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      Euro 2020: France Beats Germany, in Control at All Times

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      A score line disguises an imperious performance from the reigning World Cup champions as they throttle Germany in their debut at Euro 2020.For a few minutes, not long after the start of the second half, France finally had to break a sweat. Quite how many minutes, exactly, is a matter of perspective: the French might come in low, at about 10 minutes; Germany, by contrast, might be inclined to be a little more generous, and put the figure a little higher, at 15 or so.It might have felt a little longer to Raphael Varane, gritting his teeth, or to Didier Deschamps, trusting just a little to luck, or to a French fan, watching on, desperate for their team to cling on to a lead that, at 1-0, somehow managed to seem as fragile as porcelain but yet as certain as iron.But that is all it was: in the opening game of a major tournament, against a putative rival, in Munich on enemy territory, France looked discomfited for no more than a quarter-hour, and even that was relative. Serge Gnabry might have scored: certainly once, possibly twice. Toni Kroos snapped a shot in from distance. Robin Gosens hurled himself at a tantalizing Gnabry cross, only to make contact not with the ball but with Benjamin Pavard.There was no seat-of-the-pants desperation, no skin-of-the-teeth siege. France, the reigning world champion, did not ride out a storm. At best, it weathered a brief, inconvenient squall, waited for the clouds to dissipate, and then set out under fair blue skies once more, untroubled and unruffled and serene, a team in complete control.Scenes from a Munich evening: a French star in full flight, a German racing to keep up.Pool photo by Franck FifeThat France possesses greater depth than any nation in the world, at this point, goes without saying. It has, as the former Lille executive Marc Ingla put it, become “the Brazil of Europe,” home to a seemingly endless production line of impossibly gifted young players.Its top flight, Ligue 1, has rebranded itself as the “league of talents,” a place to see tomorrow’s stars today. It has so many towering central defenders that one of them, Aymeric Laporte, had to decide that he was Spanish just to play international soccer. France has more players currently employed in Europe’s top five leagues than any country, including Brazil.And its national team reflects that. Deschamps, the French coach, was so spoiled for choice when picking his squad for this tournament — even before he decided to offer Karim Benzema, his prodigal son, a shot at redemption — that he could have left all 26 players he did select at home, picked a whole different squad, and probably still made the semifinals.That is the quantity; the quality is no less intimidating. Benzema was thrown into an attack that already included Antoine Griezmann, the team’s spiritual leader, and Kylian Mbappé, next in line to be the best player in the world. The midfield is built around the indomitable N’Golo Kanté, or possibly the artful Paul Pogba, or maybe even the elegant Adrien Rabiot: It depends, largely, on who has the ball at any moment.It is the combination of the two — the gifted players and the sheer number of them — that makes France such a daunting proposition, that ensured Deschamps and his squad arrived at this tournament expected to add a European Championship to the World Cup it secured in Russia three years ago, and take its place among the front rank of the greatest international teams of the modern age.Paul Pogba was a handful for Germany all night.Pool photo by Alexander HassensteinBut it is not the quality of its individuals that defines this France team. It is the strength of the collective that Deschamps — hardly the most charismatic or inspiring of coaches, even among his peers in the international game — has forged from them. France did not win the World Cup by morphing into some soccer equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters. It does not intend to repeat the trick here by taking the breath away.Instead, Deschamps has taken the gold of a generation and used it to build a wall: one that shimmers and glitters and can, in the right light, be quite beautiful, but is still, first and foremost, a wall. France’s defense is stolid and obdurate and miserly. Its midfield contains more than enough brilliance to dazzle opponents, but it is no less adept at squeezing them, constricting their space and their choice until they run out of ideas or, better yet, hope.With its almost comically devastating attack — the raw speed and the rare brilliance of Mbappé, the precision of Benzema, the craft of Griezmann — France could cause chaos at will. It does not. It uses its front line only sparingly, picking its moments, content that the unspoken threat of their presence is deterrent enough.Instead, it prefers to spend its time seeking total, absolute control. That is the mark of truly great, truly gifted teams: They give you the sense that everything that happens on the field is at their behest, as if they are in charge not only of the speed of the game but the ticking of the clock. The very best teams have one thing that the merely good can never quite attain: agency. And France has agency in abundance.That, certainly, is what Germany found. It did not play badly — there will have been plenty to give Joachim Löw, its coach, hope that there will be no repeat of the humiliation of 2018 in his farewell tournament — but it did not matter, because for long stretches it was playing someone else’s game.Kylian Mbappé celebrates and Mats Hummels attempts to disappear after his own goal gave France a 1-0 lead.Pool photo by Lukas Barth-TuttasFrance took the lead, through a Mats Hummels own goal, midway through the first half, and though it did not seem particularly hurried to double it, it never looked like relinquishing it. When Germany did, briefly, wrestle the upper hand, the French seemed happy enough. Deschamps’s team sank back to its own half, then to its own penalty area, and repelled everything that came its way.And when the Germans had run out of steam, when they had blown themselves out, the French cleared the sweat from their brow, and took control once again. France had a goal. A second might have been nice — Rabiot hit the post, Mbappé had one ruled out for offside, Benzema did, too — but it was not, strictly, necessary.For all the talent at his disposal, Deschamps knows that one is always enough. That, perhaps, is the defining trait of his team. It is what, deep down, makes it so ominous, more than the players on his squad or the ones left at home: that no matter what it needs to do, no matter how great the challenge, France always has enough. More

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      Euro 2020: Ravaged and Resilient, the Show Goes On

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      Euro 2020 will not be the tournament anyone wanted, and it arrives after a year few will care to remember. And yet, once it starts, all of that will fall away.This is not how it was meant to be. The stands were supposed to be full, the cities jubilant, the lights of a carnival illuminating a continent. Euro 2020 was supposed to be the moment when it all began again, the great symbol of a world returning to normal. That is not how the tournament is. Instead, it is all it can be, how it has to be.The name itself is a giveaway. We are, as you will have noticed, in the thick of 2021. Not, though, according to the banners and bunting fluttering outside stadiums in 11 cities across Europe, nor on the television schedules of dozens of broadcasters around the world. There, we are still locked into the year that never seemed to end, hotly anticipating the start of Euro 2020.The anachronism is no accident. Last spring, when UEFA decided that it would postpone its showpiece tournament but not — despite the fact that on an elemental level keeping the incorrect date is wholly absurd — rename it, the organization rationalized it as a purely financial decision. They had printed tickets that said Euro 2020. They had commissioned merchandise. They had a website. You can’t just change a website, you know.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via ShutterstockBut the decision to retain the name spoke, too, to something far deeper. Within UEFA, there was a genuine, deep-seated belief that the European Championship, delayed by a year, would act as a potent symbol of recovery: the event that marked the end of the plague year and the restoration of the world we once knew. To still call it Euro 2020 is to say that now is when we pick up where we left off.Over the last year, that sentiment has proved remarkably resilient. As early as March 2020, UEFA felt bold enough not only to postpone the event but to set a (provisional) date for when it would be played. As the world convulsed in the first, bare grip of the coronavirus pandemic, the people who organize European soccer were convinced that the whole thing would be done in a year.And so it has continued. No matter how the circumstances have changed or the ground has shifted beneath its feet, UEFA has pushed on, adamant that this is how, and when, normal will start again.In May 2020, the organization’s president, Aleksandar Ceferin, was insistent that the tournament would be staged exactly as it should have been, had the world never changed. There would, he said, still be 12 host cities, spread across the continent, just as his predecessor, Michel Platini, had planned it.Last May, Ceferin confidently predicted that the stadiums would be full, packed to the rafters with fans reveling in each other’s presence and their mutual proximity after a year of enforced distance, isolation and separation. It would be a festival of rebirth, proof that life “will go back to normal, when we get rid of this bloody virus.”Manu Fernandez/Associated PressHe was still confident in January, as a second wave engulfed Europe and lockdowns returned. Salvation, he said, lay in vaccination. Medicine would triumph over infection, and Austria would meet Ukraine for a goal-less draw in Bucharest, Romania, in front of a full house.There was hubris, of course, and gallons of it: not only the manifest evidence of soccer’s messianic streak, its unchecked sense of its own importance, but its absolute belief that it is not really subject to the same laws as anything and everything else. A financial crisis will hit, and soccer will keep on spending. A pandemic will break out, and it will keep playing.The world can stop but soccer will go on, because soccer does not know how to do anything else, and besides: What would everyone do without soccer?Behavioral economists have a term for this — plan continuation bias — though the one airline pilots use is, perhaps, a little more catchy, a little more immediately understood. They call it get-there-itis, the porcine, obstinate and sometimes fatal refusal to allow the facts at hand to change your intended course of action.The fact that none of Ceferin’s predictions came to pass did not have any material impact on Euro 2020. There will not be 12 host cities — though UEFA eventually managed to press-gang 11 into service — and there will not, by a long shot, be full stadiums. Most are operating at about a quarter of capacity. Some may allow more fans as the tournament progresses.But there will be scarcely any traveling fans, their free and easy movement around Europe either complicated or restricted by rules in place to try to reduce the spread of the virus and its variants, to maintain control of a force that is greater than trade or travel or human interaction, let alone a mere game. There will be no carnival.Still the show will go on. It will do so diminished and deracinated, a shadow of what it was meant to be, but it will go on regardless, irrefutable proof of big-time soccer’s barrel-chested, bullheaded intransigence.Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesScenes of Euro 2020: Aleksandar Ceferin’s optimism, a German fan’s caution and Gareth Bale’s focus.Pool photo by Naomi BakerThe same can be said — more so, in fact — of the summer’s other major tournament, the Copa América. That event supposed to be played in Colombia and Argentina, only for Colombia to be stripped of hosting rights because of civil unrest. The whole competition was then meant to be played in Argentina, until that was ruled out by a surge in Covid cases.At that point, rather than give up, the tournament was simply shifted to Brazil, a country where the virus has killed almost half a million people, and cases continue to run at an alarming rate. Soccer really will not be stopped.It would be easy, then — and to some extent warranted — to chide Ceferin for his lack of foresight, or UEFA for its bullishness and its single-mindedness, or soccer as a whole for a blinkered refusal to cede to reality. It would, though, be slightly hypocritical.We have all, after all, spent much of the last year hoping for the point at which the uncanny, eerie version of existence that we currently inhabit might be banished for good, for the moment that things will go back to what they once were, clinging to the notion, despite all of the evidence, that the normal we once knew will soon be restored.Euro 2020 will highlight how distant that remains. The stadiums will be thinly populated and socially distanced. Fans, in some places, will be asked to present proof of either vaccination or absence of infection to access the games. It will still be a landmark tournament, though perhaps not in the way UEFA envisaged. Not a return to the old, but something entirely new: Euros for the pandemic age.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAnd yet, once it starts, all of that will fall away. All tournaments exist in and of themselves; once the ball and the field and the players take center stage, they develop a life of their own, they become a self-sustaining universe, a monthlong suspension of the outside world. They are breathless and swift and all-consuming, and they make you fall helplessly in love, once more — not with the business of soccer, not with the industrial complex, but with the game at its heart.Euro 2020 will still be an exercise in hubris and pigheadedness and get-there-itis; it will still be a monument to soccer’s unyielding self-satisfaction. But that’s not what will absorb us, over the next month: it will, instead, be the hope and the desolation and the joy of discovery.That the stands are not full, that the carnival is not in full swing, that the world has not yet returned to normal will not matter in those final few seconds before the final whistle, or as the goalkeeper watches on as the ball sails into the corner, or as dreams are dashed or fulfilled. It will not matter that this is not the tournament it was supposed to be. It will be the tournament that it has to be, and that, for now, will be enough.Print This Part Off and Remind Me on July 12Before you settle on a Euro 2020 favorite, remember that Pepe and Portugal lifted the trophy the last time.Christian Hartmann/ReutersThere has always been something of a non sequitur at the heart of the European Championships. For a long time, its calling card — the thing that differentiated it from the World Cup — was its concentration of quality.It was not nearly as glamorous or as global as the greatest show on Earth, the World Cup. From a purely technical standpoint, it was better. In the halcyon days when it had only 16 teams, there was no room, not really, for chaff. The bar for qualifying was so high that few, if any, of those teams that made it as far as the finals were overmatched.And yet, at the same time, the Euros has always been far more susceptible to upsets. Denmark won it in 1992, despite not actually qualifying for it. Greece emerged from obscurity to claim primacy in 2004. Even Portugal, the reigning champion, hardly ranked among the absolute favorites in 2016.Those are just the teams that have won it: the Czech Republic made the final in 1996, and the semifinals in 2004 (that year, at least in these eyes, the Czechs had the best team in the tournament). Russia and Turkey both reached the final four in 2008. Wales did the same five years ago.Given how afflicted by fatigue most of the anticipated contenders will be, there is a fairly compelling theory that this year’s edition will maintain that tradition. Picking a winner, then, would be a fool’s errand. Even picking a clutch of teams as possible candidates may not prove much of a hedge. Still, let’s have a go.A team to beat? Start with France, whose reserves could probably cruise into the quarters.Francois Mori/Associated PressFrance, the reigning world champion, has a strength in depth — Only able to play Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann in attack? Why not throw in Karim Benzema? — that nobody in the tournament can match. On paper, Didier Deschamps’s team should end the month trying to get N’Golo Kanté to celebrate with another trophy.Behind the French, the field is a little more open. England probably has the greatest resources, for all that it has spent the last month trying to convince itself that the absence of James Ward-Prowse is an unsustainable body blow. Portugal has a fine blend of canniness and craft. Belgium, the world’s top-ranked team, has an experienced side aware that this may be its last chance to win something. Italy, unbeaten in 27 games, has few famous names but plenty of momentum.If there is to be a surprise, then the likeliest source is Turkey — the youngest squad in the tournament, and a vibrant, undaunted team — or possibly Poland: a quarterfinal place should not be out of the question, given the way the draw has fallen, and with Robert Lewandowski up front, anything is possible.That leaves Germany and Spain, the two great unknowns. Germany has been drifting for three years or more; Spain has seen its preparations undone by at least two positive coronavirus tests. Either could win it. Either could fall at the first hurdle. It’s the Euros. The line between the two is very fine.CorrespondenceFurther to the discussion of Forward, Madison! in last week’s newsletter and the subject of authenticity in American soccer, Ryan Parks believes that the Oakland Roots are worthy of consideration. “They should be applauded for their connection to their city,” he wrote. “Their official website includes pages on ‘Purpose’ and ‘Culture,’ which highlights their Justice Fund, Nurtured Roots program, and Artist Residency.” I’m aware of their work, Ryan, and would be inclined to agree with you.Diaa Baghat has been watching “Baggio: The Divine Ponytail” on Netflix, and has a question. “If there was an option, who would you like to see play again at their peak? Dead or alive players are accepted in your wish list.”There’s a few fairly obvious answers to this — Maradona, Pelé, Duncan Edwards, Ian Ormondroyd — but I’m going to cheat, just a little, and say that I would have loved to have seen the Fiorentina of Rui Costa and Gabriele Batistuta in the flesh, just once. Or possibly Jim Baxter, a Rangers and Scotland midfielder who I heard a lot about from my dad. Almost too much, really. He’d probably be a bit of a disappointment.We can think of one moment Roberto Baggio wouldn’t mind seeing played again.Andre Camara/ReutersAnd finally, an excellent point from John Nekrasov. “Maybe Massimiliano Allegri, Carlo Ancelotti and José Mourinho are all being hired as a reaction to the failure of the club legend experiment that we were all talking about last summer. We had that wave of Artetas, Lampards and Pirlos being hired as an attempt to bring that new blood. Now, Lampard’s gone, Pirlo’s gone, and Arteta (sadly for my beloved Arsenal) is also hardly thriving in his current role.”That has the ring of truth to it, John, and is damning in its own way: that clubs are so easily frit — as Jim Baxter might have put it — that they rush straight back into the arms of the tried and tested at the first glimpse of any trouble. More

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      How to Watch Euro 2020: Schedule, Location, Teams and More

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      11 cities, 24 teams and hundreds of headaches: The European soccer championship is here after a year’s delay. Here’s what you need to know.The European Championship, generally considered the biggest soccer tournament after the World Cup, is being held this summer after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s a rundown on the teams, the players and the host cities for what is still being called Euro 2020.When and where is the tournament?Euro 2020 — back on, with a few changes, but still refusing to admit it’s 2021 now — runs from June 11 to July 11.The Euros, like the World Cup, traditionally have been hosted by one country, or two in partnership. But for the current edition, European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, decided to spread the games around to at least a dozen cities across Europe. The choice was not universally supported, given the inherent logistical hurdles of managing sites as far apart as Spain and Azerbaijan. But it turned out to be an even more awkward decision once the coronavirus hit.First, the entire tournament was postponed a year. Then, only weeks before the first game, coronavirus restrictions for several more changes: Dublin lost its games, and several matches in Spain were shifted to Seville from Bilbao.Unless something else changes, 11 European cities will host games: Amsterdam, Baku, Bucharest, Budapest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Glasgow, London, Munich, Seville, St. Petersburg.The first game, Italy vs. Turkey, is June 11 in Rome. The knockout stages begin on June 26, and the semifinals and final all will take place at Wembley Stadium in London. The final is July 11.Robert Lewandowski, who broke the Bundesliga goals record this season, is Poland’s biggest threat.Roman Koksarov/Associated PressWho’s playing?Twenty-four teams qualified for the tournament, including all the major European powers you would expect: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England. New rules created qualifying paths for lower-profile countries who normally miss out, allowing North Macedonia to qualify for the first time. Finland, which qualified in the traditional way, is also making its debut.Just about all the top-name players from Europe, like Robert Lewandowski of Poland, Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Kylian Mbappé of France, will be there. Karim Benzema is back in the French team after being dropped five years ago in a sex tape blackmail scandal, but several top players are out, and Spain will arrived at a major tournament without a Real Madrid player for the first time.Who’s missing?Qualifying knocked out regular faces like Serbia and Norway, and Romania and Azerbaijan will host games even as their teams failed to make the field.The absence of Norway will mean no Erling Haaland, whose transfer saga may be the story of the summer. Also missing will be Zlatan Ibrahimovic of Sweden, who has a knee injury, and the veteran Spain defender Sergio Ramos, who was omitted by his coach because of fitness concerns. The Netherlands goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen was dropped after testing positive for the coronavirus, and Germany’s Toni Kroos has only recently returned to training after a recent bout with it.A more recent, more worrisome injury has Belgium concerned: its star midfielder Kevin de Bruyne of Belgium sustained a fractured nose and eye socket in the Champions League final. His status for the monthlong tournament is unclear.Will fans be allowed?Yes, but the numbers and rules vary by city, and the rules are still changing. Scotland recently urged its fans, who can attend games in Glasgow, not to travel to London when the team plays there.The shifting of matches may not be over, either. As teams advance, the tournament schedule still could be affected by rules about travel set by various European governments.Who has won in the past?Portugal is the defending champion. The tournament dates to 1960, and Germany and Spain have the most wins, with three. England is the highest-profile team never to have won it (or even made the final).Who is going to win this time?France is the favorite in the betting at this stage, with England just behind. But the tournament is considered quite open, with Belgium, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands all given a fighting chance. Slovakia and Hungary have the longest shots, at 500-1 or more.Thomas Müller and Germany will rank, as usual, among the tournament favorites.Andreas Schaad/Associated PressYou can also bet on who will score the most goals: The current favorites there are Harry Kane of England, Romelu Lukaku of Belgium, France’s Mbappé and Portugal’s Ronaldo.How does the tournament work?The 24 teams are divided into six groups of four and play three games each in the preliminary round. The top two teams from each group, plus four of the six third-place teams, all advance to a 16-team knockout round.After that, it’s single elimination, with tied games heading to extra time and then penalty kicks, if necessary, to produce a winner.How can I watch?In the United States, the bulk of the games will be on ESPN, with a few on ABC. When two games are played simultaneously, one will run on ESPN2 instead. For Spanish language coverage, many games will be on Univision. Games also will be streamed on ESPN+.Broadcasters elsewhere include Bell Media and TVA (Canada), BBC and ITV (Britain), Optus (Australia), M6 and TF1 (France), ARD and ZDF (Germany) and Wowow (Japan). Here’s a complete list.Now, the most important question. Is there a mascot?Yes. He is Skillzy. He is reportedly inspired by “freestyling, street football and panna,” which is a fancy term for a nutmeg, the move in which a player kicks the ball through an opponent’s legs.Skillzy follows in the footsteps of Super Victor (France 2016), Goaliath (England 1996) and Pinocchio (Italy 1980).Like many sporting mascots, Skillzy has drawn a mixed reception. You be the judge.You might say the Euro 2020 mascot, Skillzy, is edgy. You might also wonder why he’s wearing a hoodie and long sleeves in the summer heat.Robert Ghement/EPA, via Shutterstock More