Shadow Scholar Syndicate: EM 2020--Day One Recap

Your Syndicate Daily is proudly presented by "Bündnis 90" and the European Greens.

With warm preemptive congratulations to Kanzlerin Baerbock :)

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

Day 1: Recap

Bookie’s Stats—

Spread: 1-0

Straight up: 1-0-0

Gli auguri, gli Azzurri! Way to meet a line, Signori!

Your ever loyal bookie isn't even slightly bitter about forking out the "welcome back into the fold cash". You fully deserved this day. No shame in paying to watch a good show. As the money "forzas" right out of my wallet, but I was screaming "forza Italia" right along with you. Thank you for bringing football back!

Prego, Prego. Grazie, Grazie.

Of course, we still have to talk about that opening 45 minutes. Not up to snuff, l'amici. Leonardo Bonnucci and Giorgio Chielleni waltzing the ball out of the back like a pair of grandfathers with tennis-ball-walkers.

They were slower than the miniature remote-controlled Volkswagen carrying out the match ball.

Someone please tell me that this awesomeness will commence fifty more times in the remaining fixtures. At the very least, this should be the manner in which all VfL Wolfsburg matches begin.

A shame that Oliver Glasner left Lower Saxony as it would have proved so much fun to watch him argue with Jörg Schmadtke and Marcel Schäfer over who gets to run the controls.

S.S.S. Tactical Breakdown

A one-match day affords us the opportunity to check in with both teams this evening. Note that, while this won't always be the case, we'll uphold the tradition of 2018 by eventually including every line-up in the goodbyes section if necessary.

All shapes determined by your friendly bookie's subjective naked eye.

Lineup—Italy—PROJECTED (5-3-2) (5/28/2021)

Obviously, we knew that it wasn't going to quite look like this. The Group A Preview section was written several days before Roberto Mancini even submitted his final squad. Once the friendlies got underway, Alessandro Florenzi and Leonardo Spinazolla emerged as the fullbacks. The late Lorenzo Pellegrini injury shifted the whole dynamic.

What we ultimately got on this fine day in the eternal city ultimately got the job done. It nevertheless came as no surprise to see this constellation produce very few quality chances in the first half.

Lineup—Italy—Match One (4-3-3) (6/11/2021)

It's actually kind of a back-five in that the fullbacks are deployed wide and further afield. As noted above, Chielleni and Bonncci took it upon themselves to initiate plenty of centralized carries out of the back. Possession wise, the Azzuri got the triangles right going forward, but it was still damn boring cagey football.

No real tactical shifts from Mancini were discernible as the match progressed. He brought on Giovanni di Lorenzo on a like-for-like at the half and the laborious, workmanlike short-passing game continued. They basically wore the Turks down with quick, one-touch stuff. Their opponents lost confidence and focus after Merit Demiral's own goal.

We do have, from the bookie's vantage point, a tactical error from Senol Günes to cover.

Lineup—Turkey—PROJECTED (4-1-4-1) (5/28/2021)

Your boy Vicey pretty much got the shape spot on, though his Bundesliga bias saw him pick Kaan Ayhan and Ozan Kabak as the center backs. German googles on that one. From the moment the Turkmen took the pitch, one could tell that the Italians would have a lot of space to work with.

Lineup—Turkey—Match One (4-1-4-1) (6/11/2021)

As I remarked when setting the line, the hosts would have effectively no trouble getting behind this. Had Mancini's men not been so tentative themselves, they would have finished it off much earlier.

With the disparities in both shots and possession so embarrassingly bad, Günes had little choice but to try something different at the half.

Lineup—Turkey—46th minute (4-2-4)

A bit of offensive augmentation with Hasan Calhonoglu sliding in, Cengiz Ünder replacing Yaziki, and Kenan Karaman rotating with the subbed-on winger frequently to generate something in attack. It seemed destined to blow up in his face, however, as the Italian fullbacks could easily shred a pair of rotating wingers.

S.S.S. Half-Assed Culture Minute

"Baggio: The Divine Pony-Tail"

That's right, gentlemen! It's back.

Improvements in VAR, ideally, mean that we can return to our much more intellectually salubrious cultural feature! No more nightly debates. I have no desire to re-litigate that purported late first-half handball. Sure, it might have been a penalty in Serie A.....but we're not in the Italian League. Wild gesticulating won't work.

Those of you with Netflix been watching the Roberto Baggio biopic? Your friendly bookie will be brutally honest. As is so often the case with cheaply produced Netflix serials, the acting/writing/production values are fairly substandard. These streaming services still have a lot of catching up to do.

It still kind of reminds you of that other Netflix production, "The English Game"....with worse football scenes. Some members of the Philly contingent might still find it a guilty enough pleasure since you get to see Il Divin Codino again, catch a twinge of 1994 nostalgia, and revisit the whole mysterious Italian Buddhist thing.

It'll work for you if you wish to parlay today's mood a bit. You also get to hear your mother tongue for 90 minutes again,

“Riffs of the Day”—Day One

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Reader: Can I get the blazers worn by the Italian coaching staff in my Schwag Pack?

Vicey: Dammit, 8-M! Since when have you known me to be able to afford Giorgio Armani tailored men's apparel?

That shit probably costs $5,000! Can't I just buy you a Pizza Margherita instead? Maybe one of those new ones from the new Rome automats? The one's that taste like shoe leather?

Reader: I'm crying watching Andrea Bocelli.

Vicey: I'm crying too, 33-M. I guess there is crying in football. Strong men also cry. Strong men also cry.

Reader: How do you pronounce that Turkish center-halve's name?

Vicey: You mean Söyüncü? What kind of stupid question is that, 56-M? Just stick a rubber band around your tongue, speak through you diastema, and follow the umlauts [SOY-Ue-nZe-TZUE]. There. That wasn't that hard.

Reader: They're failing at everything, dramatically gesturing every five seconds, and trying to get the ref to give them the game.

Vicey: Indeed, 88-M. It's no nice to have the Italians back!

Reader: I'm not sure this really qualifies as football. Feel a bit let down?

Vicey: Easy, 5-M. The Germans don't play until Tuesday.

Reader: Copa America Lines?

Vicey: It's not quite Summer until the syndicate's most compulsive gambler writes in to find out what else he can bet on. You should come down here to LA, 23-M. They're about to install fully legal betting kiosks everywhere!

Anyways, I'll give you the programming update. Back in 2019, your friendly bookie covered the Copa America in its entirety. It was part of that triple-headed monster of a syndicate chapter that provided full features on the Women's World Cup, the Africa Cup of Nations, and Latin America's continental showpiece.

I even provided lines and some analysis for the CONCACAF Gold Cup in that behemoth known as "Syndicate: Shadow Heart"! This year, it's all about the Euros, friend. Rest assured that I will throw in some CA lines in the Preview section of the dailies, which you can find below.

DAY TWO--PREVIEW

Wales vs. Switzerland

vs.