morning.
Let’s start with last night’s match between France and Austria. William Saliba started. blues. There was talk in pre-tournament talks that he would be on the bench, so I’d say I’m glad he got the nod. A player of his caliber can only get better by playing at the highest level. It does him no good to sit and watch rather than go out on the field and watch. Didier Deschamps later explained his decision:
“If I decided to use William Saliba, it was because I thought he was more ready for that game than Konate. But I don’t want to lose anyone either. We all need it. They (Saliba and Upamecano) play 120 minutes together for the France national team. It’s not much, but he’s very solid in one-on-one (situations), even if there’s room for improvement. All along, they radiated so much strength and calmness. “We needed that against an opponent like that.”
He played as Arsenal’s left central defender and I thought he played cleanly enough. No French player made more passes, and no French starter had a better accuracy (95%). There were some moments on the defensive side, a missed header in the first half giving Austria a good chance to score, but that developed mainly due to Dayot Upemecano giving the ball up the pitch cheaply and being out of position.
Still, I was very impressed with Austria. They were well organized, worked really hard and made tackles all over the pitch. Just the quality on the final ball was a bit lacking. France’s strikers showed flashes of speed on several occasions, but like their opponents, they lacked the power to consistently threaten the goalkeeper in the final third. The fact that it was an unfortunate, clumsy own goal tells the story.
Kylian Mbappe missed a chance to score in his sleep and his night ended painfully with his nose smashed by Kevin Danso’s gnarled shoulder. It was later determined that the photo was broken, as if it didn’t tell the story. . I think he’ll have to play with a mask on, but we’ll see how ready he is for the next game.
Before that, a sorry-looking Belgium lost 1-0 to Slovakia. We scored an early goal, but the first half was absolutely terrible. Romelu Lukaku was poor, Leandro Trossard was nowhere near his Arsenal form and Kevin de Bruyne looked strained by a hair transplant. As for Arsenal target Amadou Onana, it’s a difficult pass for me.
Still, it was an eventful game. Belgium thought they had equalized, but Lukaku hit the ball in an offside position and the goal was canceled out. If I had left him there, I think he would have gone in and stood there, but it was his striker instinct and all. Lukaku then scored again, but VAR intervened and ruled that Reus Openda’s faint handball during the build-up was intentional. They even used new technology to check if the ball hit the player’s hand.
I think it will be okay. If there is a way to achieve higher accuracy, we live in an era that demands it. But the question is whether it was an intentional handball. I looked at it again and even though the ball hit that person’s hand and not the other way around, the ‘advantage’ is so minimal that it’s not worth considering. I know the handball rule is one that frustrates a lot of people, but I don’t think that should rule out goals.
Belgian coach Dominic Tedesco was more optimistic than many, saying:
We lost and I want to be a good loser, or at least a fair loser. We shouldn’t be talking about VAR. We trust these guys, we trust VAR and the referee. When they say it’s handball, we have to believe it and accept it. That’s it.
I think his biggest concern will be the overall quality of his team’s performance. It wasn’t very good, especially in the first half. The same could be said for Sergei Rebrov in a really entertaining game against Romania, where the Ukrainian team lost 3-0. We’ve seen stories linking us with their goalkeeper Andriy Lunin, and as of yesterday he could be in the same bin as Onana.
To be fair, his mistakes in the first half were punished mercilessly, and Nicolae Stanciu’s finish was excellent. This has been the goal of the tournament so far for me. This was further enhanced by slow motion replays showing the ball nicking the underside of the crossbar. This improves all goals by 14.32%, which is scientific fact. Lunin was also poor in Romania’s second game, basically skipping shots from distance, and I don’t think Oleksandr Zinchenko will want to see too much of the third game.
All things considered, it was a completely deserved win for Romania, and meanwhile, watching Mykhaylo Mudryk drop 2/10 and show off his first touch like a mule in concrete boots, I wondered what on earth Mikel had . Arteta and Edu had him chasing the guy all the way through (more than really fast).
Today we have Turkey v Georgia in the early evening, followed by Portugal v Czech Republic, neither of which Arsenal show any real interest in. Except there is some vague and bogus transfer interest in some of the players featured on the show. For more on the euro, check out this morning’s roundup of podcasts on Patreon. Below you’ll also find a new Arsecast Extra recorded just before last night’s match between France and Austria. enjoy!
