Euro 2024, Day 4
Romania explode, Slovakia shock, France get it done
Ok, these ones were fun. There was something worth talking about in all of them. Let’s get into the football. We’ve got Romania vs Ukraine on the free side, then followed by Belgium against Slovakia and Austria-France.
Romania 3-0 Ukraine
This was a very silly game in which lots of fun things happened. Unless you’re Ukrainian, that is, in which case I am very sorry you had to watch that.
Nicolae Stanciu just struck the ball absolutely perfectly to break what had been a pretty nervy first half-hour. Then in the second half, Razvan Marin decided to hit another perfect shot. There was almost nothing between the two teams! Football does that sometimes.
Ukraine did genuinely switch off after that. I think they just weren’t fully concentrating for the corner and, after the shock of conceding the first two goals the way they did, it’s understandable. But I do not think that, on balance, this was a terrible performance by Ukraine. It was a terrible result, and they’ve got some serious work to do now to make up the deficit, but they won the real quiz: I didn’t think they were that much worse than Romania. They weren’t good, mind.
For three goals, this really wasn’t actually a game of lots of good chances. Neither team should be looking at this and thinking “Yeah, we’ve got an attack here”. I’ve been extremely critical of Mykhailo Mudryk in the past and, while I still don’t like him much as a player, I should say I did think he improved at Chelsea in the second half of the season. There might be more of a player in there than I thought (though not enough of one to be worth the transfer fee. This, though, was not good. I wanted to see if Ukraine’s apparently promising side would step up here, and they created almost nothing against Romania. Gonna have to say I’m not sold. I don’t think anyone is right now.
Belgium 0-1 Slovakia
Sideshow Bob stapt op harken
Sideshow Bob marche sur des râteaux
Sideshow Bob steps on rakes
