The Press Box - Ep. 133: The Ringer's Euro 2016 Week 1 Recap With Chris Ryan, Ryan O'Hanlon, and Micah Peters

Episode Date: June 17, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan, Ryan O'Hanlon, and Micah Peters take the temperature on Euro 2016, looking at the best players, most disappointing teams, and biggest story lines after the first week of the tournament. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's podcast is brought to you by the new HBO series, Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. The new show will feature intimate conversations with compelling guests from the worlds of pop culture, sports, entertainment, the arts, and technology. Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons will also include field segments and Simmons's signature commentary on current events. Make sure to watch Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons premiering Wednesday, June 22nd. That's next Wednesday at 10 p.m. on HBO. And we'd also like to say that we're brought to you by our new website. The ringer.com, which is presented by Miller Lite. We have tons of stuff about the Euros up there from Ryan O'Hanlin, Micah Peters.

Myself, I'm Chris Ryan. Go now and check out the latest in pop culture, sports, and tech at the ringer.com. And finally, I wanted to mention Seekek. Seek is our presenting sponsor and the only fan-friendly app for buying and selling sports and music tickets. Other sites, they've gone back to the same old tactic of showing you a lower price and then charging you huge fees at checkout. But at Seatkeek, the price you see is always the price you pay. With Seekkeek, there's no guesswork. You'll know exactly how much you're paying where you're sitting and whether or not you're getting a good deal all right from your phone.

So drop your old site and experience buying and selling tickets the way it should be. To start using Seatgeek, download the free Seatgeek app or go to Seatgeek.com. Hello and welcome to the ringer.com channel 33 euros pod. My name is Chris Ryan and I'm Netter at the ringer.com and I am joined by two of the ringer soccer writers. Micah Peters. It's going down. What's up, man? It's Micah's first week.

Everybody say hi to him. and I'm also here with Ryan O'Hanlon. I'm glad we have Micah instead of Kevin this week. Great take to start off with. The first week of the Euro 2016 is in the books. It's been a little bit subdued or at least overshadowed by a lot of the violence and rioting that have been happening in Marseille involving fans from England, Russia, some reported from France.

There's lots of great stuff out there for you guys to read about that. Claire McNier put up a really concise, clear kind of take on what's been going on in the streets of France on the ringer.com yesterday. You can also check out. I would highly recommend the Guardian has been doing incredible work with people on the ground and with a variety of different angles. It sucks. It is definitely like a product of the sort of the atmosphere in Europe right now. It's a very tense time. And it's terrible that it's kind of bleeding into this tournament and it's affecting everybody's lives over there.

but we're here to talk about the football. So I want to start off with a couple questions for you guys. Let's talk first about standout players, all right? I've only been one week. Not a lot of sample size yet, but I think we've already got some heroes. So I want to start with Micah. Michael, who is your standout players so far? Dimitri Payette.

I didn't even let you finish the sentence because it's that good. I think that, well, I wrote something about Demetri Pyatt. This is the creative midfielder for France in case anybody missed it, yeah? And I started it basically writing the first paragraph in all caps and had to backspace it like seven times. It was mostly exclamation points and expletives. But through two games, he's created 14 chances, eight of those coming in the first game against Romania, during which, well, at the death actually, slammed a shot from, I don't know, like 20 yards. Goal of the tournament, right?

Straight into the upward. Yes. Madrich's Garif McCauley header I don't know why it's so funny it is Yeah and then did it

again when they were playing Albania when the match was getting like really tight down the end Greisman put in the go-ahead goal sneaking around being five foot nine and winning headers in the box

but then Pius stuck one in the right corner to seal it and arguably the best thing about it was the goal celebration because tears. Well, no, the first goal against Romania was tears.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like he'd been just, I guess, what was it? Almost 10 years. Well, almost 11 years. Prior, he was an amateur in nods folding sweaters. Yeah. I mean, weren't he in a retail store.

So let's talk a little about Piat because he is a guy who is instrumental for West Ham in Premier League this year, premier play this year. but is sort of a late bloomer, right? And is one of those, I mean, Ryan, do you have any insight as to why Paiy hasn't caught on as like a, what's with the late in life or late in playing life explosion for him? I don't know, because, I don't know, France does not seem to me like a place where they can't identify young players

or good players at a young age. In other words, it's not the United States or England. If I had to give a theory, he's sort of like, a little chunky and not super athletic, so maybe that, you know, turn teams off. I guess it also, there's, that position goes in and out of style. The pure number 10, not, can't lead the line, but can't really play in the center of the park and deal with the amount of physicality that usually happens there. I mean, I think sometimes those guys, it's like the OZOZL position gets cycled in and out of fashion. I mean, that's just a guess,

though. Sometimes it's just, it just happened. Yeah, that's very true. But I mean, like, I think it was Bill, Bill Barmwell, like, had this tweet, I think, before the first game, where he was like, how did every major club in England miss on Ried Marez, Dimitrippayette, and Golcante? Yeah. Which is just mind-blowing when you think about it. Yeah, it's, it is weird. I mean, this is the kind of thing that Arsenal used to be experts at finding French talent

that were bargains and turning them into this. is how Tierra and re-happ. So maybe I'm completely wrong because those guys are all French or have grew up in France. Yeah. So maybe. Yeah.

Ryan, who's your standout player of the tournament? It's the Polish Brian McBride. Arcadish. Arcadish Milik. So that's your nickname. Yeah.

It's not actually him, but he missed a header from how many yards away today against Germany. Like negative one? He was like in the goal. Ben's his spine bent to like a 90-degree angle. and just had a really rough day.

Sometimes it's the misses that make you realize how hard soccer is. Yeah. Because I will try and say this to friends of mine who are casual fans. If my wife comes in and she's just like, why are you freaking out? And I'm like, do you understand the timing that it would take to do a volley? Like, that's insane that somebody could do a volley. Yeah. And I mean, and even the misses too.

Yeah. There was like that, well, the really bad one was Blashekowski hit him just outside of the 6 yard box. and he swung on a half ball and whiffed it. Long day at the office. I feel kind of, I just wanted to mention him because I kind of feel bad for him. He's at least getting in those positions, right? Which there's some skill to that, maybe. But the real player of the tournament for me so far is Gareth Bale.

Another person you wrote about this week? Yeah. And weirdly, he's scored two ridiculous free kicks, both of which commentators sort of call out the goalies for not being ready for these free kicks, but the ball sort of moves like a paper bag flying in the air, but it's like as heavy as a brick. So like trying to get in the way of that is just sort of impossible. And I think like as an individual, he's had the most impact on his team because those two free kicks were sort of outside of both those games. Wells was dominated by England. I think Slovakia

probably outplayed them, had more chances. And without those two goals, Wells is probably eliminated already, I would say. Maybe not. But, you know, he's not doing the stuff we see him do with Real Madrid where he's getting on the ball and running at the defense. He's more just running around like a humongous chicken with his head cut off and just trying to make shit happen. And at the end of the game, I forget who played the ball,

but it was like a 60-yard ball. And Bell isn't even on the screen. And he just comes in out of nowhere, jumps and wins aheader and almost ties the game right at the end. Yeah, Bale's role on Wales is interesting because we think of the free. Lance role that some of the top players and club teams have. So it's like, oh, you can drift inside if you want.

You can do this. But those are the luxury guys. Bail also is tracking back primary, like one of the primary playmakers is also probably the most defended, like they're keying on bail. So he's probably got at least one, if not two guys following him around the field. It's got to be exhausting. But he's really actually, I mean, he's being ridiculous. He had a great quote, Ryan, you pointed out to me that he plays for the shirt and the dragon.

So good. So, I mean, he's really getting into the spirit of things. It's kind of nice. My best player of the tournament so far is Tony Cruz's brother. Who suggested today or the other day to the Daily Mail or in the Daily Mail it was reported, that he said that if Juventus and Real Madrid want to do a swap for Paul Pagba and Tony Cruz, it'll be Pogba plus 90-some million euros. So he is valuing his brother in the 200 million euro range.

In all reality, though, Cruz had an incredible game in a zero-zero-dra draw today. but he is just such a beautiful player to watch and I love a midfielder who plays from from box to box who can do stuff in every part of the pitch and who can act as like a metronome and act as like a guy who starts the play turns play over but also can crash it at the end of at the end of goal possible goal scoring opportunities

yeah you might have mentioned it today that Cruz had played like 17 different roles across the course of the polling game for I said that Tony Cruz was a different player every five minutes. Yeah, it's pretty incredible to watch him. So let's talk about some of the teams. Who, Micah, for you, is the most disappointing team of the tournament? The most disappointing team in the tournament so far, I would have to say, is Belgium. Yes.

One, because I haven't the faintest clue what Wilmots is doing. Yeah, Wilmotz is the coach. Was he ever done any club work anywhere? Not sure. You guys go ahead and chat about that. I'm going to look it up. I mean, like, okay, so first of all, there was this team. team that was ranked first in the world between the months of October and April and came into this tournament as like favorites to win it and looked plumb awful against Italy in the first game. And I think I think my favorite were like, okay, so Wilmots after the game, Mark Wilmots.

Just to show you the cognitive dissonance of Mark Wilmots talks about. Killing Wilmonds. He used to say it's a shocker, by the way. He was talking about, okay, this, well, number one, he singled out Kevin DeBron, who's a winger, and he said that he was tired. He said, exactly, maybe the kid's tired after a busy season. And then not half a beat later says, now is not the time to criticize individuals. We should also point out that Wilmott's got his pants pulled.

down by Conte. Very true. Yeah. That he went up against the best manager in the tournament and got destroyed. Which is fine because there aren't really many good managers managing national team. But like, you know, but you could conceivably maybe feel bad for him. But he's like not backed down. He, after the game, he was like adamant that this wasn't about tactics.

Yeah. It was just about a mistake his defenders made. But then I think he also said, again, it's like I don't want to blame my players, even though he just directly did that. the next day he said that Italy didn't deserve as much credit as everyone was giving them because Conte can just play the three

Juventus centerbacks together and his job is done which is pretty ridiculous because Conte was the one who made that threesome what it was and then two Wilmots has the two centerbacks from Tottenham which was the best defense in the Premier League this year and he didn't play them together

but they're tired Ryan here's the thing is that it's worth mentioning here, we're going to talk about Italy in a second. I guess we can turn this over into our Italy conversation because I think pretty much all of us think that Italy is the best team so far. Me and Mike, I definitely think Italy is the best team we've seen so far. My favorite moment of this tournament might be the vine of Conte losing his mind when Lukaku got set free on a through ball and there's just a vine of Conte. I think his nose is bleeding and he's screaming,

I will kill you, I will kill you at Chiolini and Benucci and Buffan. How is that for motivation? Eat your heart out, Bob Knight. Okay, so we're going to talk about Italy in a second. Ryan, do you have a disappointing team you want to talk about? France is my disappointing team. Despite six points through two games, I know it's all about getting the wins, but the way they've gotten them hasn't really been that convincing. I sort of have an idea or a theory that it's not really a theory,

but it's just something I'm about to say. It's a theory. Sure. The fact that I agree that Paya has been the best player on France, but I feel like if that is the case, something is going wrong with France because he's phenomenal, but the team is so good,

they have a couple people that I think should be contributing more than him. The first game was not great. Ukraine had a ton of chances. And the second game, Didier Deschamps, Bench, Paul Pagba, and Ron Grisman. Most likely the two best players on France.

Not to be reductionist, benching your two best players is not usually a good strategy. Or is it? They did win. It was you in theory. They won two. Okay, so, I don't know.

I mean, like the greasman thing, I've kind of always expected him to be rotated out of the lineup because he'd been playing up until May 28th. But the Pogba thing. Well, the Pogba thing, he's, so he subs Pogban at halftime, which, one, if you're a soccer player and you get subbed out at halftime, there's like a guy standing there and he gives you all the papers to, like, file to retire. higher and you have a little bit on the spot and two it's like it was just a blatant admission that he should have started that is actually one of my one of my favorite Jose marino moves is when he like subs a dude after 20 minutes like have you ever seen him do that to like a defender did it wasn't there a game last season with pneumonia madditch where he sub madich in in the second half and then subbed himself that's the ultimate super efficient yeah oh man

Okay, so you think France has been disappointing. I don't know if you know, who's my disappointing team would probably, I agree with Micah, that Belgium's been pretty disappointing. I think that England gets a disproportionate amount of media attention, especially from, like, English-speaking Western countries. So there's a lot of scrutiny on them. And I suppose you could say that given that they were sort of turning it over to this younger generation and they looked like they had a lot of talent going into this, that it's been a disappointing tournament,

even though they're probably going to win their group, I think. but I do want to say that, you know, I think that they have like a lot of potential. We'll talk more about England in a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the best team of the tournament. So we've talked about the disappointing teams. Michael, why don't you get us started talking about Italy? Because I know that you were very impressed with the Zuri. First of all, they scored, I think it was, I can't remember who it was, but they got on board first in the 32nd minute.

Yeah, it was Zacharini, Sunderland Zachary. In the 32nd minute and then sat in and like just repelled everything. Yeah. For the net until the very end where. Pellet. Graciano Pellet. Yeah. Sealed the game.

Sealed the game that make it 2-0. And it was like vintage Italy 2006. It's something very, very cool when you see a country play like the platonic ideal game of their country. Yeah. And this Italy team is actually so far pretty likable. I think in the past they've had guys like. Matarazzi and you're just like, man, screw this. I can't get behind this.

But this has been, I mean, that Zacharini goal was set up with a Benucci pass that you see like maybe once every couple of years. Yeah. Like centerbacks who can make a pass like that. Yeah, it's just a religious experience. Yeah. Who's been your best team in the tournament so far? So far I'd go with Spain.

I think if I had to. This is kind of controversial pick. Yeah. It's not. There's a weird, like, dissonance with Spain. Spain is like we're not even, it's like, this is like Duke. It's like we're not even talking about them until the sweet 16th. Exactly.

And it's like the last time we saw them at a major competition, they were just like getting covered in gasoline by Louis Van Hal and Robin Van Percy. And it's hard to get that out of your head. But like Spain has won the last two European championships and they won the World Cup in between. And Spanish teams pretty much win the Champions League every season. Yeah.

So the Spain Czech Republic game was sort of like a, Spain in a nutshell in the sense that they dominated possession. They had a thousand chances and they didn't score until the last five, ten minutes. And it's Gerard P.K., their centerback, heading the ball in, which is like such an anti-SPain way to score. Off of a beautiful cross from Eniesta. Yeah, exactly. Eniasta who played out of his mind. And, you know, I sort of, we've talked a little bit last time about the new generation of Spanish players.

And he's not one of those and he's proven why he's on the team with that game. How old is he niesta? 30. Is he younger? How much younger than Shavi is he? His hairline is much older than Javi's. That's all I can tell you. 32.

32. Okay. But it's sort of like there's a, when you watch Spain, it's sort of like, if this team was just a little more forward thinking, it's like wouldn't they just score six goals a game and win every game? But I think part of it is, that's a reasonable thing to say, but also the possession they play as a defensive tactic.

Czech Republic had one chance basically at the end of the game, and when Spain is passing the ball around, the other team can't do anything with it. It's important to know, I mean, you guys have actually played the game at various levels, that tournament soccer is a different beast

than club soccer, and that these guys have plans that are stretched out over the, for the entire month here, and that in a lot of ways, you're really trying to get through this group stage with no injuries, nobody getting too taxed, playing good side. But you want to be playing your best football at the end of the tournament, right?

You want to be peaking. And we've seen before, and this leads us to our next question about what team do you think might betray early promise? Because we've seen before where teams come out of the gates really, really fast. And they're playing their best football. And you're like, oh, my God, like, that can't believe how good Italy looks. I mean, like we're talking about Italy. But a team, what do you see, Micah as a team that might betray their early promise?

I actually think that Italy will betray. And this is not necessarily because of anything that Italy's done wrong, per se. This is just my own personal mistrust of the future. So explain that. What do you mean by that? I just feel like the other shoe has to drop at some point. Right. Because coming into the tournament, there was a lot of criticism about the team that Conte picked

and how it was going to be unimaginative. and very boring and stagnant and everything else. And we kind of all had to eat our hats after the first game. But, I mean, there's still time to mess that up. Yeah. I mean, like you said, it's a long tournament. And you do want to be playing your best soccer at the end, but that requires an upward gradient.

And I don't know that that's going to happen. So let me ask you this. Do you really need a plan B if there's not... Because I don't really know what you do to beat Italy other than get lucky, because they have a really great defense. Everybody seems to know their role. Conte's got them all sort of rowing the same direction.

Assuming all those things keep moving forward. They don't have like a, oh, if you take Pierlo out of the game, if you take shot, like the way that you would for Spain, you might focus on like the Shavi and he has to access a couple years ago. Maybe if you were playing Germany now, you would put a guy and you would just be like X out, Carouse and like their whole offense fault. For, for Italy, I don't really know, like, isn't maybe he's figured out something here where it's like,

this is tournament winning football I've got them playing. They are a massive defense that grabs goals at interopportune times. Yeah, I think it's just like, you know, I envy that confidence because, I mean, yeah,

for the foreseeable future, I can't really see Italy not winning the tournament after, you know, watching them play. Right. But at the same time... All other tournaments suggest that this is not sustainable, right?

Exactly. Yeah. It's like I agree with Italy as the team that's sort of going to fall off. Just because, you know, we talked about how terrible Belgium was, but they still had a decent amount of chances. Lukaku had a breakaway that he probably scores more times than he doesn't. And, you know, I think this, it's super impressive that Italy has this very rigid and, like, well-drilled team-wide philosophy to have that in a national team's very impressive.

but I feel like it's the strategy is sort of like they scored on a long ball from Benucci and then they scored because Belgium was counter attacking was attacking so much at the end so it's like I feel like that strategy sort of leaves you open to getting upset a lot because like what's going to happen with Italy when they go behind a goal like how do they they are they going to play the same defensive packed in style that counters he unzips his own flesh and palatelli comes out and then hits a 30. 45 yards scorcher. And it gives double birds

to everybody in the stadium. Yeah, and walks out. And walks out and deaf punk starts playing. Yeah, that's what happens. I'm sold. I'm sold. All right, well, it's duly noted. I guess I would say that Hungary is a team

I don't imagine has the talent to really go that far in the tournament, despite going, you know, they have three points after one game. Let's see what else we can talk about here. I want to see about teams that you feel like are having early, problems, early adversity that you feel like they

still have the capacity to overcome that adversity to get better over the course of the tournament. If you don't mind, I'm going to jump in first to answer my own question here, because I really want to get the tactics heads here. I feel like Roy Hodgson should go 415

and start all his strikers. Discuss. We go back forward, Dyer, and then go Rashford, Stirre, Vardy, Rooney, Kane, front line. I wholly support this bat shit insane idea because earlier in the game against Wales,

they were down one zero. And I mean, there was no reason to believe that after half, that Roy Hodgson would be able to fix the glaring tactical errors that he had in 15 minutes, but did it by literally something on every stage. that he had in the stables. He also threw away like

5 million pounds for Harry Kane. Probably had like all tied up and incentives for sponsorships to be the king of England and now it's just like nod dog in storage. We should make it clear that this is the same tactical strategy you used in FIFA 2014 to win the Champions League with

FC Basel. With Hudders from L. Look, I mean it takes you got to have bravery, man. If Dyer or so, good. Let's see me good. I agree. Everyone's talking about it.

Let's see it. Yeah. No, I think that England has, this, I do think that the fact that they brought five strikers is just very controversial, controversial back in England, is a very interesting, like, you, they all bring, like, different qualities, you know,

and the Rooney thing, Rooney playing on the forward line is always something that you can, they can have happen and we just change the game a little bit. Okay, so a team that has faced early adversity, like England that you think might get better over the course the next couple weeks. I mean, sure, England, but also whales. Oh, so you still believe in dragons. I still believe in dragons.

Okay. Ashley Williams said. Okay. All right. Put him that aside. I think that there was a lot of, well, I mean, there was obviously a lot of talk about being a one-man team because Gareth Bale is literally the most expensive man in football in history.

and he has been like, you know, the wrecking ball, the one-man bludgeon. What was the thing that you said in your article? It was really good. The golden tip of a driftwood spear? I did. Yes. A lot of driftwood and was. That was really good.

But in the first game against who was it? Oh, yeah, Slovakia. Wales, Bale did score the opener, but it was who scored the one? winner? Hal Robson. Cano. Yeah, exactly. On the task.

He's not even on a team. He's not even on the team as us. Pre-Aidsts. Wait, how often does that happen? I mean, I'm sure there's like an Albanian dude who probably doesn't. I mean, those guys must play in Albania, right? Well, it's more just like his contract, contract ran out. I know, but I like the idea.

It's, yeah, the first. He can't even go to run out for the Columbus crew or something. Just kidding, Emma. Just kidding. Yeah, and Joel Allen was a man in that match. Yeah. Joe Allen is actually the Welsh messy in case anybody doesn't know this. For Liverpool.

Yeah, he actually is messy. F.C. So I think that if you have a team of players that has a golden tip of the spear in Gareth Bale and has that unity of intent that where everybody buys in, I feel like you can at least make a run of it in the late rounds. They're going to advance the round of 16. Here's my only counterpoint to that? Portugal.

yes but what if here's my only kind of one of that Portugal for the last 8 10 years the thing I would say about Wells is that Aaron Ramsey's hair

he looked like a complete dumbass when it first bleached it and it's sort of grown out a little bit and like I think the barber that Jason Concepcion

talked to for his piece about the best or worst hair at the tournament said that it would start to look better as it grew on and it did so I you can't discount that well you guys have convinced me Aaron Ramsey's hair looks cool and Gareth Bale is good so Wales is going to get far Ryan who's a team you think might like overcome adversity uh I'm gonna say Portugal despite what you just said I think you're wrong like what evidence do you have for that

evidence I have is that and don't hit me with some stat the stat is that they could have they probably should have scored like seven goals against Iceland and they had one defensive screw up, which with Pepe on the team, I think, is a guarantee to happen at least once a game, so you can't, you know, discount that. But I think if they play that game with the same chance as every game, they win 80 out of 100 times. Also, that guy doesn't finish that, whoever he was, I forget his name. They called him the Thor of Iceland or the Thor of Soccer. Ryan McBride of Iceland.

You know, I think on the whole, Portugal played well, and we sort of look at them as this team of like jokers and then Rinaldo that are always going to fall in their face, and that's what happened. But I think that game, they did play reasonably well. They had a ton of chances. Nani played well, which is really weird and disturbing, even, I think, I might say. Upsetting.

You're a VHSI-N-F.S. you know, and they have Rinaldo. So, you know, that was my Portugal take last week, Rinaldo. and I think it still is. Okay. Players win tournaments, I hear it. Let's just loosen it up a little bit. Is there anything you guys have seen? What's the, like this is, and you guys weren't really prepared for this necessarily,

but like what is the lesson you've learned so far? I mean, is there anything, whether it's a tactical thing, whether it's about being patient as a country and a national side, whether it's, I mean, what do you think is like something you're taking away from this first week? Hmm. I think that, And we were maybe talking about this the other day. When you have those teams that are like one superstar teams are getting kind of shown up by

these smaller teams that are that like I was saying before about Unity of Tent just have all bought in. Yeah. I mean that Republic of Ireland team was beating Switzerland until the end of the game. And they were definitely like that was an example of the best player by 15 miles was on Sweden. But Ireland just had their shit together. Northern Ireland could still top their group. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is nuts. Should we give some respect to Northern Ireland after last week? We said that the four of us would beat them with no one else in the fields. I did say that. And I still believe it. Michael was even working here. I still believe it. It's all of me.

I had nothing to do with that. I still believe it. Michael wants to be able to go to Belfast one day. I think it means that Mike and I could be Ukraine by ourselves. Really? I'm not you're saying. 211. Okay.

So, yeah, that this unity of intent, that this collective spirit can beat back individual performance. Yeah. Yeah, okay. What about you? I think my main takeaway would be that although Germany did not play that well today,

I almost feel like just a sort of nothing game like that is kind of part of their strategy of just moving along, getting through the tournament. I think to me, Germany and Spain look like the two most settled teams, and it shouldn't be surprising because they're the two dominant nations of the past 10 years. But coming into every tournament, we sort of get excited by all the new faces, and we should have gotten excited by France, and they still have a chance to win, and other teams do too. But I think Germany and Spain, to me, still seem like the two teams that, like, they know what they're doing compared to everyone else. Yeah.

I think that that's right. I think that we'll, this has been, I think sometimes, like, there's more, there are tournaments where you see teams come out of, uh, out of the traps and just have like really, really strong opening matches. But for the most part, this first week is like almost replicated what's usually like the second round of games where it's like much more cagey, much more. I think everybody knows that as long as you don't have a disastrous first two games, you have a very high likelihood of going through. Yeah. And so I think that's why you've seen a good get so conservative. It's in that second and third game that hopefully things will open up. People will take more chances.

Roy Hachim will fulfill his destiny and play five strikers. We'll be back next week, probably next Wednesday, to talk more about the Euros. Until then, for Ryan O'Hanlon and Michael Peters, I'm Chris Ryan. Thanks for listening.