Euro 2020 (in 2021)

C

ColourofFire

Kick Henry Jackassowski
So, Euro 2020 is going on. Can't say I'm super excited about it. Skipped the opening match to go hike and camp. Got back yesterday as the weather was going to get a lot worse, so I watched my new country's debut on a major football tournament. Denmark - Finland became quite the eventful match. Finland played like shit, even by their standards, Denmark started so-so, then the whole Eriksen collapse business, then the Finnish win after the long break and luckily the news Eriksen is (relatively) ok. Glad with the Finnish win, bummed with the way the game went down seems to be the general attitude here.

Watched Russia - Belgium after. Total snoozefest. A lot of Belgium players are either current of former long-time teammates of Eriksen, so they just played to the bare minimum they had to, Russia was completely incapable of doing anything useful.

Let's hope tonight is a bit more about quality football.
 
I watched the opening game. Turkey were rubbish, Italy looked good but I want to see them against good opposition to gauge how good they actually are.

Watched the Wales game yesterday, wasn't up to much. Started watching the Denmark game but we got a better seat in the bar and got chatting with some pals so didn't even realise Erikson had gone down until I went home at what would have been half time.

Looking forward to the England game. I've spent the last week in work explaining to the kids that you can support England as well as Scotland (and Wales as it happens).

Scotland's first game is tomorrow. I may or may not have bet some money against them :embarrassed: I'm glad they got there, I'm pally with one of the squad but he's injured just now so I[m finding it hard to get excited as I think they're going to be lucky to manage a draw with any of the group games.
 
Watched most of the action so far. Italy was really impressive in that first game. They can actually play good football when they have a manager that lets them.

The Eriksen thing was horrible to watch, had to turn off when they started shocking him. Genuinely felt ill. Glad he came back to life.
How on earth his team mates eventually managed to finish the match I don't know.

Southgate is fucking clueless btw, but that's not really new from an England manager. :grin:
And I suspect Scotland's run in this tournament could be quite short. :embarrassed:

As far as winning it, I can't look past France really. Crazy amount of talent in that squad.
 
Dexter Inferno said:
The Eriksen thing was horrible to watch, had to turn off when they started shocking him. Genuinely felt ill. Glad he came back to life.
How on earth his team mates eventually managed to finish the match I don't know.
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From what his manager said, he actually asked his teammates to finish the game. :shrug:

Knowing the Finnish attitude towards these kind of things I'm quite amazed by both teams actually coming back on the pitch to finish the game.
 
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ColourofFire said:
From what his manager said, he actually asked his teammates to finish the game. :shrug:

Knowing the Finnish attitude towards these kind of things I'm quite amazed by both teams actually coming back on the pitch and finish the game.
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Yeah, the players decided to do it after talking to him and knowing he was ok.
They had to do it last night or resume it at noon today though, which is not good from UEFA to be honest.
Seriously impressed by the players of both teams, although it really shouldn't have been resumed last night. Several of them were clearly out of it mentally, very understandably so.
Glad he pulled through.
 
Haven't watched a complete game besides the inaugural Italy/Turkey match which was a snoozefest. Just watched the last few minutes of England/Croatia, but won't be able to see any others today. The Eriksen thing isn't that much of a anomaly - SCA (sudden cardiac arrest), while uncommon isn't unknown among athletes. In fact, I had a teammate suffer this in a over-35 game about 15 years ago - unfortunately he was not able to be revived even though we started CPR quickly. It's some scary shit to see a teammate just collapse.

I think it's probably about time that all athletes involved in competition (e.g. professionals, college sports, etc.) should routinely have to undergo an ECG and echocardiogram to determine if there are any anomalous electrical conditions or something like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that might result in this. As a soccer referee, I have had to take a short course in how to recognize this on the field, but the best prevention would be pre-screening to determine players susceptible to SCA.
 
Hmm how can I watch this in the states if I don’t have cable? My son is playing football now (soccer) and would really benefit from watching some matches. He’s still in the phase where he wants to run after the ball non stop and kicks it as hard as he can most of the time (along with most all the other kids in town).

Watching these kids play is pretty great (they’re all 7-9). Two or three kids are clearly talented and understand how to pass, get open, etc. Then there’s the goalie siting in the grass picking leaves, another kid waving to his parents, the kid crying because the team is down by 2, etc.
 
bsman said:
I think it's probably about time that all athletes involved in competition (e.g. professionals, college sports, etc.) should routinely have to undergo an ECG and echocardiogram to determine if there are any anomalous electrical conditions or something like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that might result in this. As a soccer referee, I have had to take a short course in how to recognize this on the field, but the best prevention would be pre-screening to determine players susceptible to SCA.
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Professional footballers get screened for this type of thing all the time. Quite some of them (like NL's Daley Blind) play with medical devices to avoid cardiac arrests and related issues. In this case Eriksen's screenings never showed anything out of the ordinary.
 
Dexter Inferno said:
Yeah, the players decided to do it after talking to him and knowing he was ok.
They had to do it last night or resume it at noon today though, which is not good from UEFA to be honest.
Seriously impressed by the players of both teams, although it really shouldn't have been resumed last night. Several of them were clearly out of it mentally, very understandably so.
Glad he pulled through.
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Idk, with a schedule this packed and the organisational issues that are even crazier now with covid, I can understand UEFA can't realistically provide any other options in a short timespan.
 
Denmark - Finland was horrible to watch on so many levels. Not a footie fan as such but the missus and I thought it could be fun watching the match. First half was meh, a bit frustrating to watch the Danish team not being able to do anything constructive even though they had the possession, and it was like the Fins were just sitting it out. Then Eriksen just dropped for no apparent reason and everyone could see it was bad. We thought we'd just seen a man die on live television. It was awful. Thank fuck he's alive and in stable condition.

Kudos to the Finnish fans for their support, to the Danish team for protecting their mate from the cameras, and to the Finnish team for keeping their cool and doing what they had to do. It must have been a pretty weird feeling bringing that win home under the circumstances.
 
ColourofFire said:
Idk, with a schedule this packed and the organisational issues that are even crazier now with covid, I can understand UEFA can't realistically provide any other options in a short timespan.
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Yeah, not sure what UEFA could have done really, but it did have a ring of "ultimatum" to it, which I really didn't like. That organization isn't exactly known for caring much about the well-being of the players.
 
Dexter Inferno said:
Yeah, not sure what UEFA could have done really, but it did have a ring of "ultimatum" to it, which I really didn't like. That organization isn't exactly known for caring much about the well-being of the players.
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If the person involved and both teams involved pretty explicitly state they want to play (and not even wait for noon next day), I kind of feel that the whole UEFA bashing in hindsight (by daddy Schmeigel for example) is a bit off and in distaste IMHO. I don't know how it was brought to the players and staff, but none of them seemed to feel like they were put in a tough spot by the organisation, so not sure why outsiders would start this discussion.

EDIT: this isn't targeted at you, mostly at public/media people that threw this into the world.
 
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ColourofFire said:
If the person involved and both teams involved pretty explicitly state they want to play (and not even wait for noon next day), I kind of feel that the whole UEFA bashing in hindsight (by daddy Schmeigel for example) is a bit off and in distaste IMHO. I don't know how it was brought to the players and staff, but none of them seemed to feel like they were put in a tough spot by the organisation, so not sure why outsiders would start this discussion.
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It's not an easy one for sure, not least because something like this has never happened before in a major tournament.
The players' decision to resume play is understandable, but as their coach said they weren't really in the right state to play.
I can to some degree understand that some feel that the decision shouldn't have been up to the players after what they just had been through.
UEFA is an easy target though, for obvious reasons.

Either way this tournament is probably screwed for the Danes now without Eriksen in the team.
 
Dexter Inferno said:
It's not an easy one for sure, not least because something like this has never happened before in a major tournament.
The players' decision to resume play is understandable, but as their coach said they weren't really in the right state to play.
I can to some degree understand that some feel that the decision shouldn't have been up to the players after what they just had been through.
UEFA is an easy target though, for obvious reasons.

Either way this tournament is probably screwed for the Danes now without Eriksen in the team.
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Even if it happened before, these kind of events, especially with covid in the mix, involve so many parties with their own interests and possibilities that you can never do right by everyone in a situation like this. Also, they pretend the UEFA are the only ones that "should have protected the players", kinda odd to not include the national associations in that criticism.

IMHO the "best" outcome would have been if Denmark forfeited the game.
 
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Monson said:
Denmark - Finland was horrible to watch on so many levels. Not a footie fan as such but the missus and I thought it could be fun watching the match. First half was meh, a bit frustrating to watch the Danish team not being able to do anything constructive even though they had the possession, and it was like the Fins were just sitting it out. Then Eriksen just dropped for no apparent reason and everyone could see it was bad. We thought we'd just seen a man die on live television. It was awful. Thank fuck he's alive and in stable condition.

Kudos to the Finnish fans for their support, to the Danish team for protecting their mate from the cameras, and to the Finnish team for keeping their cool and doing what they had to do. It must have been a pretty weird feeling bringing that win home under the circumstances.
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Glen Kamara cost the mighty Glasgow Rangers £50k. Even a pish showing by the Finns that end in victory us good for me.
 
Holland going into the tournament in an ultra-attacking 5-3-2 formation :lol: Don't have high expectations for Oranje this time around

I will be supporting Scotland as well, DEFINITELY NOT England :embarrassed:
 
wok said:
Holland going into the tournament in an ultra-attacking 5-3-2 formation :lol: Don't have high expectations for Oranje this time around

I will be supporting Scotland as well, DEFINITELY NOT England :embarrassed:
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At least NL managed to qualify this time :embarrassed:

For the record btw, semifinals in Brazil were also reached with 5-3-2
 
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