The View from the Spaghetti Factory

Well, what can you say? Any complaints from the losing side will always be construed as sour grapes, and England deserved to let their early lead slip. After Owen’s third-minute goal, and particularly after Rooney’s exit through injury, the team descended into a prolonged spell of Keystone Cops football. There was no communication, passes were random and under- or overhit, long balls were used indiscriminately without consideration for the positions of other players. What was so surprising about the Portugal equaliser was that it took another eighty minutes to arrive.

But… lacklustre performances don’t necessarily lose matches, as Germany proved in the 2002 World Cup, only really kicking into gear in the semi-final and ending as runners-up to Brazil. The England-Portugal match pivoted on some truly dreadful refereeing. Now, this is something that those of us who support lower-division teams have come to accept as an unpleasant but unavoidable reality, but in the quarter-final of a major international tournament, we should be seeing the very best. Specifically, we should be seeing referees who are not so easily swayed by the pressure of home-team support. It happened to Spain, who were denied one, possibly two legitimate goals against home team South Korea in the 2002 World Cup.

Back to this evening’s match, Swiss referee Urs Meier had made some fairly inexplicable decisions throughout the match, but the pivotal moment came when he disallowed Sol Campbell’s goal in the final minute. Every time I see that replay, I see a sturdy (but not illegal) challenge on goal from John Terry and Sol Campbell. If there is a foul, it’s by Campbell climbing on his own teammate! What’s worse is that Meier decided to make a snap decision despite having only a distant view of the incident. As it turned out, there was little to separate the teams in extra time (each scoring one more goal) and Portugal won the match fairly on penalties. That’s not the point, though… a misinformed decision affected the result.

The solution? I don’t know. I doubt that Pierluigi Collina would have been so lazily biased, but he’s just one (exceptional) referee. To give all referees the benefit of the doubt, the speed of the modern game has made it very difficult for one man (with two off-pitch assistants) to arbitrate effectively. However, there seems to be a general reluctance to accept this, and pursue bold, creative solutions. The subject of full-time, professional referees is rarely, if ever, broached. Digital video technology would facilitate instant replay and analysis, but is not used. When the cream of Europe’s referees can so easily be pressurised by home support into rash decisions, though, something must be done.

As for the competition, I now turn to Holland (my default “second team” since the 1978 World Cup, the first international competition I ever saw on TV) although I’d love to see the Czech Republic do well…

So, Croatia. Their squad might not be packed with talent as it was in the late 90s (Suker, Boban, Prosinecki, Boksic) but they’re still effective, as shown in the 2-2 draw with France. With that in mind, it was nice to see a much more controlled England performance on Monday evening. Well, okay… up to a point. Where dodgy substitute selection was our undoing in the first match and clumsy over-zealousness made the Switzerland game unnecessarily laboured, the Croatia match provided a new insight… we hate set pieces, especially when balls are played across the face of goal. We’ve let in four goals in this tournament so far… one penalty and three free kicks.

Still, as a pundit or two will probably say before the end of the week, it’s not the goals you let in, but the goals you score which count. Putting aside that habitual English self-deprecation for a moment, we looked damn good in attack. The “next Pele” tabloid drivel is overstating things somewhat, but Wayne Rooney is on superb form, and some of the passing moves against Croatia were quite stunning.

On a slightly sadder note, that was the last first-round match shown on the BBC. I’m not particularly interested in pundits or commentators, so any TV coverage is fine by me, but the banality of some of the ITV commentary has really grated at times. Their regular updates on “how the table will be if the current scores remain the same” are boring and pointless, and there have been several instances of lazy reporting (“Greece are through… [later]… Greece are *probably* through”).

[EDIT... I originally took issue with the "Italy cannot progress if Denmark and Sweden draw with two or more goals apiece" theory. Under standard rules, that would be true... Italy drew with Denmark (the first criterion) and so would need to beat Bulgaria by a three-goal margin (or a two-goal margin, providing they scored at least one more goal than Denmark).

However, it seems the goal difference and goals scored criteria only apply for the matches *between* the tying teams. None of the goals against Bulgaria counted. Bizarre, but it is UEFA after all... I wonder when we'll see the "Silver Goal" used for the first time...]

The daftest thing has been the claim of match rigging from the Italy camp. Aside from the fact that a team of Italy’s quality shouldn’t have got themselves into such a mess in the first place, didn’t it occur to them that two neighbouring nations might just have the *slightest* urge to beat each other? I mean, think about it… England and Scotland engineering a mutually beneficial draw? Holland and Germany? Brazil and Argentina?

The matches in Euro 2004 have so far been a mixed bag, ranging from the torporific (Switzerland-Croatia, most of Denmark-Bulgaria) to the dazzling and compelling (Italy-Sweden). For us England fans, things are looking brighter than they were this time last week; the 3-0 win over Switzerland was comfortable, if somewhat lacking in technical brilliance.

For a few days, though, everything will probably seem drab in comparison with one match in particular. Group D was always going to be interesting, with past winners Holland, Germany and the Czech Republic queuing up to gain some easy points from little Latvia. However, with Latvia showing surprising pluck and discipline, and Germany plummeting into that same slough of despond which brought their Euro 2000 campaign to a premature end, the Group of Death was not going according to popular speculation.

So when Holland went 2-0 up against the Czech Republic after only 19 minutes, the tale of Group D took another twist, and it began to look as though one of the tournament favourites might not progress to the quarter finals. Holland’s constant attacking was fast and highly focused, but the Czechs responded in kind, scoring almost immediately. From that moment, the match never slowed down; the half-time break only seemed like a brief pause for breath amid the barrage of attacks and counter-attacks. By the time the Czechs equalised, the two teams had done more for football PR in 71 minutes than FIFA have done in… well, ever.

From a neutral perspective, that 2-2 scoreline would have been the fairest outcome, but the Czechs had the necessary extra stamina and creativity in reserve. They certainly gained an advantage through Johnny Heitinga’s unjustified sending off (the niggly refereeing was the only poor aspect of the match) but their turnaround, capped by Smicer’s winning goal, seemed inevitable even before that.

As someone said on a web forum just now, how are they going to compile highlights from that? They should release the whole thing on DVD.