Shadow Scholar Syndicate: EM 2020--Day Four Recap

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With warm preemptive congratulations to Kanzlerin Baerbock :)

Your friendly bookie wholeheartedly endorses a German velvet revolution. Let's go Europe!

Day 4: Recap

Bookie’s Stats—

Spread: 3-7

Straight up: 4-4-2

An absolutely delectable day of football this one. Even the 0-0 draw in the capper remained riveting right up until the final whistle. Your friendly bookie assiduously works on the round two lines as the tournament picks up momentum. It shapes up to be a round full of more surprises and at least two upset tips.

Regarding what transpired in the past few hours, few will contest the bookie's decision to award the day to his selected Czech "Bundesliga Buddy" Patrik Schick. Goodness what an electrifying tally for the first man to score a brace for his country since Milan Baros.

Shock and awe from the Leverkusen man. Where has that been the second half of the season?

Poor David Marshall will never feature in a more unflattering picture.

.....okay maybe this one from half a second later served as the true nadir.

S.S.S. Tactical Breakdown

A heavy section tonight. It's all Germany tomorrow.

We'll check in on both teams from the early match. In light of how much I heard from the Isle-philes among you today, I suppose I don't have much of a choice. Everyone wants to know how the Scots look ahead of Friday's big historic rivalry reunion. We'll also be checking in on both nations from the middle fixture. Every bit of extra examination counts in the "Group of Life".

In point of fact the only team involved in today's action whom we will not be covering are Janne Andersson's Swedes. Damn him. Your friendly bookie feels so foolish thinking that maybe this time the old man Olof might have some surprise personnel selections in store for us. He's about as much fun as a Charlie Rose roundtable on Igmar Bergman films.

Lineup—Czech Republic—PROJECTED (4-2-2-2) (6/3/2021)

Really thought we'd see a service striker here. We'll be covering the application, and misapplication, of that position several times in today's coverage. It seems the teams that don't strictly need one are utilizing it whilst it remains absent from the squads that inconspicuously scream for it.

Getting back on tangent, your friendly bookie got the bit about Jaroslav Silhavy's Czechs being deliberately built to be boring spot on. Instead of observing a diamond-box, however, we got this.

Lineup—Czech Republic—Match One (4-2-3-1) (6/14/2021)

About as rigidly straightforward a 4-2-3-1 as it gets. Vladimir Dardia operated with only the bare minimum amount of separation from his third axis wingers. The constellation has a tidy feel to it, yet the Scots were able to peel off sixes Thomas Soucek and Alex Kral far too easily.

Steve Clarke's Tartans got behind the fourth axis regularly. They rarely lost any midfield duels, generated far more scoring chances, and even retained a stark optical advantage in possession. Schick's first goal shortly before the half counted as a bad lapse at the worst possible time.

Keeper Marshall straying off his line meant that the hosts at Hampden got rather brutally punished for to bad mistakes in a match during which they were essentially the better team. Schick's goals served as clinical, perfectly timed finishes in a result that felt slightly unfair.

The Highlanders played much better than their own personnel situation suggested they would.

Lineup—Scotland—PROJECTED (5-2-1-2) (6/3/2021)

As soon as word of Kieran Tierney's injury came down, the bookie nearly rolled the line up by two goals. A huge loss like this looked to sink them. Clarke had little choice but to put a novel back-three together and withdraw his best attacker, John McGinn, back for additional support.

What the Scottish trainer cobbled together worked surprisingly well.

Lineup—Scotland—Match One (5-1-2-2) (6/14/2021)

Scott McTominay did a serviceable job pulling the strings in midfield. Andrew Robertson and Stuart Armstrong came out stronger on most of their individual battles on the left. Dykes and Christie rotated deftly and, as a result, generated their fair share of chances. Poor Jack Henry was unlucky to hit the crossbar.

Che Adams could have done much better in his 45 minutes of relief. Bookie nevertheless declares himself impressed with the work of substitute actors James Forrest and Kevin Nisbet. Callum McGregor was above average too.

It'll take some deep consideration of potential player remedies before setting a line for the big England matchup. One has the sense that some solutions present themselves and that, after sitting down in earnest, the jigsaw puzzle might come together.

Apropos puzzles, the bookie owes his most sincerest apologies to 71-M, 74-M, and indeed the entire Polish contingent. I've bloody well done it again, haven't I? What can I say? There was no deliberate deception.

Honestly thought Sousa had put the pieces in place.

Lineup—Poland—PROJECTED (3-4-3) (6/6/2021)

In the pre-tournament friendlies, it appeared as if the controversial late head-coaching appointment had refined a promising enough blueprint, sticking with a 3-4-3 while test-driving promising young talents like Tymoteusz Puchacz, Karol Swiderski, and Przemyslaw Placheta.

Entering the start of meaningful play, the Bialo had a fresh young feel to them. That sentiment evaporated fairly quickly once we saw this. Ugh. Practical capitulation. This Pollack sympathizer turned red with furry, then white with a nauseous case of the "for fuck's sake, not again."

Lineup—Poland—Match One (4-5-1) (6/14/2021)

Why? Merely because the rest of the planet--perhaps frightened of learning Polish spelling--assumes that Robert Lewandowski is the only player on this team, doesn't necessarily make it so. To be sure, one has to built around the world's most in-form striker to an extent. To flagrantly insist that he carry the team on his shoulders hands the match to the opponent.

There were better options. We return to the issue of Sousa's very late appointment. The Portuguese manager clearly doesn't know half his team, let alone his best team. Asking Grzegorz Krychowiak to cover that amount of space in midfield almost invited the bookings. There can be no excuse for his eventual dismissal.

To label the constellation a 4-5-1 is in some respects being generous. Krychowiak's overstretched assignment made it look more like a 3-3-3-1 at times. The Slovaks cut off the supply lines to Lewandowski with ease as everything was too centrally vertical. After Poland were reduced to ten men, we saw this.

Lineup—Poland—75th minute (4-4-1)

Horrible. Downright bleeding terrible. More blatant capitulation. From this rubbish one can divine a faint glimmer of hope. New Union Berlin man Puchacz and MLS middle-ager Frankowski provided a breath of fresh air once allowed on the pitch.

With these actors on the uptick, and the Krychowiak nonsense not an option, maybe Sousa can built a better XI next time. That might prove too generous an assumption as well. The gaffer has barely had time to settle in. He can't even process the evidence right in front of his face.

That brings us to the Slovaks.

Lineup—Slovakia—PROJECTED (4-2-3-1) (6/6/2021)

Stefan Tarkovic has evidently been paying attention. He knows a little something about the club form and assignments of his players. The bookie was floored to see him proceed with the following set-up once the players acclimatized:

Lineup—Slovakia—Match One (4-4-2) (6/14/2021)

What? Is this 1. FC Köln in January? Gobsmacked. What a shock. He deployed Ondrej Duda as his main striker and used Marek Hamsik as the short man. Poland's Sousa could learn a thing or two from this. At the very least, Lewandowski needs a direct service striker buttressing him. Milik, Kownacki, Swiderski, or even Zienlinski could fill this role.

Insofar as the Slovaks are concerned, I'd say the jury remains miles out on whether this actually constituted an intelligent strategy. The red card and Szczesny's goalkeeping error influenced the result more than the actual tactics did. Unbecomingly bad misses from both Lewy and Bednarek near the end robbed the Pollacks of the draw.

While certainly not as much in the dark about the Slovaks as I was when composing the preview section, I'll cop to not having learned a great deal about them here. On a wild guess, I got the talisman right. Still not in the mood to crown a cinderella candidate as they didn't look very cohesive. Their short striker experiment proved inconclusive.

The final look in today's daily brings us to the once mighty La Roja.

Lineup—Spain—PROJECTED (4-3-3) (6/6/2021)

Busquets' COVID diagnosis changed everything. With the entire team essentially forced into individualized training and the midfield linchpin gone, it's a small miracle Enrique rolled out anything remotely coherent on the pitch. What we saw was effective enough.

Lineup—Spain—Match One (4-3-3) (6/14/2021)

It worked fine. Buy now, everyone's familiar with the absurd possession statistics. According to some stats-houses, the Iberians lorded over as much as 90 percent. Marco Llorente and Dani Olmo were top class. Alba, Torres, and Koke were well above average. Somehow, Pau Torres and Aymeric Laporte look like they have their distancing sorted out.

There is and shall remain quite a lot of discussion about the finishing ability of Alvaro Morata. We expected this. In the preview section, your friendly bookie talked a bit about how--so long as the Costa Morata merry-go-round lives, everyone will fall back on the narrative that the Spaniards are now a desperate footballing nation. Okay. The Laporte smuggling doesn't help either.

Having had a chance to see a team that barely had a chance to train together over the course of 90 exiting, though goalless minutes, I largely think that they'll be okay. Note that I've thought that many times before. It does surprise that Enrique's confidence level in Morata is so low that he uses him as a suppressed false-nine.

Furthermore, the Swedes rattled off by far the better scoring chances. Meh. We'll chalk that up to this still inchoate team not being sure what to do off the ball. Plenty of time to play themselves into form yet.

S.S.S. Half-assed Culture Minute

Still a bit miffed that an ironclad internal promise to maintain this segment throughout got derailed by the events of day two, your friendly bookie will lay down two quick ones this eve. This will bring us back up to a grand total of four in four days.

Er, note that we're likely going to fall behind again tomorrow once the chronicler inadvertently writes a 15-page-rant on the topic of the German national team's failure.

"T2: Trainspotting"

Since many -Ms woke up this morning with Tartan fever, I'll take the opportunity to herald what I always considered to be one of the best sequels too many were afraid to give a chance. I'm continually surprised that so many cling to one of their favorite childhood cult era films; as if it a different experience might somehow shatter a fragile bubble of nostalgia comfort.

In my opinion, that can't really happen. For the sake of argument, say ninety percent of sequels suck. True. How on earth does that besmirch the original or, worse still, ruin your childhood? For that matter, what the hell kind of security blanket are you holding onto with the movie that featured a dead baby roaming on the ceiling?

The truth this that all those involved put a lot of thought into this sequel. It pulls elements from Irvine Welsh's initial novel that weren't woven into the first film, takes a bit from Welsh's sequel, and still manages to surprise with enough original content in the screenplay to keep fans of both books interested.

As we welcome the Scots back after 23 years, welcome this franchise back too.

"The Four Year Plan"

Poland coach Paulo Sousa also being a hot topic after today's action, you might as well check out the QPR documentary in which he features as well. Bookie genuinely doesn't want to spoil anything about what is an absolute masterpiece capturing the raw nature of the football business.

With that in mind, I will warn Poland fans that they may want to wait until after the tournament. There's enough rawness ahead.

“Riffs of the Day”—Day Four

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Reader: I can boogie.

Vicey: That you can, 11-M. That you can.

Reader: How in the hell have we not been discussing Scotland all these years?

Vicey: It's a simple matter of European geopolitics, my friend. All those messy "velvet divorces" in the old Eastern bloc created a slew of new nations. The constituent parts of the UK got overrun by all the new competition.

Reader: Now London Dykes is paying tribute to Craig Burley with bleached blonde hair too!

Vicey: 36-M brings up a valid point. This whole tournament is turning into an Euro '96 circle-jerk. Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Ondrej Duda can't possibly be trying to emulate an old national hero, can he?

Reader: Jesus. McTominay too! How many near misses can we have? Watching all these hot, depressed Scottish moms is killing me.

Vicey: Bwahahaha. Not sure I ever expected to encounter the phrase "hot, depressed Scottish moms" in my life, but now I want it to be a part of my life, 16-M!

Reader: Aaaarghh. It happened again!

Vicey: I am so very sorry, 74-M. I told you to tie Wojciech Szczesny to the goal-post, you tied him to the goal-post, and somehow he still managed to bungle home the first own-goal by a keeper in Euro history.

All is lost. It'll be nice to see Lukasz Fabianski again.

Reader: So much for those "Swedish surprises!"

Vicey: Are you referring to the fact that I falsely predicted Janne Andersson's lineup or the fact that I'm committed to going an entire recap without posting pictures of Swedish girls, 15-M?

Reader: If only Alvaro Morata's finishing was as neat as his haircut.

Vicey: ....and zing 123-M!