SCENES!
Sundays – especially those that are not branded by our TV satellite overlords as Super Sundays during these international breaks, have always given Football Daily the scaries. When the feeling of impending doom over another working week is not interrupted by the afternoon offerings of the usual Premier League kick-offs, Toby Carvery gravy and MOTD2’s ‘2 Good 2 Bad’, this particular tea-timely email starts getting a little jittery when the Sunday sun goes down. Yesterday, reader – with the weekend disappearing over the horizon faster than a Bobby Baggio penalty – Football Daily needed saving. We just didn’t think the thing to save us would be the Nations League.
Uefa’s shiny new(ish) international concept has copped some stick since its inception, including from this parish. We’re still not sure exactly what the Nations League is or what it does beyond (according to Uefa) “minimising meaningless friendlies and giving nations competitive encounters with equally-ranked teams” and providing a convoluted qualification system to a 48-team World Cup that is now almost impossible not to qualify for. But seeing as we’re in the business of watching exciting, well-matched, high-quality matches between top-tier teams that actually seem to care about the game they are playing, it turns out the Nations League is something of a success.
If you tuned in to any of the quarter-final second legs on Sunday night – Spain v Netherlands, Germany v Italy, France v Croatia and Portugal v Denmark – you might have seen why. In those four matches there were four comebacks that would make The Karate Kid blush, three extra-times, two sudden-death penalty shootouts and drama that would send Alan Partridge up a pear tree shouting “Did you see that?!” every time the ball hit the back of the net. And between Spain 3-3 Netherlands (5-5 agg, 6-5 pens), Germany 3-3 Italy (5-4 agg), Portugal 5-2 Denmark (aet, 5-3 agg) and France 2-0 Croatia (2-2 agg, 5-4 pens), said ball hit said net 21 times on the night. Subplots included, but were not limited to, a Lamine Yamal wondergoal, Cristiano Ronaldo taking one of the worst penalties of all time and then hopping around, knacked, on the sidelines like the Euro 2016 final, Bournemouth wonderkid Dean Huijsen balling out in his first start for Spain against the country of his birth, Germany scoring one of the most bizarre goals in recent memory from a corner (thanks Gianluigi Donnarumma!) before nearly blowing a 5-1 aggregate lead and an all-time goalkeeping performance from Croatia’s Dominik Livakovic in Paris.
To cut a thrilling long story short, Germany will now play Portugal in their semi-final, and Spain face France in the other. Football Daily will be there, no matter what. Nations League is in, baby, everything else is out. To the poor souls braving Wembley on Monday evening for the World Cup Group K qualifier between England and Latvia – to help decide a group that also includes Andorra, Albania and Serbia – we salute you.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Daniel Harris from 7.45pm GMT for hot World Cup qualifying minute-by-minute coverage of England 2-0 Latvia.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
He makes you understand the spaces on the pitch like no other coach and he lives the game emotionally like no other coach. I was brainwashed by [Pep] Guardiola, but in a good way. It was like I was at university. What I experienced with him allowed me to raise my level and keep that level to this day. It’s not that I was an idiot before I arrived at Manchester City but I realised that I played football in completely the wrong way” – Danilo gets his chat on with
Thiago Rabelo about his days in higher education at the Etihad Stadium, toxic social media abominations and much, much more.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Is Chris Wood the next Russian nesting doll (Friday’s Football Daily)? Getting into the referee’s notebook by putting his name in other people’s notebooks, and then the media wrote it in their ‘notebooks’. And now I’m writing another hopeful letter to Football Daily. At over six feet tall and made of Wood, he has a good start” – Keith Taylor.
I can’t have been the only person to check out the engineering marvel that is New Caledonia’s Pont de Mouli after its shoutout in Friday’s Football Daily. Having compared the before and after photos, it’s safe to say it’s the finest glow-up I’ve seen a bridge have since the former Southampton, Chelsea and England left back had his hair transplant” – Jim Hearson.
October 2021: Thomas Tuchel is angry after Thiago Silva returns late from his international duty with Brazil. March 2022: Tuchel says ‘you can’t discuss depth in the team when my players are involved in international breaks’. March 2025: No rotation for the sake of the clubs. Guess who? Yep!” – Krishna Moorthy.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Jim Hearson, who gets a copy of Engulfed: how Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and the World. It’s available in the Guardian Bookshop. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we have them, can be viewed here.
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