Halford & Brough in the Morning - England Is Going Back To The Euro Finals
Episode Date: July 11, 2024In hour one, Mike & guest host Josh Elliott-Wolfe look back at the previous day in sports (3:00), they chat with The Athletic FC's Iain Macintosh live from London, as England gets set to take on Spain... in their second straight Euro Cup final (27:00), plus the boys discuss some more Canucks hypotheticals (45:00). This podcast is produced by Andy Cole and Greg Balloch. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.
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It was unbelievably hot yesterday.
I saw a dog chasing a cat yesterday, and they were both walking.
It was really hot.
I mean, we all wanted to be loved, right?
Good morning, Vancouver.
6-0-1 on a Thursday.
Happy Thursday, everybody.
It is Halford.
It is Brough.
It is Sportsnet 650.
We are coming to you live from the Kintec Studios
in beautiful Fairview Slopes in Vancouver.
It's not quite Halford and Brough.
It's Halford and Elliot Wolfe.
Josh Elliot Wolfe is here.
Good morning, Josh.
Good morning.
Adog, good morning to you.
Good morning.
Laddie, good morning to you as well.
Hello, hello.
Halford and Brough of the Morning is brought to you by Vancouver Honda.
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What are you waiting for? Kintec, that's what
you're waiting for. Okay, to the guest list we go.
It begins today at 6.30.
Ian McIntosh from the Athletic FC.
Their football vertical at the Athletic.
I thought you were going somewhere else with that.
Ian McIntosh.
Nope.
McIntosh.
It's been confusing me for the last 24-ish hours.
Totally different iMac.
This is another iMac.
This is the British iMac.
Yeah, that's right.
Ian spelled the same way.
Spells the same way.
Yeah, it is.
Good insight, everybody.
Should we just call him IMAC?
We got to the bottom of this.
We did our research yesterday when we found out who were out on the show.
We're going to ask Ian McIntosh from The Athletic about Jake DeBrusque's new number 74 with the Vancouver Canucks.
Imagine if he's like incredibly knowledgeable about hockey.
Which is his old number 74.
No, we're going to talk to him about the Euro final now booked.
It is England.
It is Spain on Sunday after another dramatic late victory for the English yesterday.
Ian McIntosh at 630.
7 o'clock, Adnan Virk is going to join the program from MLB Network.
730, Michael Grange is going to join us.
I believe he's live on location down in Vegas for Canada and the U.S. last night in an international basketball exhibition,
a star-studded affair in Vegas at T-Mobile.
We'll talk to Michael Grange about that
and preview Canada's Olympic men's basketball team.
8 o'clock, this is the big one.
Peter Drury is going to join the program.
He, of course, one of the most iconic play-by-play voices in the world.
Global football presence.
He calls games for Sky Sports. He calls games for Sky Sports.
He calls games for NBC Sports.
He's also, for many of you,
the definitive voice of the 2024 European Championships.
He was on the call yesterday for England-Netherland.
So we'll talk to Peter Drury from Berlin.
Right, Andy?
He's joining us live from Berlin.
Yeah, Dortmund or something.
It's Berlin.
Oh, it's Berlin.
Yeah.
Somewhere in Germany. Cool. Very good. So that'll be Berlin. Oh, it's Berlin. Yeah. Somewhere in Germany.
Cool.
Very good.
So that'll be good.
Duncard.
I don't think it's Duncard.
Yeah, Duncard.
Peter Drury at 8.
Michael Grange at 7.30.
Adnan Virk at 7.00.
Ian McIntosh at 6.30.
That's what's happening on the program today.
Laddie, let's tell everybody what happened.
Hey, did you guys see the game last night?
No.
What happened?
I missed all the action because I was...
We know how busy your life can be.
What happened?
You missed that?
You missed that?
What happened?
What Happened is brought to you by the BC Construction Safety Alliance.
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Visit them online at bccsa.ca josh how
much are you loving this hot footy summer oh well i'm a big football guy yeah so it's been great
before we get into the england game in all honesty like you probably did you play growing up at all
nope did you follow it at all sometimes yeah right so that's a no. Are you surprised at the vigor in which we have,
and this collectively as a station,
because it's hard even getting guests because all the other shows are
aggressively chasing.
Can I just say thank God for soccer?
I mean.
That's the first time anyone's ever uttered that on the air.
It warms my heart.
I'm proud of us.
What are we talking about right now if it wasn't for Copa and Euro?
Blue Jays baseball.
So part of it obviously is that the European Championships are on, but also
the rise of Canadian soccer
is forced, and I use the word
forced a lot of people to pay attention
because Canada is now a major
player, including going to the semifinals
of the Copa America. But I'm curious, because I always
love asking sort of like a neutral's
perspective on this, because
one, the sport can be incredibly difficult
to watch aesthetically
oftentimes there are goalless ties which everybody loves and then secondly there's the sense of you
got to get caught up right like you're pretty well versed in sports you're like i'm good on
my sports knowledge it's what i do for a living professionally yet there's one that i know a lot
about yeah so with soccer it's it's i do think it's think the main catalyst has been Canada men playing better and being in these major tournaments.
But even the Euro, I'm fully tuned into the Euro and I've been following it the whole tournament.
So it's definitely, I think, for casual fans that I would put myself into, it's taking people by storm a little bit. And the further Canada goes,
I think the further people get invested
into other teams and other tournaments as well.
I will say this.
The ability to watch and the widespread coverage
is like when I was growing up,
as we go way back in the day,
there was an hour-long program early on Saturday mornings on TSN,
Soccer Saturday, hosted by Graham Leggett,
that was like an hour long,
and it would run through all of the English Premier League highlights
from the week, and then you'd throw in some Scottish Premier League,
and that was your soccer coverage.
There was nothing televised.
You'd get the odd Canadian Soccer League game with the 86ers,
and now we live in a world where two major tournaments,
every single match is broadcast.
And in the case of the Canada games at the Copa,
we're talking like an hour pregame show and an hour postgame show,
dedicated.
And that's how you get the casual viewer in.
If someone was sitting around on Friday night and just wanted to watch some
sports, that was front and center. Canada-Vuela the on last friday was front and center primetime
viewing it's held in north america so it's a really interesting dynamic that's at play
because more casual people are just seeing it readily available for the first time ever on
sorry go ahead sorry and i i think that's kind of been my hold up with soccer in general
is how difficult it's been to watch.
You used to have to go seek it out.
I know.
And now it's easy.
Now it's right there.
Except for like EPL.
Yeah, right.
But that's fine.
So yesterday's match, Olly Watkins, another dramatic goal for England.
This time, Olly Watkins, the hero.
This time in the first minute of stoppage time,
England 2-1 victors over the Netherlands on Wednesday.
With that, England books a place in Sunday's Euro 2024 final.
They also advance to their second consecutive European final
and the opportunity to win a major title for the first time since the 1966 World Cup.
When people compare England to the Toronto Maple Leafs and their supporters to Leafs
fans, part of the reason is that the Leafs have not won anything of significance since
67 and England since 66.
It's been an awfully long time.
Really?
That long?
Yes.
Wow.
Yes.
It's been a long time.
They should try to win more.
They should try and win more.
I thought they were supposed to be good at soccer.
You'd think with the amount of time and effort dedicated to it,
the amount of coverage, the amount of pundits.
So what's the deal? They just choke a lot?
They do choke a lot.
Okay.
They get to major tournaments and they fall flat,
although that narrative has reversed course under Gareth Southgate,
the new manager, who has come under incredible scrutiny this tournament.
And we'll get into this more with Peter Drury and Ian McIntosh
at 8 o'clock and 6.30.
But I want to get this interview out there.
So following the win over the Netherlands,
Gareth Southgate, who has been heavily, heavily criticized this tournament.
A very weird juxtaposition where his team keeps winning and advancing,
yet the calls for his head were loud throughout.
They're starting to get a little bit
less now because you know they're in the final but Southgate had a very emotional presser talking
about the gift that he gave to these English fans yesterday by getting his team to the Euro final
the same fan base that has been you know cleavers out knives out for Southgate for large chunks of
this tournament Southgate says at the end of the day, we all just want to be loved.
Here's what the England manager had to say following
a 2-1 win over the Netherlands
on Wednesday, booking a place in Sunday's
Euro 2024 final.
Yeah, I mean,
we all want to be loved, right?
So,
when you're doing something
for your country
and you're a proud Englishman,
when you don't feel that back and when all you read is criticism, it's hard.
So, yeah, to be able to celebrate a second final is very, very special.
And, you know, especially with fans that travel, you know, our travelling support is amazing,
the amount of money they spend to travel,
the commitment to do that,
to be able to give them nights like this
and I think we have given them a few
over the last six years from Russia onwards.
It means a lot.
If I hadn't been on the grass,
I'd have been watching, celebrating like they were.
So we're kindred spirits in many ways.
But of course, I'm the one that has to pick a team.
And yeah, so to be able to give them a night like tonight,
very, very special.
He's a far more gracious man than I would have been.
I would have been like,
to all of you that are cheering me on,
remember when you hated me?
I hate you all.
Goodbye.
And then I would have walked off
and the press conference would have been over.
And that's why you don't manage England.
That's why I don't manage England.
One of the main reasons.
One of the main reasons.
Again, we'll talk to Peter Drury and Ian McIntosh more about that narrative
and then everything going in to Sunday's final,
including the fact that Spain have been the best team in this tournament
by a large margin, and England's going to have its work cut out for it on Sunday.
Let's go down to Vegas here.
From a Canadian perspective, we've all been very excited
about the Canadian men's national soccer team. But the Canadian men's national basketball team got its pre-Olympic games underway yesterday by taking on a star-studded American team down in Vegas in an international friendly,
as evident by the fact that Canada played every single guy on the roster and significant minutes.
86 to 72, the Canadians lose to the U.S.
A lot of people in attendance, including Barack Obama,
who was in the house yesterday for that one.
Star-studded affair, as I mentioned.
Josh watched it.
What was your big takeaway from yesterday's game?
The U.S. is scary was kind of the first one.
And also, in terms of takeaways from what Canada can do
in this tournament, in the Olympics, moving forward is there wasn't really a big takeaway.
Because it was a friendly.
But I saw the minutes distribution from Canada.
Yeah.
And like I mentioned earlier, like, I don't think anyone played more than 17.
And I don't think anyone played less than seven.
It was very elementary school basketball where like, well, you joined the team,
you get to play.
Yeah, you got to play some minutes.
Everyone played yesterday.
And Jordy Fernandez said
he wants the team to be physical
and that he wasn't going to run players
into the ground in the game.
So it was expected.
None of the starters played
in the fourth quarter as well.
The difficulties, I think,
and the one thing maybe you can take away from last night
that started to be evident,
especially when Bam Andabayo and Anthony Davis
are on the other team,
is Canada does not have a lot of size.
And especially when Zach Eadie
also isn't playing for the team,
they lack some height.
Some of the people into the Dunbar-Lumber text message in basket,
the hoopie heads that listen to the Halford and Brough show,
have made mention on a number of occasions that the one Achilles heel for Canada
might end up being their bigs or their lack thereof.
Because they started Powell yesterday.
They put Olenek on the bench.
And those are the two guys.
That's it.
That's it.
And again, you mentioned the guys that the U.S. can roll out.
And not even just the bigs for the U.S.
Every time I'd flip over the game,
there would be moments where I'd look at who was on the floor for the Americans.
And it is kind of overwhelming.
It's scary.
Yeah.
At one point, I flipped over and they had a four-man unit.
I can't remember who was playing in the post,
but the four guys on the perimeter were LeBron, Steph Curry,
Devin Booker, and Ant Edwards.
That is four bonafide first-team, all-NBA, all-star type guys.
All they really need to do is to figure out the chemistry part of it.
Yeah, and maybe they won't, but it won't matter because they're all five amazing players.
But the thing that I always think of with with canada
basketball is like there's some similarities i guess between them and canada soccer where it's
like man you've been so underwhelming for so long and now you you kind of have this moment where
there are now expectations on you and we'll see see how they do. I mean, they have the second best odds.
So theoretically, they should be competing for a medal.
By the way, they haven't won a medal at the Olympics since 1936.
That's right.
I mean, they haven't been at the Olympics in over 20 years.
It's been a minute.
Yeah.
And they're in the group of death.
Yeah.
So they've got Spain, Australia, Greece, and Canada, of course.
So Spain's ranked second in the world.
The FIBA rankings are a little skewed, though.
Australia's fifth.
The Australians are going to be a very difficult team, by the way.
They've got a lot of NBA talent as well.
And then Greece, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of them
because they've obviously got Giannis Antetokounmpo,
but he's the only NBA representative.
I know his brother has played in the NBA.
He's been there watching,
clapping, occasionally taking
off his tearaways. He wants to trade, though.
Yeah, right. He wants to
bloom somewhere else. So
I'll be very curious to see how that plays
out when the teams get to Paris
for the Olympics at the end of the month. We did have some
NHL news yesterday, everybody.
Yeah, we had some NHL news. Two stories of
note that I want to pass along.
Didn't need the rap horns, but that's fine.
Big news!
Is Ryan Suter signing with the St. Louis Blues
big news? Yeah, because another central team has
agreed to pay him money. It is to
one listener in particular that keeps
trying to get me to book a blues guy to specifically
talk about this. The Ratic Foxa trade?
Yeah, I'm really, really stoked about this.
So,
this is more of a
comical note than an actual
news story. Ryan
Suter now... Living the dream.
He loves the Central Division.
Josh and I were talking about this
earlier, and Josh pointed out, Ryan Suter hates
coasts, east and or west.
He's afraid of water. Not a big water guy.
Just wants to stay landlocked. Imagine if that
was the reason why he has a big fear of water.
He played in Minnesota, some land of lakes, I guess.
But coasts. Ocean specific.
Saltwater, he is not a fan of.
That's the headline here. Ryan Suter
hates saltwater. Yeah, he doesn't like sharks.
There's no sharks in Minnesota.
He's played for now four,
there's eight teams in the NHL Central
Division, and he's played for four of them. Nashville, Minnesota in the, in the NHL central division. And he's played for four of them,
Nashville,
Minnesota,
Dallas,
and now the St.
Louis blues.
What's more,
he's going to be paid by three of them at the same time.
His buyout from the Minnesota wild is still going on.
His buyout from the Dallas stars is still going on.
And now he's going to be,
get a base salary of $775,000 with the St. Louis Blues,
but could get up to $2.25 million
with performance bonuses.
Is 39-year-old Ryan Suter
living the dream right now?
Yes.
That is wildly impressive.
It's the OEL move.
But OEL kind of wasn't in control.
Yeah.
But it's... I wasn't in control. But
it's...
I don't even know. Is he going to make
an impact in St. Louis? No. He's just going to
get paid. He can go. He can hang out. He can
stay in shape. He's 39 years old. He gets some good
exercise. And then he gets paid.
Even if it doesn't work out, he can sit
there and collect his royalty checks from the wild
and from the stars. There was another
bit of news from the National Hockey League yesterday as well.
The Alex Morello era is officially over.
What an era it was.
Good work by PHNX Sports' Craig Morgan,
who reached out to NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daley yesterday
and said, hey, can I get an update on what's going on with Morello
and the inactive NHL franchise.
It is the Arizona coyotes.
And then,
uh,
daily confirmed that after that latest land bid auction went kaput and
Morello had no new place to build a friend,
uh,
build a,
uh,
an arena,
he relinquished his rights to the Arizona coyotes franchise.
Um,
he made the decision for stop looking for another arena, apparently,
shortly after the bid fell through.
He didn't even try and pick up the pieces and go find another one.
Shocking.
Yeah.
And so as for the future of hockey in Arizona,
Bettman said at the NHL Board of Governors meetings that it's not something that the league has on the front burner
or that it's focused on.
So if they do ever
end up going back to Arizona, one,
it's not going to be with Alex Morello involved
in any capacity. And two,
it might not be for an awfully long
time. So the Arizona
Coyotes doggone acid logo might
just be sitting in cobwebs for a while.
Nuts. And it
didn't even move to Utah with them,
all the franchise rights.
Would you not want to wash that stink off your franchise?
Right, I do wonder if the new owner, Ryan Smith,
kind of had that as part of it.
When Gary Bettman proposed this entire thing,
which was, we're going to do this very unique step
of making a franchise inactive,
meaning that they still exist.
They're just currently on pause.
Like we hit the pause button on the VCR.
Oh, also you can take all of their players.
You can take their players and you can take some stuff.
But if you don't want to take some stuff, Ryan Smith,
what do you think about that?
And he'd be like, well, great.
You're right because it is the stink of the organization.
Yeah.
It was definitely if you're taking an organization, you don't want to take the history of the Arizona Coyotes.
And I guess that's fair.
But it is just it's weird, I guess, more than anything.
I don't know.
I kind of just always thought the Arizona thing would just work out eventually.
Well, it might still.
They will.
I would not be surprised if they will go back,
but we're talking decades down the road.
Yeah.
And I think that it's a market that almost needed the reset
to alleviate itself of Morello first and foremost.
And then I think a lot of people are going to want to just rid themselves
of the Coyotes' existence entirely and say,
there's hockey fans in Arizona.
They would like a team to come back,
but not that team
because the stain of Glendale and Moyes
and everything else that they had to deal with
over the course of three decades there.
It just was more bad times than good.
And then I think that there was a love for the sport
in certain pockets,
but maybe, and this works on two levels the franchise and i think there was some angst with the nhl as well as to how the whole thing was handled and i do think that
yeah just having a break from it and and taking your time if you're going to go back and making
sure everything is perfectly set up to have potential success when they or if they eventually
go back is is crucial because it kind of feels like everything for the last two decades almost
has kind of been like i guess this is gonna happen next and then it's not really gonna work out and
then we'll try to do something else and oh man that didn't work either for 20 years um so we'll
move we'll finish here with the blue jays josh is wearing his Blue Jays hat today and Laddie is
also wearing his Blue Jays
hat but he's got a cool backwards hat.
I have my headset on. I don't want it to
I can't do a backwards hat. I look
like a dweeb. I always clank it off
the microphone. Just do it for a second.
Just turn your hat back right now. Okay. Let me see.
This is good live radio here folks.
Oh he looks instantly cooler.
Yeah. Yeah look at that.
We rastified him by 10%.
There's nowhere.
It's not so bad.
Watch.sportsnet.ca.
Hey, look.
He looks like Fred Durst.
He looks so rad.
Yeah, you're right.
Man.
Just wants to break something.
Speaking of the Blue Jays, Ernie Clement, as heard in our intro,
hit a three-run homer for the second straight night.
Ernie Clement's on fire right now.
Jays get back on track.
I'm using air quotes.
You can't see that because I'm on the radio.
But the Jays get back on track after a walk-off wild pitch loss
in the opener to the Giants.
They win 10-6.
Real quick, Laddie, Josh, Laddie, start.
Thoughts on the game last night?
You were very excited when you came in this morning.
I didn't get to see a lot of it.
I got to see the end.
See how excited you are?
We're on the West Coast, though, so
I can do stuff, come home, and the Jays
are still playing, which is pretty exciting.
It was nice to see the offense
rolling. When the Jays have a six-run inning,
that's like a 12-run inning for most normal
MLB teams. I like how you described it as a normal,
as if they are a not
normal. They are a not normal team. I think
Josh will agree with me on that one. But yesterday
they looked kind of normal.
The thing is, they scored
10 runs. They win, but also
everyone got injured in every
part of the organization. So
Bo Bichette left with a calf injury.
Dalton Varshow left
with a knee injury. I do
like that. That wasn't it.
Oh, I missed another one? There was also
Jimmy Garcia, supposed to pitch in AAA.
He had a stiff neck, so he did not do that.
Top prospect Ricky Tiedemann, he started,
left to start with forearm tightness in his start.
And third base coach, Carlos Feebles, also left the game.
He had a stiff knee.
Not Feebles.
He felt a pop in his knee.
Yeah, felt a pop in his knee.
So even the coaches weren't.
Not a banner day health-wise for the Jays yesterday.
But they did beat the Giants 10-6.
But they beat the Giants.
Okay.
After that horrible game one in that series, it was.
The walk-off wild pitch and Dan Shulman's dejected call.
There were two real big highlights for me.
You don't see a lot of walk-off wild pitches.
No.
It was a good one.
And just the lead-up to the walk-off wild.
The walk-off wild pitch was bad enough.
Yeah.
Blowing a two-run lead in the ninth inning, that was bad, too.
That's also bad.
Okay, so coming up on the show, Ian McIntosh from the Athletic FC.
That's the shorthand for the Athletics Football Vertical.
He's going to join us to talk about the Euro 2024 final between England and Spain,
what happened yesterday.
England's dramatic, another dramatic victory late in match for the English as they advanced to
play Spain.
So we'll talk to Ian about that.
Seven o'clock,
Adnan Virk,
730 Michael Grange,
eight o'clock.
Very excited to talk to Peter Drury,
who I would consider the voice of the Euros right now.
I know that they have multiple play-by-play people working,
but there's something special about Peter Drury's voice as he narrates
everything, including Sunday's final between England Peter Drury's voice as he narrates everything, including
Sunday's final between England and Spain. That's
all coming up. You're listening to the Halford & Brough
Show on Sportsnet 650. Listen 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays and on demand through your favorite podcast app. 6.30 on a Thursday.
Happy Thursday, everybody.
Halford Brough.
But no Brough.
Josh Elliott-Wolf in the chair today.
Sportsnet 650.
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We are in hour one of the program.
We are efforting Ian McIntosh from The Athletic to talk about the European Championships.
England-Spain Sunday.
England advancing in a dramatic fashion yet again yesterday.
2-1 victory over the Netherlands.
Late Ollie Watkins winner to get that one.
Do we have Ian on the line yet?
We're still working on that one.
Ian will be joining us shortly, hopefully.
When he does, he will be the highlight of Hour 1.
Hour 1 of this show is brought to you by North Star Metal Recycling.
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While we're waiting for Ian, oh, he's got him on the line now.
So we'll recap very quickly what happened yesterday.
England advances.
Day prior, Spain advances.
Spain has been the best team in this tournament.
It pretty much goes without saying.
It is going.
So they've won all their matches, and they've scored 13 times.
One more goal, and they will set the European Championship record set by France in 1984.
Spain has been a buzzsaw.
They have done it with flair right from the start of the tournament,
highlighted by a pair of youngsters and 16-year-old.
16 years old, Josh.
I thought you were young.
Yeah, he's younger.
He's 10 years younger than you.
And more talented.
Probably makes more money than me.
Lamin Yamal at 16 and Nico Williams at 21.
It's going to be a tall order for England on Sunday.
Joining us now to break that final down further,
Ian McIntosh joins from The Athletic here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650.
Good morning, Ian. How are you?
Good morning, gentlemen.
I am very good indeed after what happened last night.
How are you? We're good. I can very good indeed after what happened last night. How are you?
We're good. I can sense the mood in your voice. So it might be an obvious question, but how are you and the rest of the nation feeling following another thrilling, late, late, dramatic victory for England as they beat the Netherlands 2-1 in advance to the final against Spain?
I think as a nation, no one's entirely sure how this has happened, but we're
not going to question it too much. You know, we've had our fair share of bad luck through
tournaments over the years, and it just seems like we're being recompensed all at once for
everything. And I'm fine with that. I don't have a problem. I'd imagine the Dutch will feel a little
less enthusiastic about this, given the nature of the critical penalty, but we'll find a way to move on together, I guess.
Can you explain to our listenership
how truly unprecedented this is for an English squad
that finds joy in crucial moments,
is able to stage late comebacks
as opposed to falling victim to them,
and not just winning on penalties,
but winning with some of the most clinical penalties
that I've seen in an awfully long time.
This is not our father or grandfather's England.
This is a whole new breed.
Yeah, I mean, this isn't normal in my lifetime.
I mean, in the 80s, England kind of worked hard,
drank hard, and didn't really threaten to go very far.
In the 90s, they were quite a likable team, particularly in 96.
They all seemed like people you'd like to be in the pub with and occasionally didn't really come close.
I mean, the semifinals in 1996, an unfortunate exit in 98 and then we move into the noughties where england despite having some
of the best club players are absolutely wretched in almost every tournament at which point obviously
a lot of people just kind of fell out of love with the national team and didn't get back into
it until gareth southgate arrived and then we've had a run of tournaments where we've been quite
likable and played quite good football and gone
quite far and then we had this one and it was like the noughties all over again our whole host of the
continent's best footballers you know we've got the player of the year from the premier league
and the player of the year from la liga um so watching those performances in the group stages
and against slovakia it felt like a harrowing kind of return to the way it used to be.
And then last night something clicked and it all came back together.
And it's, yeah, there's a lot of people just walking around asking if everyone else watched the football
so they can make sure it was the same match and it wasn't a weird dream.
The Gareth Southgate experience over this particular tournament.
It's tough to try and encapsulate it.
I've been trying to do it for the last half hour,
but there's so much to unpack
with his history as a player
and then how that might have forged him
to be able to take this job
and the scrutiny that comes with it.
And there has been so much scrutiny
in this tournament,
despite the fact that England is in the final.
Have you been able to sort of contextualize
what Southgate has had to go through these last few weeks it must have been absolutely
awful and i think whenever you know you're in our line of work and you pass comment on football
you are aware that there are humans at the bottom of it and i think in some ways the level of
discourse seems to have dropped and there's a a rush to label people as frauds or failures when all evidence stands to the contrary of that.
In terms of England men's managers, Gareth Southgate has got us to as many semifinals on his own as every other manager combined.
He's now got us to twice as many finals as every other men's manager combined.
The man is not a fraud or a failure.
I think there's a tightrope that you have to walk
when you're in this job, when you're passing comment.
Journalists aren't supposed to be cheerleaders.
And those performances in the group stage were bad.
I think those of us who ensured that the criticism
was about the football and not about the person
are feeling quite good today
because I think if you're one of the people
who's dragged Southgate around the streets
for three weeks and online and in print,
you'll be feeling quite bad about yourself.
Now, he has conducted himself magnificently
throughout all of this.
He's never lashed out.
He's never done anything else other than just accept
that this kind of comes with the territory
and create a bit of a siege mentality.
And you can see with the way the players have reacted,
the comments that they've made after the game,
how tight this group is.
Now, I don't want anyone to think that this is revisionism
and I'm suddenly coming out and saying
Gareth Southgate's the best manager of all
time, but I do think
whatever happens now, if
we go out and lose 6-0 to Spain,
no one can doubt that man's integrity.
I'm glad you brought up the
way that he's conducted himself. We played
his interview from the post-match yesterday
where the sort of famous
now quote, like, everyone just wants to be loved
and talked about how he was
giving the fans many of whom were had the cleavers out for him at certain points of this term and
giving them something to cheer about and he would have been right along there with them had he not
been managing the team I do wonder I mentioned this earlier his experiences as a player and
going through the intense scrutiny after missing the penalty at Euro 96, if maybe it uniquely forged him to take this kind of role
and act the way that he has that other managers just wouldn't have
because they didn't have that experience of going through the fire before.
Yeah, he is clearly a very, very skilled communicator.
And you don't always get this.
What you often find with managers is that they connect
to the generation immediately before them because
they've been the senior player in the dressing room and the junior players have looked up to
them so managers tend to do quite well in the sort of five to seven years after they retire
um southgate is obviously you know he retired far longer ago than that um but you can see from the
way he is with the players the way the players are with him, particularly after that penalty shootout
and him with Saka,
that, yeah, he has been able to counsel them
and console them in a way that not everyone else can
because there was a time through the back end of the 90s
where, yeah, the word Southgate
was just directly connotated,
the direct connotation was with failure.
If you heard kids playing in the playground
and someone missed a penalty, it'd be,
oh, Southgate.
Yeah, he was a synonym for it.
So yeah, he will have been very, very important.
And there's a reason that this is quite a likable team.
He's clearly worked on the culture so hard over the last,
God, how many years is it now?
Eight years.
It looks and sounds like a club team.
We are speaking to Ian McIntosh from The Athletic
here on the Halford & Brush Show on Sportsnet 650.
Ian, speaking of penalties,
your thoughts on the controversial call
that led to the Harry Kane penalty
against the Netherlands yesterday. I mean, it wasn't a penalty. That's a penalty. It was, you know, you're sitting there
watching it on TV and we were surprised that it even went as far as VAR and laughing and saying,
my God, this is going to be the one time the referee goes to the screen and doesn't give a
penalty. I don't understand how that could be a penalty.
It's actually Kane who gets the
follow-through contact as he goes
for the shot. As far as I can see it,
that's just a thing that happens
in football. When you start giving penalties
for that, we're going to have a lot of penalties.
And looking forward to
Sunday's final, it's hard not to look
at the Spanish side with
all the bright young talent,
especially on the flanks,
and then the way that they've conducted themselves
in this tournament.
They've won all of their matches.
They're scoring goals at a pretty healthy clip.
How big a challenge is this Spanish team
going to be for the English on Sunday?
They're so good.
Yes, very good.
They're the best team in the tournament,
and tournaments don't always go like that. Often the best team in the tournament. And tournaments don't always go like that.
Often the best team in the tournament will burn itself out early.
They are the best team in the tournament by some distance.
The pace of their attack is extraordinary.
Nico Williams has just been magnificent.
Laminia Mel's a child.
He's an actual child for, I think, two more days.
And he plays like
a guy in his mid-thirties.
He's the tactical foul in the
semi-final in injury time.
That is the act of a cynical,
grizzled professional in his thirties.
How's he doing that when he's 16?
I was in my bedroom listening to Iron Maiden when I was 16.
The kids are an absolute
phenomenon. They are
a fantastic team and would absolutely be the rightful winners.
But the reason this sport is so magnificent and the reason it soars above other sports,
like rugby is a very good sport, but generally the favourite team always wins.
That doesn't happen here.
England have got a bit of team spirit and a bit of momentum.
And again, some very very very good footballers
they're not the favourites at all
but there's just a couple of weaknesses
on the Spanish side, I think they're looking
a bit leggy, I thought in the last
15-20 minutes against France
all that dynamism started to drain
out of them
I think England have got a
puncher's chance definitely but I think
also if Spain win it,
you won't find many people in England who begrudge them that.
They are a fantastic football team.
Well, pushing this a little bit further before we let you go,
would you care to make a prediction or would you rather leave that one be?
Well, my record of predictions is spectacularly bad over the years.
So I will therefore confidently tell you that Spain will win 3-1. They will
win 3-1. It is written so it will
be done. Spain will be the European
champions. And if you want to
use that quote on Monday morning when it turns out
England have won 2-0, I'd be more than happy
for that to be the price I pay. I've already
written it down. Ian, thank you very much for doing
this today. This was great. Enjoy the match
on Sunday. It should be a lot of fun.
Will do, gentlemen. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, great. Enjoy the match on Sunday. It should be a lot of fun. Will do, gentlemen.
Thank you so much
for having me on.
Yeah, thanks for coming on.
We appreciate that.
That's Ian McIntosh
from The Athletic here
on the Halford & Brough
show on Sportsnet 650.
Andy's got a big grin
on his face.
I love that entire interview.
It was so good.
It was pretty good.
We need more English
soccer commentators
on this show.
Well, as a matter of fact,
Andy, guess what's happening.
You won't believe this, but...
So at 8 o'clock today,
we're going to have
Peter Drury on the program.
For many of you that don't know exactly who Peter Drury is,
the moment that you hear his voice, you'll be like, oh, the soccer guy.
Yeah.
The voice, really, of a lot of these Euro matches.
And you've heard him on Sky Sports and NBA does some games for NBC as well.
One of the definitive voices of the sport and this summer
because we've been paying so much attention to Euro.
Now, for those of you that would like us to dive back into some Canucks talk,
give me some hockey talk.
My home of the Canucks, Sportsnet 650.
We are doing an exercise throughout the week.
We have asked listeners, hey, we know it's slow.
We know Daily Hive wrote a 2,000-word think piece on the new Canucks
and the new numbers they're going to wear.
We get how slow it is
right now. But there's
still an opportunity for some
entertaining and intriguing
thought-provoking conversation
on your beloved hockey team.
So I asked earlier before Josh
took over for the back half of the week here,
send in your
Mount Rushmore ideas, hypotheticals,
what-ifs, what ifs,
bar room debates,
anything that you want us to sink our teeth into.
It can be alternate universe and reality stuff,
whatever.
We'll try and attack it with our wealth of Canucks knowledge.
Cause I don't know if the listeners are aware of this now,
but we were probably a little bit more versed in Canucks knowledge than the
history of the English national team.
A little bit.
Yeah.
Me personally, definitely.
So what do you got for us?
I like this one.
So which of the Stanley Cup finals
would have had the biggest impact
had they gone the other way?
Oh, that's a great one.
Okay, so we got to set the table here.
82-94-2011.
We should probably make the case for each
before we start breaking down which one it is.
So really quickly,
the obvious, 82 is obvious
because it eliminates this cursed franchise narrative, right?
You win one.
You win it early.
You get it out of the way.
You're not a loser franchise.
Not that I'm calling the franchise a loser franchise.
They're a loser franchise.
I just did call them a loser franchise. You don't'm calling the franchise a loser franchise. They're a loser franchise. I just did call them a loser franchise.
You don't have the 50-plus years of angst.
You don't have the mounting pressure for 94 in 2011
because you've already got the cup in 82.
94, that's an interesting one
because that would have been the butterfly effect one for me.
And by that, I mean the NHL was in such a unique place at that time.
There's that infamous Sports Illustrated cover,
why the NHL is hot and the NBA is not.
The NHL was hot back then, Josh.
I know you weren't born yet.
It was hot in the States.
I was not born yet.
You weren't born yet.
No, but I remember.
The Rangers were everyone's sort of preordained choice to win
because it was a big market team and they had their own lengthy cup drought.
That one would have been super intriguing because of what it would have meant
for the league.
I'm not sure necessarily for the franchise.
I actually probably would be number three on my power.
2011,
plain and simple.
That's the best regular season team to never win a Stanley Cup
I will fight anyone aggressively
and with a knife
if they try and tell me otherwise
I'll take a knife fight
there was a good Tampa team that didn't win
but then they eventually won
my bad
and it would have been the coronation of
the best Canucks team
would go on to have won a Stanley Cup.
The best regular season team to never won a Stanley Cup.
They would have righted that wrong.
And also, it would have ended the angst that had been building for a long time.
So take it away.
Where are you going with this?
I look, maybe I'm biased because I have only been alive for one of these.
I'm going to say 2011.
It's totally valid the way i interpreted this is what would have the biggest impact afterwards okay so in the next like
decade after the cup and i i kind of wanted to make a case for 94 because hey maybe you don't sign mark messier and maybe that whole thing doesn't happen and but also it kind of went into a nicer period of canucks time quicker than it did
after the 2011 loss like you got to the west coast express quicker than the canucks got to their current era. 13 years.
13 years.
13 years.
And so the thing about 2011, I think if they win,
like does that give Mike Gillis some time to maybe do a rebuild
if he wanted to do a rebuild, whatever it is.
And hey, maybe that would have gone worse.
Would have been hard for it to go worse,
but maybe it would have gone worse.
Sure.
And then maybe you don't have this whole Jim Benning era as well.
So that's why I'm going 2011.
The butterfly effect for 2011 is huge.
Yes.
Because it does alter.
It alters a lot of things because you've got to remember
how profoundly broken that team was after 2011.
They were like chasing ghosts for a decade.
Yeah, it was a dysfunctional franchise.
I think mentally they were shook for at least one calendar year after that, They were like chasing ghosts for a decade. Yeah, it was a dysfunctional franchise.
I think mentally they were shook for at least one calendar year after that, if not two.
And that would be the great one where you're looking at it saying, what if?
What if?
I mean, for me, it would be more the coronation.
Someone just brought up a very good point to move the 1994 team maybe to the top of this is that if,
if they win in 94,
do we avoid not one,
but two riots in the aftermath?
That's I D you know what?
I will admit,
I thought about this one for a long time and I never thought about the riot angle,
but that's something to seriously consider is that if they win in 94 and there's no first riot, there's probably no second riot.
Because you're just content.
And all of a sudden, Vancouver internationally isn't even known as a riot city.
You guys are the ones that riot after the Stanley Cup.
Ruff always tells that story.
When we used to work at NBC and we'd go on the road and they'd be like, where are you guys from?
Vancouver.
And you're like, ah, you're the guys that burned down your city
after you lose hockey.
The Riot Place.
Yeah.
And then we'd have to make a joke
and then go quietly sob in the corner.
But it's...
As one does.
I didn't think about that.
You know, that's really interesting.
Because again, the 94 team for me was sort of,
it's physically sandwiched in the middle of these two.
And then for me, it was like,
well, it's always the one you kind of like,
they overachieved to get there.
Not like they didn't in 82, but, you know,
it was a bit of a Cinderella run and it provided so many good memories.
That's actually the one where it's like, yeah,
like that team got so close and it was disheartening to lose,
but there were so many good vibes in the aftermath.
Linden cemented himself as a folk hero.
Bure became this electrifying presence if he wasn't already.
And I think the table was set that, oh, they're going to be good for a few years here.
It didn't end up exactly working that way.
The other thing, too, with 2011 is I talk about it being the greatest regular season
team.
And if you go back and look at it, statistically, they tick all the boxes.
They were amazing.
Best penalty kill, best power play.
Every single major award that year
had a Canuck in it, right?
It was either they were going to be nominated for it
or they were going to win it.
So there's that part of it.
I also would have liked, if they had won,
maybe you would have gotten to see
what that group would have been like
at its quote-unquote powers
for a
couple more years this is kind of what you're talking about yeah it gillis would have more
leash unquestionably av probably too he's not fired two years after um and it was the way that
they lost right is they broke a lot of people mentally on that team because that entire post
season was such a roller coaster book ended with the crazy series against chicago and then
the crazy one against boston and then yeah 2012 like it's you you kind of mentioned it but then
for that next calendar year it was like oh man they're just completely in their heads and hey
look 2012 it also had the daniel sadin injury too and that plays a part but maybe they do have more
confidence as a team moving forward for the next couple of years to potentially make it more than just a one time thing.
Yeah.
A couple of people and understandably are pushing back on my notion that the 2011 team is the greatest regular season team to never win a Stanley Cup.
I think, I mean, that was dominance.
Dominance, dominance, dominance. Just pick any facet of that team
that wasn't at the top of the NHL
and point it out to me.
They had everything that you possibly wanted
and from a managerial perspective,
they had Lawrence Gilman at his peak powers
stashing guys on LTIR
and adding at the deadline
to put together just a very thorough and competent
and loaded lineup, right?
Up until the Stanley Cup final operating
where everyone was healthy and ready to go.
Dispatch.
And then I thought that the dominance
in the Western Conference semifinal
against a good Sharks team where they won it in five,
I thought that was where I was like, okay, they're cooking
and they're going to have the coronation be fitting of a team
that that's good in the regular season.
That's a good choice there, Josh.
Well done.
Is that your choice too?
My choice is going to be 82 just logically.
Because, I mean, sometimes the most obvious answer
is the most simple one.
Yeah.
It's the least fun, though. It's the least fun. And it's the one that one yeah which is it's the least fun though the least
fun and it's the it's the one that you're going to talk about the least in part because it was
so long ago and uh everyone does remember that that was also a miracle storybook run as well but
when you talk about the ultimate butterfly effect if they had just won the cup way back when and
gotten it i hate saying it like it's a to-do list,
but gotten it out of the way.
But if they had gotten it out of the way,
the mounting pressure wouldn't have been like what it was.
I don't know if it would have been the ultimate alternate path
for the organization.
And there also would have been like that would have affected
how the 94 team was constructed, I assume, as well.
And there would have been different butterfly effects, too.
Or just in terms of, like, things change if you win a cup, right?
Sure.
But, yeah, it's just kind of like the most boring one.
Okay, before we go to break, I need to tell you about the BC Lions.
The Roar is back at BC Place for the BC Lions 70th season.
Get your tickets now at bclions.com.
I will remind you that this Saturday, 4 o'clock from BC Place,
it is the biggest game of the season for the Lions so far.
They will host the undefeated Saskatchewan Rough Riders.
There's a big party on the plaza beforehand.
It's the Watermelon Smash.
There's a watermelon-eating contest.
A lot of watermelon content on Saturday.
So be sure to go get your tickets now.
They're opening the upper bowl.
They're expecting a huge crowd.
Go to bclions.com and get your tickets now
for Saturday's game.
4 o'clock kickoff at BC Place.
It's the Lions and the Rough Riders.
Coming up on the Halford & Brough Show
on Sportsnet 650,
we still have two hours to go.
I know.
All the content we've given you so far,
and still two more hours.
It's quite impressive. Adan Virk's going to join us at 7 for some baseball talk
and some movie talk.
And then at 7.30, we're going to go down to Vegas.
Michael Grange, NBA writer for Sportsnet,
who was at the Canada-USA Friendly yesterday from T-Mobile.
Star-studded event for an exhibition basketball game.
We'll talk to Grange about what he saw
from the star-studded American team
and what he saw from Team Canada
as they prep for the Olympics in Paris later this month.
You are listening to the Halford & Brough Show
on Sportsnet 650.