England U17 2 v Italy U17 1
UEFA European U17 Championship
Group A
Played at Walsall FC
Monday 7 May 2018
Twitter @ball_sup
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A much better “fan experience” today at Walsall, than at Chesterfield the other night. More relaxed, less corporate. Chesterfield had gone into full rabble rouser mode - can you hear, me, make some noise, wave for the camera, I said Can You Hear Me? Today, there were lots of kids attending, Dads, Lads, Mums, Lasses & all combinations thereof. Bit of flag waving. Lion mascots. Piss about penalty shoot out at HT. And, no great assault of the senses. Loved it.
A good game as well. Italy took the lead, but England kept at it & in it to make that two from two in the group. Still no game time for Sheffield United’s Marcus Dewhurst. But that is how it goes. I’m beginning to notice the players a bit more now. As is often the case at age group football, you notice the midfielders more. They’re involved, the ball goes through them.
For the opening games, England have set up with (4) Jimmy Garner (Manchester United) & (8) Thomas Doyle (Manchester City) in midfield. With (19) Matty Daly (Huddersfield Town) pushed up in the hole behind the strikers. Doyle has scored a penalty in each of those two opening games. Daly has been subbed off in both games. (11) Xavier Amaechi (Arsenal) catches the eye because of his style of play. He’s one of those players who thinks he’s full of tricks. He keeps the ball close to his feet, shimmies & shakes. He looks a little greedy at times. No great worries about that at this level. (7) Arvin Appiah (Nottingham Forest) bagged a very good goal to equalise. Early in the game, the Italian defenders got panicked by Amaechi & Appiah. Routinely hauling them down in a sort of jumping on their back stylee as they went at them at pace. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d ended up with less than XI at one stage. It ended up with them having four booked.
I’ll make an observation about reffing at a tournament like this. Today’s four officials were from Iceland, Faroe Islands, Kazakhstan & Northern Ireland. Lingua Franca English (I assume). Basically, in order to avoid different interpretations, they have to be absolutely pedantic sticklers for the rules. That can make them seem whistle happy at times - but, I’m sure they’re keeping the assessors happy in the stands. In a new first for me, the referee had to warn one of the Italian players in the warm up. I hadn’t clicked at first - the three pitch officials were doing their running & stretching in front of the bit I was sat in. They actually had a set of those cones that aren’t cones marking out a warm up area for them. One of the Italian players ended up coming into their zone while he was dribbling a ball. Nowhere near them, mind, but in their cone zone. The ref immediately stopped the whirling & gyrating & went and warned him off. Once all the massed hordes had left the pitch to go back in the rooms, a UEFA Official came & collected the Ref Zone Cones. This game … This game …. (shakes fist).
We had a nice stumble across in Birmingham on the way to The Bescot. The Indian Brewery, Livery Street. (We were actually on our way to The Wolf). A few cask & kegs outside a railway arch alerted us. A neat bar & modern anglo/Indian canteen. I chatted one of the fellas up. The downside was they’d had a good few busy days. And, they’d started to run out of beer. Not what I need to hear. Anyway - they had a few guest craft kegs, a fridge full of their own bottles & cans & a couple on keg.
Indian Brewery IPA at 4.9%
That was very refreshing. But, maybe a little underhopped. Fair play, it grew in bitterness as I got down it. There was some citrus & it was nice & rich.
Indian Brewery, Birmingham Lager in a tin at 4.5%
I was much less impressed with that one. Bland & ordinary. To be honest, I couldn’t quite work out what they were trying to do. It wasn’t oversweet fizzy normal lager sugar water. Nor was it barley sugar & dirty. It was just bland, it didn’t taste of anything.
656/1357
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