Euro 2024, day 18
Hello, and welcome to the first of these in the new Post-Tory Britain. After the new government repeatedly promised change, we got an absolute snooze fest in the later game here. Keir Starmer! I will vote for whichever party in 2029 promises to abolish boring football matches. Let’s get into it.
Spain 2-1 Germany
We thought we were getting a feast of beautiful football and we got a bloodbath. It’s not quite what I was expecting, but I’ll take it.
The first half was not great. Neither side got into any kind of rhythm and the game got weirdly ugly. It was surprising to see these teams cancel each other out, but that’s what happened. It became pretty physical and defined by fouls. I don’t really have a lot to say on those 45 minutes other than “neither team got going”.
Spain got the breakthrough early in the second half by doing exactly the thing they’ve done so well all tournament: getting it wide. Lamine Yamal starts dribbling towards the box from the right flank and gets every German player’s attention. They all stop paying attention to everything else because they’re transfixed by Yamal, which gives Dani Olmo a free run at the box. It still takes a cute finish, but Olmo delivers and it’s 1-0 to Spain.
From there, I thought Spain were far too passive. They needed to keep emphasis on pushing players up the pitch and getting it wide. They took off Yamal after 63 minutes and Nico Williams after 80. This is a hard tournament for fitness, so it might benefit Spain now that their exciting wingers got some rest, but it did make the team worse on the pitch. They fell into the trap of sitting deeper and nearly gave the game away.
Germany, meanwhile, were positive. Bringing on Niclas Füllkrug, unsurprisingly, changed the way they attacked. Suddenly, the team was less focused on intricate passing movements than being direct and crossing it in for the big man. This primarily came from Florian Wirtz and Joshua Kimmich down the right, and Maximilian Mittelstädt on the left. Comparatively, I thought Jamal Musiala had a really disappointing game. It wasn’t a time for intricate movements in the half-spaces. Personally, I think moving Leroy Sané over to the left in the second half would’ve worked better than taking him off and keeping Musiala in that position.
They did equalise through a cross. Mittelstädt floated one in from deep on the left, which Kimmich was able to flick on for Wirtz. It came in a second half when Spain just totally ceded control of the game, entirely through their own doing. I think this should be a lesson to Luis de la Fuente that he has to keep his foot on the accelerator. Don’t settle and let opponents suck you in like this.
As often happens, both sides were a little flat on their feet in extra time. Germany lost some of their positive rhythm, probably down to both tiredness and the substitutes not quite finding the tempo of the game. It was really just going to come down to whichever side could produce one moment of quality, and that was Spain, with Olmo floating a nice ball into a Mikel Merino header. This really could’ve gone either way, but it went against the hosts. So it goes.
I still think Germany should take a lot of positives from this tournament. Nagelsmann has got the side playing good football, and adding a little more steel for 2026 would put them in excellent shape. Spain, meanwhile, are heading to play France on Tuesday. I think they should be winning that game, for reasons we’ll now get to.
Portugal 0-0 France (France win on penalties)
Oof, what a stinker.