Day Eight

My good friends Dave and Ann invited me over for today's football. We planned to watch the first game at his house, then stroll down to the Southank club in Southville for the England game.

France 2 Ukraine 0

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening me

Not it seems thunderbolts plural, as I'd imagined for forty years. No, we're talking either one solitary though massively fearsome thunderbolt or the abstract concept of thunder in the form of a bolt. Which is the proto-Germanic word for a strike. All the football news here first.

The thunderbolts were multiple and very physical in Donetsk on Friday. Just as the French were halfway through the Marseillaise the heavens opened, as if in royalist revenge. Circa stadium tonat; around the ground the thunder roars.

It was an impressively orchestrated son et lumiere performance but not really the weather for running round a field, so after three minutes the ref called a halt. By this point about half the electricity in the stadium was coming from the sky. They finally restarted an hour later, for the fans an hour of cowering out of the rain, for the groundstaff an hour of walking round directly under it sticking pitchforks in the pitch. Why they weren't considered at risk from lightning I don't know.

ITV had to fill, and considering their limitations I have to say they rose to the occasion. Adrian Chiles went round the panel asking each of them about their rain holdup experiences, so Gordon Strachan filled us in on the incidence of snow in Aberdeen and Gareth Southgate told us about the Liverpool Villa game that was delayed due to an off-target parachutist. Neither were exactly on topic, but when you consider that ITV presenters never normally have to talk for more than thirty seven seconds before Adrian Chiles is saying see you after the adverts, sorry about the shouty Italian man but that's how they pay my wages, it was a bravura performance. Then they showed us the England France highlights again, made sure we were up to speed on how attractive young French and Ukrainian women look in macintoshes, and before we knew it the game had resumed.

By this time we were stuck into beer and pizza in the casa Hobson, and to be honest the first half rather faded into the background. We decided to watch the second half at the Southbank, and walked down at halftime. We made it before they were due to start again, but by the time we'd got the amiably relaxed man running the place to understand that the rain in Ukraine had fallen mainly on the game and turn over to ITV we'd missed both the goals.

There seems to have been a sense that Menez, scorer of the first goal, should have been sent off in the first half. Maybe so, but the action we saw was mostly dominated by France. As well as scoring the second goal, Cabaye hit the post with the keeper stranded. The highlights package had one decent Ukrainian effort, but Lloris saved well enough from Shevchenko.

It was a shame for the home fans, who must have hoped for a repeat of the Sweden game. They may not have realised Sweden were about to blow another lead somewhere else.

England 3 Sweden 2

By the time England came on we were sat down, the beer was flowing and everything was in place. Andy Carroll opened the scoring towards the bottom of the second pint. And after all our pisstaking it was a move made in Liverpool. Gerrard crossed it to exactly the height of Carroll's head plus his jump, and Carroll got ahead of his marker. As the ball came down he rose to meet it, simultaneously twisting every muscle in his body to squeeze their collective potential energy into his neck.

At precisely the right moment he instantaneously converted all the potential energy to kinetic, and his head flew forward like a piston. Every last drop of ATP in his body fired its inertial load into the ball, which flew into the bottom corner, while Carroll himself dissolved into a puddle of lactic acid with a grin and a ponytail in it.

He headed the ball really hard, is the point. The biochemical metaphor may have come out a little mangled, but however it was achieved it was one of those goals you know you'll see again and again.

The contrast with the winning goal could hardly have been greater. Walcott took the ball down the right, and crossed to Wellbeck. It came behind him, so couldn't be whacked. Not to be denied, Wellbeck dangled a delicate little heel into the path of the ball at the exact angle needed to deflect it round the pursuing defender, under the unsuspecting keeper and into the net. The two goals exemplified the contrasting virtues of the scorers. Strength where it was needed, delicacy where strength would have been unavailing, precision in the highest measure from both.

The middle goal was a conjuring trick. Sweden thought they'd cleared the English corner, and were charging out to close down Walcott just outside the box, but somehow he found the balance between a chip and a drive, getting the ball up and over the defenders with enough speed to be under the bar before the unsighted keeper had grasped what was happening. He was moving to his left, but the swerve deceived him and left him flat on his back, the fall guy to Walcott's tricky rapier thrust. Touche.

It wasn't all good news. We managed some pretty comic defending, after our solid lines in the French game. The first Swedish goal at least had the excuse that we'd cleared our lines, it was just that the ball came straight back in. Glen Johnson, having played Olsson onside, had then got himself in the way, and was unlucky to deflect the ball in twice. If he hadn't been there Olsson would have knocked it in anyway. Mind you he'd have been offside, but then that's the way things go sometimes. At least we'd had some semblance of marking.

For their second goal we abandoned zonal marking and man marking, in favour of the rarely used stand-and-watch system. Maybe they were just overawed by the majestic fullness of Mellberg's fine Scandinavian beard, but they'd let him score twice in ten minutes.

We mustn't overly carp though. They scored, they let two in and could have crumbled, would normally have done so in the past, but instead they kept calm, carried on and scored two more.

So now all our sinews are stiffened, and everyone is imitating the action of a tiger. Roll on the hosts.  We're gonna score one more than you ...

Thanks to Dave and Ann for their excellent hospitality. And thanks to the Southbank for the beer and screen.