Northern Ireland fans enjoyed their first finals in 34 years
Photo: Asif Burhan
Normally at the start of a season, Prost writers produce a series called 3 Hopes and One Fear which looks forward to a team’s season. We set out to do a three best and three worst listicle about EURO2016 but decided to retain the 3 Up & One Down format instead.
After all, why give Russian and English hooligans any more publicity than they’ve already had?
3 best and one worst thing at EURO2016
by Steve Clare
1. The Outsiders; Albania, Iceland, Northern Ireland and Wales
This was a competition where the small nations flourished.
Arrogant pundits, by which we mostly mean England supporting English pundits, repeatedly pointed out that these ‘little peoples’ were only in France by dint of UEFA extending the number of qualifiers from 16 to 24. Yet, these four small nations gave us some of the most memorable moments of 2016.
Let’s start with Albania, the tiny country forgotten by both Warsaw Pact and the EU, once an isolated impoverished nail file on the European map, now just an impoverished one.
Although they held out very well against hosts France until a late collapse. Their finest moment came when they beat Romania.
When Armando Sadiku finished off a cross in by Ledian Memushaj in Lyon, it gave Europe’s perennial punchline nation a famous and unheralded win. Eventually results over which they had no control exiled them from the knockout rounds, but not before residents of the poorest countries in Europe has had a brief moment of joy in the French sunlight.
Armando Sadiku scored the Albanian winner against Romania
Photo: Commons wikipedia
Moving on, we come to Northern Ireland.
They brought a large traveling contingent who must have been dismayed at their team’s opening performance against Poland. The green shirts barely came out the traps and allowed a middling Polish team to dominate both possession and territory. The occasion had been too much for their ragbag of Championship and Scottish Premier players, a fact confirmed to the Belfast Telegraph by Steven Davis.
Poland obtaining a draw against Germany probably made the result seem better at a later date, but the performance was poor and the players seemed struck by the gravity of the occasion.
However, as is befitting for a nation that has overcome terrible tragedies, they picked themselves off the mat and came back with a whirlwind for their second match. Ukraine were their unfortunate opponents.
Second half goals from Gareth McCauley and Niall McGinn resulted in a glorious night for the Ulstermen. Despite losing narrowly to Germany, they secured a most unlikely passage to the knockout stages as one of the better 3rd place sides where only an own goal saw Wales defeat them.
Their fans were also responsible for one of the more bizarre trends in France. The song “Will Griggs on Fire” became a worldwide thing although the Wigan Athletic striker never played a single minute at the EURO2016.
Iceland joined Albania and Northern Ireland as the least likely qualifiers and the romantics’ favorites.
Iceland went into the competition as the outsiders’ pets and did everything possible to enhance that with their beautiful attitude to the game.
The Viking Clap thing is already bound to be a feature around every ground in Europe, and indeed the French team did it after their victory over Germany.
France do the Icelandic clap with their supporters
The will be remembered for their never-say-die attitude, for making the most out of the limited number of players available and most of all for eliminating the English, it seemed on behalf of Europe, coming as it did within days of the vote to leave the European Union.
Suddenly everyone who had not been talking about Iceland after they held Portugal, was talking about the moment they put the English in their place. Videos of fans celebrating in day light at 2am in the morning lit up ESPN’s coverage.
Those of us who were planning a trip to Iceland in September now sadly will have to abandon that plan, because of all the people who booked holidays in the wake of the Icelandic team and people being a fantastic advertisement for the place. There’s always Albania I suppose.
The BBC cannot hide the horror that Wales finished above England
For all the heroics of the Viking Saga, it was Wales who made the most history by reaching the semi finals.
They played poorly in two games, ironically against teams they know so well England and Northern Ireland, and shone against Slovakia, Russia and Belgium before reaching the semi final against Portugal.
Then they chose to freeze again.
Nonetheless, their 3-1 defeat of the much fancied Belgians will go down as probably the best game of the tournament and inspirational individual performances by the likes of Ben Davies and Joe Allen have made them global names.
Aaron Ramsey’s career is back on track and that league table showing them finishing above England will be printed out and posted to many a wall from Anglesey to Aberavon.
Oh – and Hal Robson-Knu doing the Welsh equivalent of the Cruyff turn. How much did that put on his value?
2. Referees
The referees were good. They got many of the most difficult calls right. Even in the semi finals, the influence of strong refereeing helped the game.
The penalty call on Bastian Schweistieger against France for handball was a tough call even if it meant awarding a spot kick to the home team. But replays showed that Italian referee Nicola Rizzoli had observed the situation accurately and made the brave and correct call. The 45 year old architect also kept up superbly well with the pace of the game.
In the other semi final, experienced cheat Cristiano Ronaldo tested the mettle of Swedish multi-millionaire Jonas Eriksson who referees for the love of the game and certainly not for the money.
Ronaldo “lost his footing” twice early on, the second time crying for a penalty. Eriksson made it very clear early on that the crafty Portuguese was not to waste further time on such antics.
Sadly English referee Mark Clattenburg dropped a hilarious clanger in the final to ruin it for the whistlers.
He gave Portugal late free kick for handball on France’s Laurent Koscielny and promptly booked him too. The hand involved however was that of Portugal’s Eder.
Koscielny is very white whereas Eder is decidedly very black. Luckily for Clattenburg, Raphael Guerrero’s free kick hit the bar or Clattenburg’s racially tinged error would have decided the final. They say justice should be color blind but Mark Clattenburg took that too literally. That aside, the referees did a marvelous job.
Hopefully the Eurosnobs will stop telling us how much worse MLS referees are than English ones.
3. The Good Fans
The early scare around the Russia v England match proved not to be a harbinger of mass chaos to come. True, there was a well plotted and ugly demonstration by Croatian dissidents objecting to the men who run Croatian soccer.
However the early fears of English and Russian thugs running amok throughout France proved to be hyperbole and the French Police, already stretched on the lookout for terrorists, coped admirably wisely ignoring the English tabloid bleating about heavy handed policing.
This success story allows us to focus on the good fans.
The fans from the Irish Republic provided some typical good humored comical moments, whether it was serenading a baby to sleep or changing an old couple’s flat tyre.
Most memorable perhaps was their chant at Swedish supporters with whom they were drinking, as they sang “Go home to your sexy wives”, bringing to song one of Europe’s favorite stereotype about the Swedes, although it is harder to see the Irishwomen left at home enjoying the joke as much.
Their northern neighbors did not let the island down.
After a mixed reputation during the period of violence known as the Troubles, the fans of Northern Ireland have become some of the most pleasant in the business. Gone are the sectarian ditties of the 1970s, and the Green and White Army with their Football for All credo has become an entity whose presence on the world stage has become welcome. (You can still get your fill of 17th century sectarian bigotry at a Rangers game if that’s your thing.)
Despite the proliferation of Union Flags, the Green and White Army have decided to model themselves on the good-natured behavior of both their southern neighbors and of Scotland’s Tartan Army, rather than the swaggering jingoism of the English. They supported their team with an incredible passion and with incredible volume, and when they lost to Wales, they did so with dignity. They were a great credit to their nation on their first appearance in a generation and their joy at the win over Ukraine was one of the most romantic and eye watering sights of the tournament, perhaps only matched by Albania’s.
Their “We’re not Brazil, We’re Northern Ireland” chant is that rarity, a song that exhibits humility rather than an arrogant belief in their own greatness.
However, it was the “Will Grigg’s on Fire” chant that really defined their tournament, even though the Wigan man never got off the bench. It even inspired a reporter to ask Germany’s Matt Hummels if he was actually terrified, in the run up to the Germany game. Hummels’ response was incredibly class incidentally.
Is Mats Hummels terrified?
Many other fans lit up the tournament although Swedish people behaving with calm civilised dignity is hardly news. Despite being in a group with England and Russia, the Slovaks and Welsh managed to avoid provocations, with the Welsh hymn singing lighting up the tournament musically.
The singing of the Welsh will long be remembered as will their grace in defeat. The Albanians had the time of their lives with a rare appearance on the world stage, and once again the nation of Belgium came together overcoming the linguistic differences that bedevil the country’s daily affairs; tous ensemble, as they say in the linked video.
In Belgium, that phrase carries a lot more meaning than it would in an undivided nation.
Northern Irish fans singing Will Grigg’s on Fire in Paris
It was a good tournament for fans and there was more bad than good. But since our readers are mostly negative cynics, let’s look at the worst thing of the tournament.
1. Yellow Shirts and Former Communists
Some of the biggest failures in EURO 2016 were from Eastern Europe but the success of Poland, Croatia and Slovakia mitigated that a little statically.
Dividing the continent up between East and West and using the Iron Curtain as a divider, the former Communist nations and Turkey had an atrocious record.
10 sides from the Eastern half of the continent qualified and they came out of the group stages with a record of P 30, W8, D8, L14.
That doesn’t even begin to tell the story of how dominant the West was.
Five of those eight wins came when two teams from the East were in direct opposition; in games where Albania beat Romania, Poland beat Ukraine, Turkey beat Czech Republic, Croatia beat Turkey and Slovakia beat Russia.
Only on three occasions did an Eastern team beat a Western Rival in the group stages, Poland beating Northern Ireland, Croatia memorably beating Spain and Hungary overcoming Austria.
Four of the 10 still qualified, of which three went out immediately in the next round without scoring a goal and conceding eight.
Only Poland made it to the quarters beating Switzerland in a shoot out in a last eight heavily dominated by the continent’s most geographically westerly fringes, like Wales, Portugal and Iceland.
But let’s not just stick it to the former communists. There was another sub group who failed even more miserably; the Yellows
If we wanted to pick on another subgroup, we could pick on those yellow shirts and draw a circle round Sweden, Ukraine and Romania. Two draws and seven defeats in nine matches with just three goals scored and 12 conceded was the sum total of the Canaries’ efforts.
Spain’s ‘triangles of vomit’ second kit
It gets worse. Of those three goals, one was an own goal scored by Ireland’s Ciaran Clark, and the other two were both penalties by Romania’s Bogdan Stancu.
Not one goal from open play in nine hours of football. With that, we said goodbye to the international career of Zlatan Ibrahimovic who retired from Sweden upon their exit.
If you’re a former Red or a current Yellow, this was not a tournament to remember.
Of the smaller irritants, that we chose not to highlight, here are some things that appeared at EURO 2016 that we hope to kiss goodbye to:
Spain’s triangles of vomit away kit; manbuns; Italians being flash at penalties organised Russian hooligans, English journalists pretending England still matter to anyone but themselves, flares and fans on the pitch
– and most of all, a team whose sole ambition was not to be eliminated actually emerging with the trophy.
EURO2016
