we needed to be more direct and Bowen brought that during his relatively short time on the pitch. He helped get the ball going away from our goal, which was a relief and when he needed to be back helping out in defence, he didn’t shirk his responsibility. On top of that, his ball over for Kane’s header really deserved a goal and had the keeper not made a great save, Bowen contribution would have made a properly game changing difference.

Jordan Pickford. They say goalkeepers are all mad and Jordan Pickford is a great example of this. Given my club allegiance and his history as a Sunderland player and fan, I’m not Jordan’s biggest fan and I don’t really rate him that highly as a keeper. However, having not had much to do in the match, he turned up when it mattered, making a great save when Vlahovic hit a rocket shot from the edge of the box. An equaliser at that stage could have really spurred the Serbs on and who knows how the game would have ended. So well done to Pickford for the save. Whatever I might think of him, he’s not England’s number one for nothing.

Cesc Fabregas. Not particularly an England positive, but he was on the England game and his punditry deserves some recognition. Given the presence of Rio Ferdinand and all the abject nonsense he’s prone to talking, Fabregas’s common sense, insightful comments were more than welcome at the end of the game when we all just wanted to relax after a tense second half. And he’s right about Phil Foden; with the amount of natural ability that lad has, he has to be demanding the ball more often and taking games by the scruff of the neck.

Is it coming home? Well, I’m not sure. But whatever does end up happening, a win and a clean sheet in the opening game won’t do us any harm whatsoever. Bring on the next group game!