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On the way:
⭐ Guler stars, Georgia pack a punch
🤿 Mbappe and LeBron in masks
📺 Alexi Lalas throwing TV shade
🎯 Joshua Zirkzee, Man Utd’s target
Euros Zone: Georgia on my mind
There’s an awful lot that governing bodies, such as UEFA, get wrong, not least when it comes to their habit of meddling with competitions. But you know what they say about broken clocks.
Six years ago, UEFA launched the Nations League — a concept that, whatever its true intentions, gave more minor nations an alternative route into the European Championship. Kudos for doing so because it let Georgia contribute to the most electric game of Euro 2024.
By no means is the mechanism perfect. Norway and Erling Haaland were in the same qualifying group as Georgia, performed better, but failed to make it to Germany. The Nations League gave a second chance to Georgia, who had never been to a major tournament before.
But what harm in that when it gives exposure to a team we would otherwise have paid no attention to? A team whose tempo, fluid movement and intricate passing ran Turkey so close yesterday?
True, Georgia lost 3-1, but only after rattling Turkey and hitting a post and the crossbar before conceding with the last kick of the ball. It was chaos and it was glorious, with no cares given.
Georgia’s Willy Sagnol was happy to have presented “such a nice image of Georgian football” — and in a sport where nothing much is secret any more, watching them was a magical mystery tour.
More of this, please.
Giddy Guler — and another long-range beauty
Another day, another prodigy who makes you feel your age.
BBC
Another day, another prodigy who makes you feel your age.
Arda Guler, the Real Madrid midfielder with “waif-like physique and choirboy looks”, to quote James Horncastle, conjured a beauty of a goal for Turkey, the long-range banger which has been weirdly ten-a-penny in Germany.
He’s 19 and the first teenager to score at a European Championship since Cristiano Ronaldo in 2004. Give it time and he’ll be contesting certain Ronaldo records at the Bernabeu, too.
Something in the water is making men out of boys in this sport. And when Guler has Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti texting him after full time, he’s hardly going to go backwards soon.
Nice Ron, VAR!
Ronaldo isn’t the type to let a 19-year-old put him in his place and Portugal’s top boy came close to his 131st international goal last night.
It was late in a drab and wet meeting with the Czech Republic (the German weather looks dreadful), which Portugal edged 2-1 with a stoppage-time winner. A headed chance Ronaldo would normally take in his sleep came back off the post before the rebound flew in, but it transpired that he was offside anyway — by a tiny fraction.
I’m not here to shill for the video assistant referee (VAR) system, but the speed at which UEFA’s semi-automated offside technology ruled out that effort, in what felt like a few seconds, was impressive. It bodes well for the Premier League, which is introducing a similar system next season — though when it comes to VAR and the Premier League, don’t hold your breath.
The man in the mask
We’re waiting for confirmation of how many games Kylian Mbappe will miss with his broken nose. The noises suggest we might not see him again until after the group stages.
“Crack on — it’s not a broken leg,” says The Athletic’s columnist Alan Shearer, who missed his calling as one of the Incredibles. But how easy is it to play with a broken nose? Just grab a mask and shout ‘avante’?
It’s been done before in plenty of sports. A protective mask made LeBron James look like a superhero. A less flattering design made Paul Gascoigne look like Hannibal Lecter. They can’t all be winners.
One nasal specialist we spoke to said he would recommend at least a month out of action for Mbappe.
Not. A. Chance.
Catch a match
(ET/UK times): Group B: Croatia vs Albania (9am/2pm) — Fubo, FS1/ITV1, Live blog; Group A: Germany vs Hungary (12pm/5pm) — Fubo, FS1/BBC One, Live blog; Scotland vs Switzerland (3pm/8pm) — Fubo, Fox/BBC One, Live blog
In The Pink: Kroos, a new kit, and boots he’s worn for a decade
(Sebastian Widmann – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Toni Kroos. Hot feet, hot looks.
To sum up, a marketing department’s dream — unless you’re Adidas trying to sell boots.
Because Kroos has stuck to the same line of boots — the Adidas Adipure 11Pro (yes, those above) — for more than 10 years. They haven’t been on public sale since 2014 and the only factory sole-plate size left is his.
Commercially, he missed the memo completely, but sometimes you like what you like. Who is going to argue with his results anyway?
I’ll tell you what is a marketing dream, though — Germany’s pink away kit for Euro 2024. It got a bit of hammering when it was released (not German enough, or something), but the critics are in the mud. It’s become the fastest-selling Germany away jersey in history.
I saw this at Leeds United. Everybody at Leeds clamours for a traditional yellow away kit, but when the club released a charcoal-and-pink effort for the 2019-20 season, it flew out the door. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that.
(Lars Baron / Getty Images)
Copa Corner: Lalas not bothered about the likes
Football won’t see a more iconic goatee than Alexi Lalas’ in the 1990s; the Carlos Valderrama of beards.
In the spirit of being noticed, the former USMNT defender has reinvented himself as a soccer pundit who likes to shoot from the hip for Fox Sports. With the Copa America looming, Adam Crafton went to meet him and chat about Lalas’ gift for riling viewers.
“Life’s too short, and f*** them,” Lalas told Adam. That’s the level of diplomacy I like.
Another man at the Copa who might need to ignore public sentiment is Brazil’s Lucas Paqueta. He’s part of the national team squad despite the threat of a severe ban for alleged multiple Premier League betting offences hanging over him.
The Athletic tracked down a different footballer, Kynan Isaac, who was banned for spot-fixing in an English FA Cup tie in 2021. Isaac denies any wrongdoing but got 10 years for a single breach — which is all the warning Paqueta needs about where this could end for him.
‘Unicorn’ Zirkzee: Man Utd keen on 23-year-old striker
Joshua Zirkzee was at Walt Disney World in Florida last week when a missive arrived asking him to join up with the Netherlands squad. He can’t ever have been happier to see work ruin a holiday.
Injuries got him to Germany, but so did 11 goals for Bologna in Italy’s Serie A. Those goals might go further again by bagging him a summer transfer to Manchester United, who sound pretty keen on the 23-year-old.
There’s almost nothing they don’t need at Old Trafford but more support for Rasmus Hojlund up front would be a start. Zirkzee’s ‘unicorn skill set’ casts him as a novel breed of centre-forward: tall at 6ft 4in (193cm) but slick and a mobile dribbler of the ball. Stay on top of this deal. Like him, we think it’s got legs.
Chelsea are trying to spend again. They’ve bid £27m ($35m) for Atletico Madrid striker Samu Omorodion. Don’t worry if you have to look him up. So did we.
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(Top photo: Marvin Ibo Guengoer – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)
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