On To The Knockout Phase

Multitasking between track & field, the Euros, Copa America, golfing, taking in the Oregon coast and a little bit of work.  Yeah, it's a tough job but someone has to do it.  I did eventually get to see four of the final group stage matches.  

No Premium For Mediocrity

With the expanded format, teams were generally not punished for mediocrity in the Group Stage.  Looking at you Netherlands as the prime example.  They needed a late goal from Wout to edge Poland 2-1, drew 0-0 with France and then surrendered a late goal to lose to Austria 2-3.  But, 3rd in their group with four points was enough to get them to the knockout rounds.  France didn't turn anyone's head with a 1-0 win over Austria, then draws with Netherlands and Poland but they moved on.  

England sleepwalked their way to the knockout rounds with an uninspiring win over Serbia, then draws with Denmark and Slovenia.  Speaking of those two, they both failed to win a group stage match but advanced with three draws.  Belgium looked toothless and likely lead the tournament in goals ruled out by VAR but also made it.

Modric as the Man of Sorrows
Sent along by BFS Art Director Laura O.

Two exceptions to that story line are Croatia and Scotland.  Perennial contenders Croatia put themselves in a hole with an opening 0-3 loss to Spain and made it even deeper when they dropped two points surrendering a late equalizing goal with Albania.  Somewhat incrediby, they were still in position to advance, carrying a 1-0 lead over Italy into stoppage time.  A 90+8 minute goal off a corner gave Italy a 1-1 draw and sent the Croatians packing.  The sad note there is that might have been the major international appearance for Luka Modric.  His goal in the 55th minute, this week's YouTubeableMoment, scored shortly after missing a PK, had given Croatia the lead.

As for Scotland, the opening day loss to Germany was only surprising in its magnitude (5-1).  The 1-1 draw with Switzerland had seemingly set them up for advancement with only Hungary to go.  Alas, they could not muster a goal in that contest and eventually lost 0-1.  Clearly a disappointing effort.

On the positive side, Georgia's 2-0 upset of Portugal was fun to watch, especially since neither Dennis or I are big fans of the Portuguese side.  With the74th ranked team knocking off the 6th rated side, this was the biggest upset in European Championship history.  

Germany and Spain were the only sides that looked close to pre-tournament expectations.  Not that it necessarily means anything for the knockout phase but at least they were businesslike in getting through the group stage.

Can You Get a Red Card In A Debate?

Fortunately, I missed the two ugliest contests of the week - the Presidential debate and Czechia vs Turkiye.  The latter featured 25 fouls, 16 yellow cards and two red cards.  Had those sanctions been available for the debate, we probably would have seen a number of them applied there as well.

Poised For Disappointment

After a solid opener against Bolivia, the USMNT faltered against Panama.  Down a man after Weah got sent off at 18 minutes, they did take the lead but that only lasted for four minutes.  Panama got the game winner in the 88th minute.  Though they sit in 2nd right now, level on points with Panama and a better goal differential, the outlook is not great.  Panama get a weak Bolivian side for their last group stage match while the US must face Uruguay.  Those matches are Monday evening.

You Cannot Lose If You Do Not Play (apologies to Steve Forbert)

Speaking of disappointment, the Union did not do so this week but they also didn't play. They face Montreal on Saturday night on the road. 

Viewing Challenges

As we head to the final two days of the Olympic Trials plus a travel day on Monday, keeping tabs on everything is going to be difficult.  The Euro Championship bracket can be seen here.  Will probably get to see Saturday and Sunday matches either live (they are at 9 and 12 out here) or on DVR.

Busy time to be away.

Scenarios

Quickly adapted to west coast time here in Eugene.  I think it suits my internal clock.

Some of the early heats at the Olympic Trials are "interesting" in that they often have 7-8 athletes and the first six advance to the next round.  Yes, preliminary races that eliminate one or two athletes.  I raise that because the Euro Champs have a similar feel.  With the expanded format there are 24 teams in the group stage and 16 advance to the knockout rounds.  The first two in each group make it plus four out of the six third place sides.  So, 36 matches to eliminate eight teams.

Those four third place spots make the scenario analysis incredibly byzantine.  ESPN offers a comprehensive summary, including all the tiebreaking procedures, here.  We will not offer a thorough review but rather will simply suggest which of the Matchday 3 contests look the most interesting to us, remembering that the final group stage matches within each group are played concurrently.

Group A - Scotland vs Hungary

Either must win to have a chance to advance and even that might not be enough for Hungary.  Germany are already in.

Group B - Croatia vs Italy

Croatia must win to have a chance to advance.  Spain are already in.

Group C - Denmark vs Serbia

Denmark are in with a win but even have a slight chance with a draw, if Slovenia lose to England.

Group D - Netherlands vs Austria

The caped crusader for France
(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Either are in for sure with a win and both likely advance with a draw.  That could lead to a boring match but since Poland are out, their match with France doesn't look all that appealing unless you want to see if Mbappe plays with his tricolor mask to protect the broken nose he suffered in the first game.  He did not appear in their second match and you wonder if they would risk him if advancement looks solid.

Group E - Belgium vs Ukraine on TV while watching Romania vs Slovakia on your computer

All four teams have three points with Romania and Belgium tied with a goal differential of +1, Slovakia in 3rd with 0 and Ukraine at -1.  It is possible both could be blowouts by the higher ranked Belgium and Romania but this group has seen much chaos so hard to say.  We will likely go with Belgium-Ukraine, mostly to see if Lukaku has any more goals ruled out.

Group F - Czechia vs Turkiye

Czechia have to win to advance whereas a draw is probably enough for Turkiye.  Portugal are in.

Offside Again

We've missed enough matches but it seems like the most controversial play so far was the Netherlands potential game winner being ruled out for offside.  You can see the play here.  No doubt Dumfries is in an offside position.  Does he prevent keeper Maignan from making a play on the goal?  Maybe.  Did Maignan have a prayer of getting to the ball? No.  But the Offside Law only references preventing an opponent from playing the ball, not whether he could actually get to it.  Since the on-field call was offside, this really shouldn't have taken long to resolve.  What would have been really interesting is what would have happened if the call on the field had been a good goal.

Ogee Leading Goal Scorer (or How Do You Say F*** in Turkish?)

With six already, Ogee is in the lead for the Golden Boot.  The most egregious of the own goals so far can be seen here.  The Turkish defender sends the ball back to where he thought his keeper was positioned only to realize he wasn't there.  Probably didn't affect the result but it was a howler.

I Don't Know Who U Are Anymore

Two more losses for the Union, which I guess gratefully I did not see.  In Wednesday's 4-3 loss at Cincinnati they got the equalizer at 90+1 minutes only to surrender the game loser at 90+10.  On Saturday at home to Charlotte, they fell 0-2.  Lots of shots on goal although at 1.0, xG suggests maybe they weren't all that dangerous.  The results drop the Union to 11th place, which would not be good enough to make the playoffs, even though the format generously allows nine teams to make it.  Yeah, kind of like preliminary heats where six of the seven finishers advance.

Hopefully set up here to see the third matchday group stage contests, either live or by DVR.

Through Matchday One

Random observations through Match Day 1 of European Championship Group stage:

Good to see Syzygy Szczesny still playing for Poland

Watch the kids who come out with the players for the national anthems.  They are singing with more gusto than the players

In case you didn't see it, check out Christian Eriksen's goal here.  When you think about where he was three years ago, this is amazing.  I wiped away a tear watching it.

This is not your father's Belgian side.  They fell 0-1 to Slovakia in the biggest upset ever in European Championship history.  Hard luck Lukaku had two goals wiped out, correctly, by VAR.  

England and France were underwhelming enough in their 1-0 wins but they got their three points.

More Hardware for Sportif Allentown

Champions again; Dennis is sixth from right in back row

Dennis's over 30 team won their league again.  Dennis appears twice on the stat sheet, once for a goal and once for a yellow card.  You can see the goal here (it should start at about 1:46).  See the throw-in, then the pass back, then a ball into corner, a bouncing cross and that's Dennis outleaping the keeper for the header goal.  Just like I taught him.

Still Messy Without Lionel

Checked in occasionally on my phone to see how the match was progressing.  Great that they finally scored an even strength goal when at 3 minutes, Glesnes sprung Uhre with a great pass and Mikael made a great run and finish.  The lead made it through the half but not far into the second half.  Miami had a player sent off at 69 minutes so I was thinking we'll at least get a draw.  Not.  They gave up a goal in stoppage time for a 1-2 loss.  Only when I watched the highlights did I realize how bad this was.  Miami had another player sent off in the 88th minute so the game loser came with the Union up two men.  

Oh, and Carranza is leaving for Feyenoord in the summer and Wagner was the lastest player to call out management for lack of investing in the team.  Otherwise, things are going great.

Big match for Scotland today versus Switzerland at 3 pm.  Thursday has Denmark-England at 12 and Spain -Italy at 3.  Tough day to be traveling. Friday, another travel day, has France - Netherlands at 3 pm.  Belgium are pretty close to a must win situation against Romania on Saturday at 3.  Olympic Trials start Friday so not sure how much I'll get to see.

Euros!

Hope your DVR machines are clear and ready to record the group stage matches that start today with Germany v Scotland.  Then we have 12 straight days of two to four matches per day, running through Wednesday June 26.  Matches look to be either on Fox or FS1.

Are You Kidding Me?

Lloyd Kelly: The Callum Wilson of Defenders?

Newcastle have made their first summer signing - defender Lloyd Kelly from Bournemouth on a free transfer.  People are talking it up but I'm perplexed.  According to whoscored.com, he's never averaged higher than a 6.83 rating for a season.  But way more distressingly, check out his injury record here; he's missed an average of 16.2 matches a year over the last five seasons.  He has missed time due to ankle, hip, calf, and hamstring injuries plus unidentified muscle and ligament problems.  Coming off a season defined by how many key players were absent due to injury, this seems like an incredibly irresponsible signing.  We are big fans of Callum Wilson but would be even bigger fans if he stayed healthy.  Kelly may be cut from the same cloth.

Speaking of Injuries

BFS Track and Field Correspondent Jack W sends along this report of Usain Bolt rupturing his achilles in a charity soccer event.  He cites this as proof that soccer is more "physically damaging" than track.

Taking Their Ball and Going Home

BFS Artistic Director Laura O sends along this clip from Portsmouth in which the ball going into the net generates a huge cheer, just not for the reason you expect.  They were also less than happy with the ball's eventual fate.

Gimmicky Gimmicks

Mostly by accident, we happened to tune in for the final of The Soccer Tournament, an eight-team women's 7 v 7 tournament.  Details are here.  No doubt there was talent all over the place.  And the money was great - the winning team split 1 million dollars evenly across 25 members.  But the format of the final was the gimmickiest thing you could find - very close to last goal wins.  At the end of regulation they went into "target time."  The "target" was the number of goals the team in the lead had at the end of regulation plus one.  To win the match you had to be the first team to reach the target.  For example, if the score was 4-3 at the end of regulation, the winner was the first team to five.  But wait, did we mention that after three minutes, each team had to take a player off the field?  Then another at six minutes, and again at nine minutes and so on.  Mackenzie could only sputter "that's not soccer."  This is why we can't have nice things.  Sure somebody put the money up but then turned it into some goofy spectacle that only had drama because of the money.  

No Messi No Fuss?

The Union have a tough home match, facing Miami at 7:30 on Saturday night at Subaru Park.  No word on whether fans will get refunds when they find out Messi will not be playing as he is away on international duty.  They're also missing a few other key players while the Union may have Julian Carranza back in the line up.  Seems like our best chance to knock these guys off.  

Yeah, not much this week but we were shortstaffed.  Not sure about the schedule for the next two weeks.  Thursday and Friday involve travel.  My best shot may be to check in after the second round of group stage matches to see what the advancement scenarios look like.  That would put me on target for a post a week from Sunday.  

Get Real

Ho-hum, another Champions League title for Real Madrid.  And what exactly was that mess at Subaru Park?

Real-ly?

Veni, vidi, Vinicius: I came, I saw, I scored

Dortmund pretty much owned the Champions League Final for the first 70 minutes.  The problem was that they failed to put anything into the goal. You kinda knew that Real Madrid would find a way to win it and they did.  Not a bad game, other than the final score, 2-0 favor RM.

This championship has been very much the domain of Real Madrid.  They've won 15 of the 69 competitions (European Cup or Champions League), five of the last nine, and six of the last 11.  The strange part is that how it often looks like they're not going win, either looking like dead meat in the early knockout stages or unimpressive in the final.  This year they relied on two late goals from Newcastle washout Joselu to even make the final.  Oh, and they just added Kilian Mbappe to the roster.

Burnley and Vincent Part Company

After two straight years of double digit in-season sacks, 2023-24 was a quiet one, with only three managerial changes during the season.  Before and after the season?  Well that's a different matter.  One was sacked before the season began.  And there were five more announced after the season ended.  

Here's the table for in-season sacks:

All three sides showed improvement and two of three met their post-sacking goal.  This is much better than the success rates of 50% in 21-22 and 36% in 22-23.  The five gone post-season include Pochettino (Man United?), Klopp (villa in Majorca), Moyes (job at TalkSport), DeZerbi (Chelsea? Man United?) and Kompany (Bayern Munich).  

Laws of the Game Under A Microscope: Part II - Blue Cards

IFAB has approved trials for a "sin bin" concept in which referees could send players off for 10 minutes for cynical fouls or dissent.  The idea is explained here.  This won't be coming to a Premier League near you just yet but it is getting air time at lower levels.  Note this is not replacement for red cards but an additional sanction in the referee's pocket.  

At first I was agin' it but I'm coming around.  Key for me is that it's an addition, not a replacement.  Further, it is focused on my least favorite part of the game - shithousery.  In fact, they could just shorten the whole thing to "he got a blue card for shithousery."  Referees are pretty good about showing yellows for tactical fouls and this ups the ante for committing one.  On the other hand, referees tolerate far too much dissent for my tastes.  If they are not showing yellows now, will they show blue cards, for which the sanction is even greater?

And what of the impact?  To get a sense of what it might to do goal scoring, I looked at every match with a red card this season.   There were 54 occasions when a team was shorthanded due to a red card.  In 29 of those cases, the team with the advantage scored at least once.  However, on three of those, the only goal was the result of the PK associated with the red card, so I don't count that as a goal based on the man advantage.  So we have goals in 26 of 54 shorthanded situations, or 48%.

But, to assess the impact of blue cards though, we must narrow the focus to goals scored within 10 minutes of the sending off.  In 18 of the shorthanded situations, a goal was in fact scored within 10 minutes.  However, seven of those were a PK resulting from the sending off, so we don't count them.  Thus, we have goals within 10 minutes 11 out of 54 times, or 20% of the time.  This is actually higher than I was expecting, and basically the same as the NHL average power play percentage too.  Sure, we're talking about a longer "power play" (10 minutes versus 2) but I would not have guessed it would be that close.

Will teams play differently knowing the man advantage is limited to 10 minutes?  That could apply to both offense and defense.  Many times the shorthanded side will make a substitution to cover the hole left by the sending off.  That might not be a good strategy if the disadvantage is only going to last 10 minutes but it could mean a higher percentage of goals.  Will the offense attack more intensely, again knowing they only have 10 minutes?

I'm trying to think through possible unintended consequences.  Probably missing something.  I'm willing to be persuaded here.

308 Minutes Without An Even Strength Goal

Finally: Union celebrate Uhre's (middle) goal; the 2-1 
lead didn't last though

But who's counting?  Okay, actually I am.  The Union's inability to score without being a man up continues.  The streak includes the final 43 minutes of the NYCFC match, 14 minutes of New England, 90 minutes each for Charlotte and Toronto and another 71 Saturday night versus Montreal (the opening 44 minutes before Lassiter got his red and the final 27 minutes after Elliott got his). 

The Union made things really difficult by allowing Montreal an early goal when three defenders failed to close down attackers.  Since Montreal had clearly come in with their "wasting time" slider pushed all the way to the max, this looked look a real problem.  They then proceeded to give the Union a lifeline when Lassiter was sent off just before the half.  Philadelphia took advantage early in the second half with a PK (Gazdag did not miss) and minutes later a goal from Uhre on a great pass from Sullivan.  Things were looking up, even if it they were goals with the extra man.

But things got strange.  Elliott failed to corral a pass from Semmle and in his attempt to recover the ball, made an ugly challenge on Edwards; two lapses of concentration in not settling the ball and then trying to compensate with a serious foul play.  You can see the play here (I read some complaints about the call; yes he did get the ball first but then plowed into Edwards with a straight leg at speed).  Montreal wasted no time, leveling the match on the ensuing free kick.  Some chances in the closing minutes but the final was 2-2, a result arguably worse than either of the 0-0 draws with Charlotte and Toronto.

For the class 1/2 1/20 full people at least it wasn't a loss and Uhre scored.  Otherwise, this was a car wreck at Subaru Park.  Dropping two points after being up a man to a team below them in the standings at home is no way to make the playoffs.

It's Mackle-henney (mild Wrexham spoiler)

What birthday present can you get for the man who has everything, including a soccer team?  A song to teach people how to say your name!  Ryan Reynolds did just that for his Wrexham co-owner Rob Maclenny Micklehanny Maclanenny McElhenney.  The video is here and aside from being a great tune (written by Justin Paul and Benj Pasek), it's a hoot, littered with cameos by people in Rob's life.  Don't miss the Jason Kelce appearance.   It was actually released last year but just showed up in this year's Welcome to Wrexham.  We get a glimpse of what Rob is going to do for Ryan's birthday but it would be too much of a spoiler to discuss that.

European Championships

So we are off to Eugene for the Olympic Trials in a few weeks.  That can mean only one thing.  It's time for the European Championships!  Okay, in fact it means more than one thing - great track and field action, hanging with Bucknell friends, enjoying the West coast of Oregon, etc.  However, the European Championships is a bonus.

There is plenty of stuff on line to look at.  Rosters are here.  Some predictions here.  Fixtures are here.  Some matches I'm already anticipating include:

Scotland - Hungary

Any Group B but especially Spain - Croatia, Spain-Italy and Croatia - Italy

Denmark - Serbia

Austria - Poland

Ukraine - Romania

Czechia - Turkiye (Czechoslovakia Turkey to those of us born before 1960)

Aside from the teams, I do enjoy seeing various players of interest to me.  This year my FM Forest Green side is represented by Angus Gunn and Scott McKenna for Scotland.  Newcastle have Martin Dubravka (Slovakia), Fabian Schar (Switzerland), Kieran Trippier (England) and Anthony Gordon (England).  The Philadelphia Union have Daniel Gazdag (Hungary).  Dennis gets to see some Aston Villa players, including Youri Tielemans (Belgium), Ezri Konsa (England), Ollie Watkins (England)  and John McGinn (Scotland).

Always a great tournament and will hope to catch as much as I can, even if it means getting up at 6 am in Eugene.

Not sure about a post next week.  If not, don't forget all the Euro stuff plus the Union host Miami on Saturday 6/15.