Euro 2021 Round of 16 Scores: Day 3
Spain 5, Croatia 3 - The first of the two 2018 World Cup finalists to get knocked out on this day, Croatia lost to the mighty Spanish team, which is emerging as the likely favorites to win it all.
Spain was actually dominating this game 3-1 entering the final minutes of regulation, then had to survive an inexplicable and highly uncharacteristic collapse, as they allowed two goals in the final few minutes of play. Croatia was able to force extra time, despite seemingly being on the way to defeat, and thus elimination, in regulation play.
Once in extended time, however, it as all Spain again. They scored two goals in a span of four minutes to put the game, and the Croats, away. Croatia falls short, but they can be proud of their effort in this game nevertheless.
Switzerland 3, France 3 (5-4 penalty kicks) - This was the second game of a great day in European football play, and the second consecutive game that went into extra time. Unfortunately for me, France was the second of the two World Cup finalists of 2018 to get knocked out.
For a recap of the game, I figured I could use my brother's email description here:
The good news is that although Les Bleus played like shit in the first half, and perhaps the first ten to fifteen minutes of the second half, they finally started showing glimpses of why they're ranked number 2 in the world, and of course the reigning world champions. They scored 3 goals in the second half, and led 3-1 in the 75th minute. The bad news is that the defending was abysmal, which means that the Swiss managed to score two goals in the final 10 minutes of regulation to force overtime. Neither team could find the back of the net in overtime, so it went to penalties, and Switzerland won that shootout 5-4. Every player on both sides converted his attempt until Mbappé's shot was blocked. Not that I blame him. Like I said, it's the defending that caused France the victory. When you're up by two goals late in the second half against a relatively modest opponent like Switzerland, you need to seal the deal, and Les Bleus simply failed to do that. Anyway, the next opponent for Les Bleus would have been Spain, and quite frankly you need to play WAY better than France has been playing to get a good result against La Roja. Oh well. There's always next year's World Cup. (Which I don't plan on watching by the way, seeing as I consider it a travesty that a country like Qatar, with its disgraceful human rights record and inexcusably poor treatment of migrant construction workers, was selected to host a major international sporting event.)
Yes, France is eliminated. And as my brother already mentioned, it wound up being Mbappé, the biggest star of French soccer, who wound up kicking the shot that ended up being blocked. But he is a tremendous player, and I for one am glad that he is on France. Not going to be too hard on him. It kind of reminded me of Roberto Baggio in the 1994 World Cup final, when the biggest star on the Italian team missed the key kick.
One thing that definitely makes this otherwise bitter pill a little easier to take is that France has been on a tremendous run up to this point. They entered the tournament as the number two ranked team in the world, had gone to the final in the previous Euro tournament of 2016, and most obviously, they won the World Cup in 2018. So I am not too sad.
This was, ironically, the first game of the tournament that I got to watch a lot of. Managed to get home early enough to catch the end of it, at least the end of the first extra time session, all of the second extra time session, and then the nerve-racking shootout.
Unfortunately, this just was not France's day, nor France's tournament. But I still feel good about where French soccer is presently, and look forward to the future with this still very talented and promising team.
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