SEMI-FINALS…
Germany 3-2 Turkey
Storms, real and metaphorical
A seriously short-staffed Turkey played out of their skins, but the fairytale had to end. Typical German ability to win ugly when they really didn’t deserve it; to be fair, though, they were denied a penalty on 50 mins.
Russia 0-3 Spain
Scorchio!
Another fairytale comes to an end. Have the Russians been found out, or were Spain truly exceptional? Is this finally a consistent Spanish team? Or have they just happened to turn it on in a crucial game? Don’t ask me. Funny game, innit?
Switzerland were not affected by the outages, because ZDF switched to their feed after the 3rd grey screen of death.
So the Swiss are now all going round saying “Und Wer hat das gerettet? Nicht der scheisse Österreicher!”
Ah, I wonder if that’s the feed we got for a while. There was no BBC icon or score/clock in the corner, and (mercifully!) no John Motson commentary :-)