2024 In Review: Media Consumed

One of the things that struck me this year was just how much media I consume at the moment. At any given time I'm watching a few TV shows and movies (based on interest and on feeling like I'm getting my money's worth from the various streaming services I pay for), reading a number of books and comics, listening to music and podcasts, and maybe playing video games. Which all makes it odd when I consider that it doesn't feel like it's been that good of a year for it all, somehow?

In fairness, I have kept up with a number of shows, particularly from Disney Plus. Of those, X-Men 97 was the clear standout, both because it was a good treatment of the characters and because it dovetailed well with the comics I was reading this year. Echo was decent, though maybe not as memorable as Hawkeye, where Maya Lopez originated, and the Acolyte had some promise but didn't necessarily live up to it. Its cancellation feels like capitulation to the toxic review bombers, but I also don't feel like I'll wither and die not knowing what happens next. 

Agatha All Along was another promising one, which did a very nice job of playing a long con on its viewers, at the same time that it was pulling the con on its characters. Its seventh episode, "Death's Hand in Mine", was the standout, but somehow I felt like it whiffed at the end - not in undoing Agatha's death, but rather in failing to really explain her motivations. I liked the fact that the Witches' Road never really existed, though.

That said, there was one other big standout, and that was Shogun. I already wrote about it, so I won't go on at length here, but it was probably the most compelling show I watched all year. Honorable mention also goes to Slow Horses, Fargo and Fallout, while Bel Air remained the most fun cheesiness. I'm expecting Slow Horses and Fallout to get more seasons, but I'm also hoping for more from Fargo and Bel Air.

In terms of movies, I feel like the one standout was Deadpool and Wolverine, which is the only film I watched twice. It held up just as well on the second viewing, on Disney Plus, but I'd have even been happy to catch it in theaters a second time. Dune Part Two was pretty good, though maybe not the visual feast that the first part represented, while the Maxine Minx/Pearl trilogy of horror movies from Ti West was good, trashy fun - particularly the first two movies. The Zone of Interest was so different from the book that it might as well have had a different title, but it was a fascinating, harrowing watch. And for ongoing comfort watching, I started the year with Fox's X-Men series and continued with a new MCU rewatch, which let me re-evaluate a couple of films and confirmed my opinions of the others.

Turning to books, the one that was most influential was Douglas Wolk's All the Marvels, which has brought me into the world of critical analysis of American superhero comics. It led me to The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz's review of how postwar comics informed progressive activism and imagery, and vice versa, as well as Guy Mankowski's Albion's Secret History, which I picked up because of its references to music but was pleased to see that it talked about other cultural aspects of Englishness.

I also read a lot of Richard Osman and Mick Herron, and I'm debating picking up Osman's latest, even though it's not in the Thursday Murder Club series. Other than that, history was a big part of my reading, particularly the Shortest History series, as I took in the volumes on Italy, Japan and India.

For comics, I mostly read X-Men related books, though Wolk's book convinced me to try The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, which turned out to be a great read. A friend lent me Image's W0rldtr33, and that was a nice change from the superhero stuff. I'm still debating whether or not to get the DC Universe Infinite app, but somehow the pile of physical comics beside my bed isn't diminishing fast enough for me to go ahead with that one.

For podcasts, I finally finished Revolutions, which I started in 2022, just as it was ending. Ironically, just as I was finishing its final series on the Russian Revolution, Mike Duncan started it up again, but this time with a speculative story about a possible Martian Revolution. I don't know if I'll check it out, but it might have to wait until it's done - somehow I found it harder to retain information from the Revolutions format than I did from Duncan's History of Rome.

Keeping the X-Men theme going, however, the standout podcast for me this year was Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men. I've mostly been listening in order from when they started, so I'm only up to the episodes from 2016, when they were covering Inferno, though I made sure to listen to their more recent review of X-Men 97 and their interview with Lenore Zann, who played Rogue. Their show's given me a taste for more comics-related podcasts, so I've started exploring Wolk's Voice of Latveria, and at some point soon I'll be checking out the Cerebrocast for more X-related goodies.

And finally, my video gaming has been limited primarily to various Kingdom Rush tower defense games on my iPad. I've been playing them off and on for about a decade, but my interest really took off when the Youtuber Voduke published his magisterial ranking of all the heroes in the series. That led me to buy a few heroes and towers across the various games of the series, including the DLC levels for the fourth installment, Vengeance. 

The big news for this year was the launch of Kingdom Rush Alliance, the fifth tower defense game in the series; for the first time I was there from the start, though on some level I found it a little underwhelming - I still haven't been able to figure out if that's because it only offered the main campaign at launch, whereas I discovered all the other games after they'd been out for a while and had released a lot of elite levels. Alliance has its charms, though, so I won't say it's terrible or on the wrong path, but it does feel a little lacking in replayability. I'll have to see how I feel when the next elite levels and its first DLC drop.

Looking ahead to next year, I'm hoping for big things from Marvel's new offerings, particularly the fourth Captain America movie, Brave New World. Having watched the MCU's Infinity Saga again, it's clear that Marvel dropped the ball a bit in the Multiverse Saga by not giving us more glimpses of the core characters - if you think about it, this is the first time we're seeing the new Cap since 2021's Falcon and Winter Soldier, and we're not getting a new Avengers movie until 2026, so it'll be a gap of seven years since Endgame. That means Brave New World will have a lot riding on it, particularly since Marvel had to pivot away from the Kang storyline they were doing.

I'm also hoping for a good new season from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which will hopefully make up for the end of Lower Decks next week. I'm sure other, unheralded shows will come up, and I'm looking forward to being pleasantly surprised by them as they launch.

Overall, though, I'm hoping to spend a little less time consuming media and more time... I dunno, doing stuff? I wouldn't say my media diet made me stay home more, but now that I'm not really sequestering myself like I did during Covid, I think I can go out and explore the world more again.

Or maybe we'll be stuck inside again thanks to the new administration? I'll explore some of those concerns in my next blog, which will be a rundown of my 2024. Though I'll spoil the main theme for you here: 2024 sucked, just like the eight years before it, and like the four years that are coming now. But next time I'll explain just how 2024 sucked. Lucky you!

Quick One on the Hunter Biden Pardon

Whenever I'm with my mom, she'll usually ask me what I think about some cultural or political thing that's going on, and generally speaking, I refuse to venture an opinion. There are lots of reasons for this, whether some deep-seated thing about being criticized later for my answer, or because I honestly don't care - when she asked me over Thanksgiving about the prospect of President Biden pardoning his son Hunter, it was primarily the second one.

I haven't followed that case a ton, beyond reading a couple of articles here and there, as well as listening to Hunter's interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast a few years ago. So I don't know the ins and outs, beyond whatever's filtered out through osmosis into the wider culture. Based on that, my read is that Hunter probably is a bit dodgy, but that his dad probably isn't... or isn't dodgy for the same reasons.

When President Biden announced this week that he'd be pardoning his son for any crimes he may have committed between 2014 and 2024, I thought about that conversation with my mom, and then decided that I was okay with it. Part of it is probably that phenomenon where a party's voters agree with an action when their party's leaders do it, and disagree with it when the other party's leaders do it. But part of it is also a slightly nihilistic satisfaction at seeing the Democrats doing something that the Republicans have been happy to do forever (and make no mistake, Bill Clinton made dodgy pardons too).

Trump's been talking about pardoning the January 6th rioters forever. Some news headlines have suggested that Biden's pardon of Hunter gives Trump the "excuse", but it was always going to happen. And Trump's going to pardon himself for the January 6th thing and the missing documents case. That was going to happen regardless of what Biden did.

So the reason I'm broadly in favor is that, if Biden hadn't pardoned his son, Hunter would be at the mercy of Trump's Justice Department as of January 20th. Make no mistake, they'd have thrown the book at him, and they wouldn't have minded any of the bleating about political witch-hunts that would have ensued. At least this way, Biden's earning some of the criticism he's getting from the right, and his son is off the hook.

For the moment, anyway. When I brought it up with my mom today at dinner, she was a little less pleased with it than I was, but she also pointed out that Trump's people are going to... ahem... find some trumped-up charges to get Hunter on. Realistically speaking, laws are only effective insofar as they're enforced, so there's probably very little stopping Trump from ordering his attorney general to have Hunter thrown in jail on general principle. Especially given that the Supreme Court ruled this year that the president can commit crimes while in office.

But this pardon is a last middle finger to Trump and the whole ecosystem around him, which depends on sycophants to enthusiastically do whatever he says, as well as moderates to criticize the Democrats more severely for doing the same things that the Republicans do. The whole "when they go low, we go high" thing has been totally invalidated - and if it's bad for democracy and the rule of law that certain pardons are skirting dangerously close to dodgy territory, then too bad. I'm sick of Democrats getting steamrolled by Republican gamesmanship (cf. Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016).

Anyway, what's bad for democracy and the rule of law isn't so much a father pardoning his wayward son, shady as he may or may not be, as a convicted felon and known insurrectionist getting voted into office on promises of being a dictator on day one and of prosecuting his political rivals. I wish the pearl-clutching brigade had spent more time criticizing that for the past eight years, rather than enabling Trump's worst instincts.

The Darkest and/or Stupidest Timeline

I won't deny that it's been very hard to be existential the last couple of weeks. The worst possible outcome of the elections came about, and now all we have to look forward to in the lead-up to January 20th is learning exactly how screwed we are. Matt Gaetz as attorney general? Sure! Some dum-dum from Fox News who doesn't believe in germs as Defense secretary? Hey, why not? The anti-vax, brain-worm guy in charge of Health and Human Services? The more the merrier.

All the good news at the moment feels transitory at best (e.g. the Onion buying Infowars), or a bit infuriating (e.g. Marine Le Pen potentially going to jail for misuse of EU funds). That last is infuriating because we could have short-circuited Trump's return, but we decided to dismantle all our guardrails for democracy and rule of law instead. So now I get to worry if the food I eat is going to kill me, and I won't be able to get vaccinated against diseases anymore. I'd inject bleach, like Trump suggested during the pandemic, but I won't even be able to tell if it's pure bleach or adulterated with some crap or something.

I did engage in one meaningless act of defiance (two, if you want to be nitpicky) and deleted both my Twitter accounts this week. There was a little hemming and hawing over conversations I've had over the years, but fuck it, I'd been inactive so long (except for posting links to this blog) that I don't even miss it.

Instead I'm now on Bluesky, which, yeah, feels a tiny bit like old Twitter, and also doesn't come with the soul-crushing negativity of the last few years. I'm following a lot of writers and interesting people there, so hopefully my timeline evolves past people comparing it to Twitter. That said, I have already had to block a fascist, just to give you a sense of how much the sewers are overflowing.

The best part is that I fired my therapist last month, because I wasn't getting much out of it and she kept minimizing my concerns, saying it was just anxiety. That may be true, but I caught myself wishing I could talk to her last week - until I realized that she'd probably just have told me I was spiraling again. If they do deport everyone in January, I might drop her a line again, assuming neither of us has been sent to Venezuela or been buried in a ditch somewhere in the Central Valley.

On the plus side, now that another pandemic and lockdown is pretty much inevitable, I don't feel like I have to defend my continued Covid-hoarding. Indeed, I may have to increase my reserves of toilet paper, paper towels and Kleenex boxes, ahead of any further catastrophes.

There's also the possibility of moving to Europe, but a good many places are already run by fascists (Italy), or are under threat of it in the near future (Germany). This might be the opportunity my dad's been waiting for, that I finally move back to Italy. Or I might try Ireland, which is apparently an expensive real estate market, so I'll feel right at home not being able to buy a house there. I also have to keep on my little sister's good side, so that if needed, she can sponsor me to move to Australia.

On the plus side, if I have to move to a place with fresh air, public transportation and single-payer healthcare, I'll probably get a million times healthier within a month. Which means more McDonald's! Also, I know where the Taco Bells in London and Sydney are, so I'll be covered from that perspective.

Hmm. Better pack the statins anyway, just in case.

This post started as an aimless brain-dump of my thoughts on the past few weeks and then turned into a standup act, so maybe it's best to end here. I'll be back in the next few weeks with various musings on TV shows, movies, comics and roundups of 2024, but I'll end with this final thought:

We haven't really had a good year since 2015 (which itself was pretty sucky for a number of people). My hope with the election was that we could move toward turning a corner, but now I see that at least the next four years are gonna suck hard too. I'm hoping to find ways to make them suck less, at least within my circle of control, but 13-plus years of suckage is a long time, there's no getting around it.

In the meantime, come find me on Bluesky!

Two Different Visions of 'Salem's Lot (And X)

I haven't read that much Stephen King, and I haven't read him in a while, but I absolutely loved 'Salem's Lot when I read it in 2003 or 2004. I read it at the right time to be primed for the updated NBC miniseries that came out in 2004, starring Robe Lowe as Ben Mears and Donald Sutherland as Straker, but it's also been so long since I watched it that I don't remember anything except the iconic scene where Barlow kills Mark Petrie's parents - instead of clonking their heads together, he spins their bodies around, breaking their necks.

These are the things that stick with you, 20 years after the fact.

I also knew that there was a 1979 version, but I can't recall how much of it I saw - if any. In any case, just before I left for Europe I saw that Max was getting ready to release a new version, so I put it down on my "to-watch" list, and dutifully caught it when I got home. My short review is, just watch the 1979 version instead.

This is exactly what I did, and the differences are pretty stark, even though the new movie is pretty indebted to the 1979 version, moreso, in some ways, than it is to the book.

The 2024 version suffers from two big problems. First, it is a single, two-hour movie, instead of a three-hour TV miniseries (as the previous two versions were). The pleasures of the novel come from the slow unfolding of the horror of what's going on, after we've become acquainted with the characters who live in the town and their relationships to one another. This new movie has pretty much none of that, so that the characters feel like they're on rails - they're just doing their thing as dictated by the plot, without it feeling like any of their actions are organic.

The other big problem for me is that the new movie is set in the 1970s, as the book and the first miniseries were. I love a well-done period piece, but this version suffers from the same issue that a lot of 70s-set movies made in modern times do, which is throwing in 70s signifiers to really hammer home what decade we're in. In the 1979 version, Ben Mears drives a jeep, but in the 2024 version he drives a sort of Impala that is intended to scream 1970s. The 2004 doesn't have this problem, because it sets the story in the present.

There's another issue with Ben Mears, which is his age. David Soul was 36 when he played the character in the 1979 version, while Lewis Pullman is 31 in this year's version. Five years doesn't seem like much, but it does give you a change in perspective, as you start to see middle age on the horizon - and it's particularly important here, because of Ben's backstory as (supposedly) a grieving widower. I say "supposedly", because the 2024 version doesn't give Ben any of that backstory - he's just some guy who lived in the Lot as a kid and came back. This version also takes away his interest in the Marsten House, which is the thing that brings him back to the Lot in the other versions.

I don't particularly begrudge other changes the new version makes. It may have been more true to life that the only Black character in the 1979 version was one of the gravediggers - and he has, at best, one line in a single scene. But the actor that was cast as Mark Petrie is pretty good, and I'm never going to complain about Alfre Woodard in a role (here she replaces Jimmy Cody, Ben's first ill-fated sidekick in the book).

But overall, the better technology for photography and special effects ends up detracting from the story. In the 2024 version, characters get grabbed in jump scares, but in the 1979 version, they didn't have the budget for stuff like that, so they just stand there while the vampires bite them - which is true to the book's depiction of vampiric hypnosis.

The climactic battle in the 2024 version takes place at a drive-in theater, where the vampirized townsfolk are hiding in the trunks of cars. This sequence has some good visuals, but it also relies on a vampire trope that I hate, which is of them being able to survive in shadow (in this case, the shadow of the movie screen). It's emblematic of the movie as a whole: it has some good, evocative visuals, but it lacks substance. The 1979 version is pretty cheesy, but it does the atmosphere and the characters' motivations better, and because it's set in its own concurrent era, it's not so desperate to show you how 1970s it is.

This thought was brought home to me when I watched X, the throwback slasher flick directed by Ti West and starring Mia Goth. X is set in 1979, but it seems a lot less desperate to show that it's set then - the year is more to link it to old-school slasher flicks from that same era, and to comment on the way porn capitalized on new technologies even back then (there's a scene where one of the characters talks about the possibilities that home video holds out for porn). The result is a lot less self-conscious, and a lot more deft in introducing the characters and describing their relationships.

It's kind of an unfair comparison, because 'Salem's Lot has different themes on its mind than X, but as I say, the new version of 'Salem's Lot doesn't do as good a job of exploring those themes. All that leaves you with is a good-looking but ultimately empty movie - on the other hand, Lot director Gary Dauberman originally filmed a three-hour version, and I'd like to have seen that.

England Presses the Tuchel Button

Well, at least it wasn't Frank Lampard.

I was intrigued when the FA announced that Thomas Tuchel would be the next England manager. I admit I don't know a lot about him, but I also wasn't expecting them to go for a foreigner again. I don't think it's a bad appointment, but it raises a few questions, which I'll be interested to see answered as he takes the reins.

The tenor of the reports I read today talked about his clashes with upper management at his previous clubs. This was confirmed by a perusal of his Wikipedia page, which cites acrimonious departures at almost every club he managed (a notable exception being Mainz). That doesn't seem too big a problem at clubs like Paris St. Germain or Chelsea, which have reputations for sacking managers, or at Bayern Munich, since he was the first coach in 11 seasons not to win the Bundesliga (though he won it in the first of his two seasons in Munich). On the other hand, the fact that he left so many clubs in the same circumstances should give the FA pause - particularly since the manner of his departure is a reason why Manchester United decided not to hire him during the summer.

Then there's the fact that Tuchel also rubs players the wrong way. He had issues with certain players at Chelsea and Bayern, and had a bit of a reputation for being an authoritarian at other clubs too. Speaking as absolutely not an expert, the England job seems like it depends more on man-management than tactical nous, so this is really the aspect that concerns me about Tuchel's appointment.

Fabio Capello was brought in partly to impose some discipline on the England squad after the antics at the 2006 World Cup, in which the WAGs' sideshow contributed to this feeling of the players being more concerned with celebrity and endorsements than playing for their country. Early reports spoke glowingly of Capello's rule that players had to wear suits to team dinners. On the other hand, the football at the 2010 World Cup was disappointing, and Capello left two years later amid a dispute with the FA over John Terry losing the captaincy because of his alleged racist abuse of Anton Ferdinand.

My other question about this appointment isn't about Tuchel's ability, but rather about the FA finding the courage to appoint a foreigner for the first time in 12 years. That phrasing should indicate how I feel about them appointing a non-English coach - both Capello and Sven-Göran Eriksson had excellent records, even if they never won trophies or got as far in tournaments as Gareth Southgate did. I expect that Tuchel should do well, if he doesn't set everything on fire before the next international break - he is, after all, a league winner in both Germany and France, and a Champions League winner with Chelsea.

However, the fact that the FA opted for a foreign coach this time shows how few decent English coaches are left. I've banged on about this a few times over the years, so I'll just rehash my points quickly by noting how odd it is that an Englishman hasn't won the top flight in England since 1991, and that a British manager hasn't done so since 2013. The best jobs seem to go to buzzy, fashionable foreigners while English managers get stuck on the carousel of diminishing returns that starts with the clubs outside the notional top six (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Spurs) and ends with Everton or West Brom or something.

The last English manager to get a top 6 club on merit was Graham Potter at Chelsea, and he didn't have a good time of it. He was then replaced by Frank Lampard, who isn't considered a very good manager but still walks into these roles because he was a famous player. Either would have been a bit underwhelming if they'd gotten the job instead of Tuchel. Not that Southgate inspired dancing in the streets when the FA appointed him in 2016.

The way I see it, Thomas Tuchel will either be a masterstroke, bringing home a World Cup or Euro... or he'll be a disaster. He won't bed in long enough to get boring, a point that the Guardian's Football Weekly made today, but it'll be one of those other two extremes. Indeed, given his track record of making friends and influencing people, I feel there's even an outside chance that Tuchel breaks all the china before the 2026 World Cup. At any rate, if he doesn't win that, I don't expect him to still be there for Euro 2028.

Either way, I appreciate the FA's willingness to look beyond the tired carousel of English underachievers for an actually decent tactician. I'm looking forward to seeing how Tuchel does, and maybe, hopefully, this appointment gives English managers a kick up the arse and we'll see more of them gaining experience abroad.

RIP John Cassaday

As if the passing of James Earl Jones wasn't bad enough for the nerdosphere, I learned today that comics artist John Cassaday also passed away yesterday. He wasn't as much of a household name, even among comics fans (I believe), and I don't even know the full range of his work, but I did know his work on Planetary, and honestly, the craft on that is enough to cement his place as one of the greats.

I first encountered his work back in 2000 or 2001, when Planetary was a going concern and Warren Ellis was revitalizing the hell out of the Wildstorm line. And while Bryan Hitch was giving the Authority the widescreen comics treatment, Cassaday's ultra-detailed style was doing something equally interesting on Planetary, which was Ellis's sort of meta-commentary on how superhero comics (and especially Marvel) erased the pulp characters who'd come before.

Each issue dealt with a different aspect of either 20th-century adventure fiction (like the Shadow, Doc Savage, Victorian horror literature) or 60s comics (the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Superman and Wonder Woman), and Cassaday's style accommodated all of them. He could do beautifully craggy faces, which was notable after the 90s, when certain artists couldn't seem to depict different ages to save their lives. But he could also imply action without undue bombast - this is a talent that Hitch has, and Frank Quitely also does it quite well.

I also liked that if Hitch's Authority looked like Alan Davis, Cassaday's work on Planetary reminded me of a slightly less cartoony Kevin Maguire. Incidentally, the reason Hitch's work looked like Davis's is that he was being inked by Paul Neary, who inked some of Davis's most famous work (and who, sadly, also passed away earlier this year, a fact I only learned today when looking for reputable sources about Cassaday's passing).

I did experience a little of Cassaday's non-Planetary work, in the form of one issue of Astonishing X-Men, which he did with Joss Whedon. I didn't stick with the book, because I couldn't see how anyone could follow up Grant Morrison's New X-Men, but I've since heard that Astonishing was almost as good, so I have that to look forward to. And I've been seeing some panels from Cassaday's Captain America work, so that's another body of work to get stuck into.

But I'm sad that, having passed away at 52, Cassaday leaves behind much less than if he'd had his allotted threescore and ten. Ellis may have conceived of the strangeness of the world in Planetary, but Cassaday brought it to life, and he'll be missed.

RIP James Earl Jones

Like everyone, I was sad to see the news that James Earl Jones died today. I confess I didn't know much of his work beyond the obvious ones, like voicing Darth Vader and Mufasa, as well as in the early Tom Clancy films. But of course I knew his voice, and I knew his presence whenever he showed up on screen.

Reading his Wikipedia page, it's exciting to see that he had the same type of experience on stage as some of the great British actors, having played roles in Shakespeare as well as contemporary American theater. I've long thought that America should have an equivalent to the Royal Shakespeare Company, i.e. a group that turns out the most talented actors, like Ian McKellen, Michael Gambon, Patrick Stewart, Lawrence Olivier... I'm aware I've listed a bunch who did SFF movies or shows, but bear with me, will you?

Anyway, Jones would belong in that company, and now that I've read of his background in Shakespeare and in theater more generally, I'm sad I never got to see it. He was a great actor, and he'll be missed.

Rethinking Profit

It's not all comics and football around here - sometimes I turn my incoherent ramblings on economics. And the thing I've been wondering about lately is profit.

I know that the business of business is profit. According to Milton Friedman, that's all a business should be thinking about - any other social benefits of profits generated are out of the business's sphere of responsibility, and shareholders can use the profit for whatever social purposes they want. This then leads to the idea that a publicly held business's fiduciary responsibility is to maximize those profits, and if its management fails to do so, then the shareholders have the right to exchange the board for one that will bring the most profits possible.

The problem I have with this is, a business has to have something in mind beyond just making profit, if it isn't actually in finance. Strictly speaking, Pfizer (a stock that I own) isn't necessarily delivering the greatest profit to shareholders, because it continues to develop drugs rather than fire all its scientists, hire investment bankers, and compete with Goldman Sachs. 

That may seem like a stupid analogy, but it isn't - drug discovery is extremely expensive, even if you discount Pharma companies' own claim that it takes a billion dollars to bring a drug to market. There are a lot of dead ends, where a molecule that seemed promising at the start turns out to make people's skin fall off or just drop dead; a Pfizer or a Merck or whoever can outsource the discovery process by buying promising companies, but that's expensive too. It'd be easier if they just turned into a bank, wouldn't it?

Same with, say, Ford. You don't have to reinvent cars every year or so, but you do have to keep building them, adding features that either customers want or that will keep them alive (funnily enough, these aren't always the same thing), and you have to pay people to build the cars for you. Those people have their own demands for profit, and the longer they stay, the more they cost you.

Perhaps I'm being willfully naive - I understand that Ford and Pfizer and every other publicly held corporation can't just pivot to finance, because then we'd have the ultimate externality, in which food, clothing, medicine and basically everything else isn't being produced. But profit doesn't really seem to serve any societal function of its own - whatever industry you're in, profit may be the ultimate goal but it doesn't get shared with the people who build it. Employee pay is an expense, which is why companies sometimes make layoffs in the midst of record profits: the market is stupid and it thinks that the company is making its operations leaner.

Michael Moore has a joke in Downsize This, where Wall Street goes through the roof because one day, every company decides to lay off every employee. I read that almost 30 years ago, but it's stuck with me ever since, as did an Economist article I read about 15 years ago or so that suggested that American companies were too profitable.

Now, it's one thing when Michael Moore criticizes corporations, but when the Economist thinks that corporations are sitting on too much cash, that bears paying attention to. Their argument was that this profit wasn't filtering out into the rest of the economy, it was just going to shareholders; indeed, a piece in Forbes this past year notes that nearly half of before-tax profits of non-financial corporations went to dividends, and that capital expenditures are at their lowest level in years. Companies aren't investing in R&D or strengthening their processes, because they're trying to funnel all that cash back to investors.

Now, this might seem odd for me, as a person who owns stocks in individual companies (as well as retirement vehicles like a 401k, an HSA and a Roth IRA) to suggest that there's too much focus on profits. I might have a different idea if my holdings were a few orders of magnitude larger.

I guess I see it through the lens of enshittification, the term Cory Doctorow coined to describe when online platforms decline in quality once they've captured their audience. He sees it in terms of Google destroying the market for online search by being better than all the other search engines, and then, when network effects and habit mean that people refuse to use Bing or whatever, Google fills its results with a tidal wave of shit, like sponsored links, adds, and now AI-generated garbage. 

But it's applicable in the analog world too, as we've seen with Boeing's ongoing quality-related struggles. When a business focuses on maximizing profit over everything else, then improving the physical products it sells is contrary to the desires of the shareholders. Performing quality control takes money and slows down launch of new products, so you get a lot of products rushed out before they're ready or you get a lot of incremental improvements being touted as new products, with a price premium to match.

This is where people normally protest that no, of course they're not advocating for socialism, they're totally in favor of capitalism, yada yada yada. It's true that I'm not arguing for a command economy, because I do believe that some amount of capitalism is needed for markets to efficiently find the best solution to a problem - after all, Google may be crap now, but before it destroyed all the competition, it simply did provide a better service. But I think that, as in all things, the incentives are misaligned.

At the very least, there needs to be some way for shareholders to reward profitability over a long period, rather than every three months. And maybe the shareholders should include the employees as a matter of course, since they're the ones who've made the profit possible? Tim Cook may be great at logistics and at understanding the big picture of getting his phones to my avaricious grasp, but he's not the one assembling the damn things, putting them in boxes to the store, or taking my order when I pop into the Apple Store to pay the Cupertino Idiot Tax.

If nothing else, sharing the profits more widely with those who actually do the work might help reduce income inequality, no?

RIP Sven Göran Eriksson

My post about the Beckham doc on Netflix talked about a weird time, so it's fitting that I run this post, about the recently passed former England manager, Sven Göran Eriksson, since he was a big part of why that was such a weird time.

I was listening to the Guardian's Football Weekly today, which led off with some tributes to Sven, as he was known during his time here. Some of it was fair, talking about his rise from obscurity in Sweden to managing in Portugal and Italy, and then getting hired for the England job on the strength of his time at Benfica and Lazio. They also talked about his record as England manager (three quarterfinal exits in a row, in 2002, 2004 and 2006), and on the tabloid obsession with Sven's personal life.

I thought some of their comments missed the point, btw. Max Rushden and co were right to point out that the Sun and other tabloids' relentless reporting on Sven's affairs was a bit much, but they also didn't mention that Eriksson was in a relationship with Nancy Dell'Olio while the tabloids were reporting on his various affairs. Indeed, one of the guys on the podcast said Eriksson wasn't hurting anyone with his affairs, but surely he was hurting Dell'Olio?

Sven's time as England manager is also a little confusing in hindsight. It's held up as a period of drift, because the expectations at those three tournaments were high, especially in 2006, when a lot of England fans expected to win. Mars bars were even briefly rebranded "Believe" bars, because presumably that would fire up the fans. 

But the football turned out to be slow and ponderous, and not at all the kind of play you'd expect to win a tournament with. I even remember sitting through the first half of England's opening match against Paraguay, which was settled by a Paraguayan own goal in the fourth minute, and when the half ended and they returned to Gary Lineker and the Match of the Day team in the studio, they all looked embarrassed at having to talk up such a performance. As I recall, England's tournament didn't really improve, and my abiding memory of their exit against Portugal, even more so than Cristiano Ronaldo winding up Wayne Rooney, is both Rooney and Beckham throwing tear-filled tantrums as the game slipped out of their control.

(I also remember having to be careful about the big grin on my face as I took the train home from my friend Ian's house. Not, I should add, because of England's elimination, but because Brazil had been eliminated by France in the earlier match, which made me quite happy back then. But that's by the by)

The 2006 World Cup is remembered more for the Wags (wives and girlfriends) and their antics in Baden-Baden, where the England team was based, than for anything the men did on the pitch. It was held up as a symbol of moral decline, in which the players (chiefly Beckham) were more interested in celebrity and partying, and of Eriksson's dangerous indulgence. Indeed, the 2010 World Cup, where England were coached by Fabio Capello, was promised to be a much more buttoned-up England camp, though they actually went out earlier than they had in 2006.

I was among many who tut-tutted at the Wags' antics in 2006 (although now my writing playlist features a song by Girls Aloud, a member of whom is Cheryl, one of the chief Wags, so I've clearly changed in the intervening 18 years). Though if you consider it, Sven's England achieved an impressive level of consistency, certainly more so than the three tournaments before or after.

England had three different managers at Euro 96 (Terry Venables), World Cup 98 (Glenn Hoddle) and Euro 2000 (Kevin Keegan). The exits were at, respectively, the semi-finals, round of 16, and group stage. If we go back to World Cup 94, England didn't even qualify.

After Sven's departure in 2006, the roll call is even bleaker: failed to qualify for Euro 2008 (Steve McClaren), round of 16 in World Cup 2010 (Capello), and quarterfinals in Euro 2012 (Roy Hodgson). We can also take Hodgson on his own, since he was the first England manager after Sven to hold the post for three tournaments, and he didn't exactly cover himself in glory either, with a group stage exit at the 2014 World Cup and then the humiliating defeat to Iceland in 2016.

You can look at this from several angles. One is that England didn't know how good they had it when Sven was their manager. Certainly he and Capello are among England's most successful managers, in terms of win percentages, even if both served up some pretty dour performances on the pitch.

But that's what's frustrating about Sven's time as England manager: he had an arguably more talented group than Gareth Southgate had for his four tournaments, and got less out of them. The Football Weekly guys said something about good man-management by Sven, which is attested by the players, who all seemed to deliver stirring eulogies this week; but I also remember that the England team was riven by cliques, with the Manchester United and Liverpool, and later Chelsea, contingents not talking to one another. I'd say that Gareth Southgate was better at getting the whole squad to play for each other.

Still, I have some mixed feelings about Sven, because I appreciated that his bookish demeanor riled up the tabloids, who'd probably rather have lost gloriously with Dave Bassett at the helm. And another thing the Football Weekly gang said was, Sven, for all his faults, lived life. Those affairs were a bit distasteful (especially the one with the FA secretary who'd also had an affair with the FA chief executive), but apart from that, he seems to have been a bon vivant.

What's sad is that, overall, Sven's career didn't really hit the heights again after 2006. He managed Manchester City before Abu Dhabi bought it, then a variety of middling to low-level national teams, the lowest of which were China and the Philippines. He also managed Leicester City a couple of seasons before they were promoted back to the Premier League, so, much like his time at Man City, he missed out on the Foxes' big success in 2016.

I've done a bit of criticizing in this post, but overall, I'd say that Sven deserves to be regarded as more than a footnote in the history of England's men's national team. His time in charge coincided with my first stint living in the UK, so the England matches were a big part of my life in those years. Indeed, my favorite Sven game is the 5-1 defeat of Germany in World Cup qualifying in 2001. His tournament teams may not have hit those heights, but he deserves the credit for that result, and for giving England a confidence they hadn't had before.

Netflix's Beckham Documentary is a Weird Snapshot of a Weird Time

I try not to do this, but sometimes I'm just taken with a show and I feel the need to talk about it here, even though I'm not through watching it yet. Add the fact that I had no idea what else to blog about this week, and voila: I want to talk about the David Beckham documentary on Netflix.

I heard about it when it first came out, and gave it a hard pass, because Beckham's a footballer that I made my mind up about years ago, and I've been content not to revisit that opinion. Whenever he comes up in conversation these days, it's usually negative, like the flack he took for shilling for Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup. After years (decades) of playing to the LGBTQ community and presenting himself as an ally, many in that community felt betrayed by that move.

I've also been a little bemused by his whole thing at Inter Miami, not that I knew about the details. Having checked out the ownership section on Inter Miami's Wikipedia page, it looks like he received an option to buy an expansion team when he joined MLS in 2007, which I guess is the same deal the league gave to Lionel Messi when he joined Miami. Nothing too odd, at least without doing full due diligence.

So I was a little surprised when I learned, or was reminded, that the documentary had been directed by Fisher Stevens, who played Hugo on Succession and has made a career for himself as a director of well-regarded documentaries. It came up because I heard Stevens talk about the Beckham doc on Marc Maron's podcast, WTF, in an episode from last year. They talked about the various people Stevens spoke to for the doc, and that's what persuaded me to have a look.

It's authorized by Beckham, which is both good and bad. Good, because Stevens gets access to a lot of people, from Beckham's wife Victoria to former teammates, his parents, and various others. I think what made me want to check it out was the fact that they spoke to Sir Alex Ferguson, which felt like a good get. The bad thing about being authorized is that sometimes it feels a little sanitized - Beckham gets to present himself as he wants, which is his right but is also at the heart of why I'm a little disdainful of him.

On the other hand, the documentary does give Sir Alex a voice throughout, including when it discusses his rift with Beckham. The only person that's clearly thrown under the bus (so far, because I'm partway through the third episode, of four) is Glenn Hoddle, who was the England manager at the 1998 World Cup. That means he was in the hot seat to talk about the red card in the match against Argentina, which Beckham received for kicking out at Diego Simeone. In fact, it's kind of cool that they talked to Simeone about it, and he's quite forthcoming about it.

More than anything, the episodes I've seen have been a nice time capsule back to the 90s and early 2000s, and the football culture that prevailed. There's a lot of archival footage of Beckham from the time, both on the pitch and off it, which takes me back nicely. The music is pretty on-point too, capturing some of the Cool Britannia stuff that was happening around then (see also my love for the Britpop documentary, Live Forever).

There are some things I didn't know, or had forgotten about. For example, that red card against Argentina may have galvanized the whole of England against Beckham, but it was good to be reminded that his sending off didn't actually make them lose the match - they held on for penalties, which is when England came a cropper. Though it wouldn't be the last time the English collectively blamed a single individual for an early exit from a tournament...

It was also interesting to hear directly, from Beckham and Ferguson, about the incident that led to (or at least presaged) Beckham being sold to Real Madrid. I remember hearing about the boot to the face incident in the dressing room, but hadn't read up on how it was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's boot, or how it was effectively a freak accident when Ferguson kicked a pile of laundry and the boot hit Beckham in the face. I also hadn't known that they'd originally sold him to Barcelona, only for him to ask to go to Real Madrid.

The other thing that was helpful to be reminded of is just how good Beckham actually was on the pitch. My enduring memories of him are missing a penalty against Portugal at Euro 2004 and of his tear-filled tantrum when the same opponents knocked England out of the World Cup two years later. But the documentary, without spending too much time on the intricacies of football, does a good job of showing the ways Beckham could be influential. The prime example is the qualifier against Greece, which Beckham essentially won single-handed (though my abiding memory of that qualifying campaign was the October 2001 demolition of Germany).

I suppose my memories of those years are erased by the unceasing juggernaut of the Messi-Ronaldo rivalry that dominated the 2010s, and by the importance of Wayne Rooney to the English game. Though it's worth noting that Beckham's stardom and ubiquity essentially paved the way for the circus that surrounded Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, as evidenced by the religious ecstasy Beckham provoked in fans when he got to Real Madrid. Rooney, on the other hand, was a creature that the English fans understood better - a chaos agent with a rampaging style similar to that of Paul Gascoigne, who however didn't squander his gift like Gascoigne did.

My memories of Beckham end when he left England, though I had a good laugh at his first couple of seasons as one of Madrid's galacticos, since they didn't win many trophies, being too top-heavy to play well. I do remember when he came to MLS, and how they allowed him to break the salary cap, which has become known as the Beckham rule. I even (vaguely) remember when he went to AC Milan, though I think I didn't know he'd ended his career at Paris St-Germain. I'm looking forward to seeing what the documentary has to say about those years.

Overall, the show isn't perfect, but it's been nice to revisit those years through the lens of Beckham's career. I made a point at the time of ignoring the celebrity stuff he was involved in, thanks to his wife (who I should add was also my favorite Spice Girl), so the hoopla around his wedding and children was new to me. But it all brings me back to those years when I'd first moved to the UK, so it's fun to watch.

Also, the sections where Stevens talks directly to Beckham about his life now are unexpectedly interesting, like the joke about playing football against his son Romeo and threatening to invite his former teammates, like Zidane and Figo and Roberto Carlos, to destroy Romeo and his friends. It's nice to see that will to win is still there, even when it seemed like he was more interested in being a fashion icon.

Chris Claremont's X-Men and What Came After

As part of my ongoing reread of the X-Men, I've finally arrived at the moment when Chris Claremont, the book's most influential scribe, left. This was in 1991, when the X-Men were at the height of their popularity, spawning a new flagship title and inspiring toys and the X-Men animated series. It's also the inflection point for the X-books, where they went from the bestselling titles of the 80s to the sprawling mess that made podcasts like Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men necessary.

This post isn't so much an explanation of what happened (which I've pieced together via Wikipedia pages and comments on podcasts), but more how I saw it play out then, and how I see it now.

The first thing to say is that Claremont's departure after X-Men #3 was the first time that I realized how important writers were. I bought that issue soon after it came out, and continued on with the book for a couple of years, but I must have noticed something was off, because I kept coming back to X-Men #3 and its farewell to Claremont, and I put two and two together that Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza weren't quite as good.

Thinking back, that must also be the point at which I became a fan of writers rather than artists, to the point that for years I barely noticed the actual art. It's only in the last few years, with my overall reread of my old collection, that I've forced myself to study the panels in many books. As a result, some artists don't hold up like they did for me back then, while others, like Jim Lee, do look as good as I remember.

Claremont's departure is likely also involved in my switch to DC. The JLA books that hooked me at that time were well-drawn, with one of Adam Hughes's earliest ongoing commitments, but overall the writers, Keith Giffen and JM DeMatteis, were the standouts powering the book. I had a similar whiplash when Giffen left both JLA and Legion of Superheroes, which drove home how important the writer's voice was to my enjoyment of a book (even if, in those specific cases, Giffen was doing the plot rather than the script).

What I didn't realize until I reread my physical copies of Claremont's old issues is how full of tics and idiosyncrasies his writing was. Much has been made of how every character always repeated their powers in the course of an issue (likely a result of the old adage that every issue is someone's first), or of how they repeated certain phrases (doing something "fit to burst"; yelling "Glory!"; and so on). 

I was also struck by how wordy his pages were, from 1975 to 1991, as he described everything and had the characters deliver long monologues. Those are probably also the result of a certain way of doing comics, in which he was plotting the book with the artist and then writing the script after the pages were drawn. It meant Claremont had to adapt his wording to whatever the artist had drawn; most notably, John Byrne drew the Dark Phoenix destroying an inhabited world, which meant Claremont had to adapt the rest of the story to that, leading to the death of Jean Grey, something he hadn't intended on at first.

I like to jokingly wonder whether Chris Claremont is the best bad writer or the worst good writer, but both are unfair. He managed to create a richer world for the X-Men than either Stan Lee or Roy Thomas had before, and having unchallenged control of that world for 16 years meant that he could introduce characters and concepts that are still playing out now, whether in the comics, in the movies or in TV shows. Wolverine is essentially his character, even if he didn't originally love Logan as much as Byrne or other collaborators did; same with the more complicated understanding of Magneto's motivations. 

In terms of Claremont's legacy, I'm still figuring that part out. I have bad memories of the issues in the 90s after he left, but now that I'm embarking on reading that era, I'll have a better sense of how it all played out. I still haven't quite forgiven Lobdell and Nicieza for (as I saw it) ruining books that I loved, but I'll be interested to see how I see their run going forward.

One problem with them and some of the other writers who followed Claremont is, as Jay and Miles put it in an episode that I listened to recently, Claremont had been writing the X-Men so long that Lobdell, Nicieza and whoever else thought that was just how you had to write them. Anybody would have trouble replicating such an imposing voice, even if they were a good writer themselves, so it's fair to say that the deck was stacked against them. And even more so when you consider that, as the flagship Marvel title, X-Men was subject to a lot more editorial interference than it had been in 1975, when Claremont, Len Wein and Dave Cockrum rescued it from the obscurity of being a bimonthly book of reprints.

Since I'm reading one issue of Uncanny X-Men per day (and now also X-Men, the series launched by Claremont and Jim Lee), I've calculated that this first year will take me through to the very eve of Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men. As I recall, there were a few reboots and new directions in that time, including Claremont coming back, and Warren Ellis being given control of the non-core X-books. But Morrison's run - divisive as it is - still strikes me as the short, sharp shock the X-line needed to move on from Claremont's influence.

I've heard some stuff about Morrison's pitch when they were plotting out what they wanted to do with the book, and it sounds bad when they talk about disregarding the existing fans. But I also think of the context, when creators, including Ellis, were just getting to grips with the internet and how easy it was to hear about how pissed off certain fans were that someone was doing new stuff with a book. I don't know how much of a link there is to the toxic fandom of today, but it certainly seems to prefigure stuff like Comicsgate, which has also served to radicalize a bunch of nerds to be culture warriors. If that link really is there, then I kind of wish Morrison's run really had driven all the old fans off. But I'll have to study it myself in more detail when I get to those issues...

The other thing to consider is that, influential as Morrison's run was, they also became something of an albatross on the characters after they left. At the very least, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men is meant to be a good continuation of New X-Men, but in the 20 years since Morrison left, there haven't been that many notable characters introduced - certainly not many that stuck. As far as I can tell, the exceptions are Hope Summers and Pixie, but I'll have a better sense of it when I get to those issues.

As for Claremont himself, I'm kind of looking forward to X-Treme X-Men, but also not. My sense is that he's never really recaptured the lightning in a bottle of his first X-Men run, so that series may end up just complicating the continuity further. But we'll see.

Let's Fucking Go: Spoiler-Filled Thoughts on Deadpool & Wolverine

I just got home from watching Deadpool & Wolverine, and yeah... it was pretty fucking good.

Maybe it's not quite as good as the first one. The first Deadpool benefited from that tight focus on Wade and his desire to get back to Vanessa, with only a minor nod to the wider X-universe, so we got more of the unfiltered Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. This could be good or bad, depending on how much you like Reynolds, but it feels like it was the breakthrough role for him, in that his public persona then became Deadpool.

But if this one is a bit more sprawling and laden with references, and the jokes about Deadpool fucking Wolverine get old after a while, it's also a fun movie in its own right. The first thing to note is that the references, in the form of Marvel Multiverses, are part of the movie's grand joke. The wasteland that Wade and Logan find themselves in features not only the 20th Century Fox logo, following Disney's acquisition a few years ago, but also various characters from the X-Men and Fantastic Four movies. I guffawed pretty loudly when Chris Evans's character in this sequence was revealed to be not Captain America, but the Human Torch.

(Incidentally, per the expletive-laden post-credits scene, I couldn't shake the feeling that Chris Evans was really enjoying playing against the Boy Scout type that he's played since 2011 as Cap)

All the Multiverse stuff was used well here, to poke fun at the way the concept's been used. The main joke delivery mechanism was Channing Tatum as Gambit, whose lines all talk about forgotten characters or those "who didn't get a chance", which is surely a reference to the Gambit movie that was in development but never came to pass. At any rate it was good to see Gambit doing his thing on the big screen.

Along the way we get to see a bunch of versions of Logan, from the one that's close to his height in the comics, to the Age of Apocalypse version, to a version played by Henry Cavill (who I think would make a good Cyclops - if we discount Matt Bomer). We also get a bunch of different versions of Wade, and they all get massacred in hilarious and satisfying ways, even if they get better because of Wade's healing factor. I also appreciated Wade's fourth-wall breaking plea to stop using the Multiverse as a gimmick, though I suspect Marvel's not going to listen to that plea.

Another thing that made me happy about this movie was the presence of X-23, as previously seen in Logan. I know we saw her in the final trailer, but I was still worried that she appeared as a flashback or a character in Logan's head, so it made me happy to see that she wasn't only in that scene, and that she played a key role in Logan's character development for this movie. Since I started reading newer X-Men comics, she's become one of my favorites of the new characters (i.e. the ones introduced since 1993), so it was good to see her, and the actress who played her, Dafne Keen, have those good moments with Logan.

For me, the best thing about this movie, beyond seeing Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine in a role that doesn't diminish his last appearance in Logan, was the hard R. Marvel's gotten a lot more violent and sweary since the 1990s, when they couldn't even say hell or damn, but even now, you don't really get to see the effects of Wolverine's claws or Deadpool's swords or Gambit's explosions. This movie didn't pull its punches, either in terms of violence or language, and given the consistent PG-13 tone of the rest of the MCU, I'm not complaining. Though it'd be boring if they all turned into this.

I don't know if there's going to be another Deadpool movie, and I kind of hope not. This does, however, make me feel a little more confident about the MCU accommodating the X-Men, whenever that's going to happen. It's also a nice companion piece to X-Men '97, which kind of kicked off this annus mirabilis for the X-Men - but whereas that was full of loving homages to the old show and to the Chris Claremont comics, this was an irreverent (but still loving) take on the same corner of the Marvel universe. If we can keep an energy somewhere between those two extremes for the MCU X-movies, the future should be bright indeed.

Or as Wade, Logan and Laura say at various points: Let's Fucking Go.

Interesting Times

Another week, another big piece of news on the 2024 campaign trail. Last week it was Donald Trump almost getting shot at a rally in Pennsylvania, and this week the big news is Joe Biden deciding not to seek reelection after all. After the Republican National Convention this week, a friend was having anxiety about the GOP's new confidence, and I told him that the news cycle would move on.

Listen, though, I didn't expect this.

Like pretty much everyone, I tuned in to the debate last month and was horrified to see how bad Biden sounded. This isn't to imply that he made Trump sound like JFK, but it kind of pointed up all the things that the GOP has been saying since the campaign started, somewhere around 28,000 BC. It didn't suddenly make me want to switch my vote to Trump (sorry, spoilers), but it certainly wasn't what we needed to show that Biden was the person who could beat Trump.

I kept faith, though. As I said, one debate performance isn't as important as keeping out a man who packed the Supreme Court with anti-abortion rights judges who've essentially dismantled the administrative state; who banned Muslims from seven countries from entering the US (though notably not from the country that provided most of the 9/11 attackers); who handed out positions to cronies and crooks; who oversaw the worst response of any country to the Covid-19 pandemic; and who, when he was turned out of office in the 2020 election, declared it a fraud and engineered an insurrection to stay in power. And yeah, I haven't touched on his personal conduct, but he's also a felon. So.

But clearly, the opinion polls and the pressure from various Democratic grandees became too much, and Biden decided it was time. With respect, this wasn't the time, because we've already gone through the primaries and there aren't any real national figures that I think can beat Trump. There was a bit of an attempt to primary Biden earlier in the year, but it came to naught, and now we face the prospect of Democratic infighting as we go into the Democratic National Convention and, worst case, into the election itself.

I am reassured that Biden did endorse his VP, Kamala Harris, but I've read that the Democratic elites don't believe she's the right candidate. I have my misgivings about a candidate who suspended her run for the 2020 nomination before a single vote had been cast, but I also worry that shutting her out makes the Black vote stay home in December. If the Democrats actually believe that Trump is a threat to democracy, which he is, then they shouldn't play around and they should get behind Harris.

Was Biden a flawed candidate? Yes, of course! You can quibble over whose fault the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was (Biden was in charge, but Trump negotiated it), but the crisis in Gaza is entirely his failure. The only person who'd probably have done a worse job of reining in the Israelis and minimizing Palestinian deaths is Donald Trump; but I feel it when Arabs call for people not to vote for Biden. It's hard to argue that anyone else would be worse for the Palestinians than Biden when literally the worst is coming to pass.

Anyway, the die is cast. Biden's stepping back from the campaign trail and endorsing Harris. As I've said, we need the Democrats to TAKE THIS FUCKING SERIOUSLY and rally behind her. Because the question isn't only who's going to be in the White House next January, it's who's going to be in control of the Senate and the House. It's also about who will have the power to appoint new Supreme Court justices. People who were calling for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to step down before the election (to avoid the fate of Merrick Garland's nomination in 2016) drew some glares, but that time has now passed. The Republicans would totally hold that seat empty again in the hope of winning the election and getting to fill the seat themselves.

So yes, we're living, unfortunately, in interesting times. I'd be happy for some boring times come November, and we're only going to get those if the Democrats win the White House, and ideally both houses of Congress.

Euro 2024: And That Makes Four for Spain

So Spain are champions of Europe again, having won their fourth title in this competition. They not only won all seven matches, they did it in a certain amount of style. At least once every match, one of the commentators would say that this is no longer tiki-taka football, but that's a little meaningless, since they last won a tournament with that style of football 12 years ago.

More accurate is that they had the most fluent attack, and the most redoubtable defense. They didn't win ugly, which is considered one of the marks of a quality team - rather, they won beautiful in pretty much all their games, whether it was a 3-0 against a Croatia who matched them for possession and shots; or a 1-0 against an Italy that refused to be broken down until an own goal; or after going down a goal against Georgia, the surprise package of the tournament.

I'm not normally the biggest fan of the Spanish national team, in part because of those tiki-taka tournaments in 2008, 2010 and 2012, and in part because they knocked out Italy in 2008 and 2012, the latter being a particularly brutal 4-0 hammering in the final. I'll admit that part of me was hoping to see a repeat of that today, but since I was watching with an English friend, I think it's better on balance that they kept it to 2-1.

With regard to England, they deserve some props for getting this far. Their record wasn't as spotless as Spain's, and when they won they seemed able only to win ugly. It was surprising to see how disjointed they were in the group stage and the first couple of knockout matches, given that my understanding of Gareth Southgate's tenure is that he's always been good at getting the team all playing for one another.

Still, the players kept faith with his plan, even when they didn't seem to understand it, and they made it to their second Euro final in a row. It helped that two individual moments of brilliance from Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane in the dying minutes of the Slovakia game saved England's tournament. By the end England looked like the team they'd been in previous tournaments, even though it's maybe too much to suggest they were as cohesive a unit as Spain.

Regardless of the result, and of what Gareth Southgate decides to do next, England should be proud of what the team has achieved, and how close they came to matching the women's team's Euro victory in 2022. Getting to two successive finals of a tournament is impressive, and I think it reflects how English and Spanish teams have also dominated the Champions League in the last two decades. It'll be interesting what this team looks like at the World Cup in 2026, and then at the next Euros, which will be held at home in Britain and Ireland.

As for the wider tournament, maybe it's impossible to be wholly objective as to the quality of the football. I'm just always so happy to have a World Cup or a Euro that, even if Portugal were to win with a succession of 1-1 draws and four straight rounds of penalties (which is not too far off from what happened in 2016), I'd still happily watch as much of it as I could. As I noted in previous posts where I calculated goals per game in this tournament compared with the last two, there were more goals and more exciting games, even if there weren't that many surprises or giant-killings.

That last point makes me consider the concept of England "under-achieving" at tournaments since 1966. It's the favorite refrain of England fans and pundits, that somehow the team hasn't achieved the destiny it deserves. But as the authors of Soccernomics say when they tackle this question, winning tournaments is hard. By definition, only one team can win a tournament, and when you have a knockout competition, it comes down to skill and conditioning and heavy helpings of luck.

At least at the Euros, there are about 7-9 teams that you think should get to the quarterfinals every tournament (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, Portugal, and maybe Belgium), which means that by definition, they will all have to face one another. Spain saw off Germany, France and England on their way to the final, after having beaten Italy in the group; England beat the Netherlands and Switzerland (which had knocked out Italy). Both teams can say they faced at least some serious opposition, even if it's true that England made heavier work of facing easier opponents.

The point of all this is, England (or any other big team) can only be said to under-achieve if they don't reach the quarterfinals. After that point, it comes down, as I said, to a whole bunch of variables on the day, which even the most detail-oriented managers can't really account for. So while England should be wistful about what might have been, the fact is they showed themselves to be one of the two best teams in the continent, and should use that as a springboard for future tournaments.

The other thing I've been considering in this tournament has been the number of participants. This is kind of related to the previous point about under-achievement. By its nature, a larger tournament features a larger number of worse teams, but this year in particular, I feel like there were very few teams that were only there to make up the numbers. The evidence for this is that only Poland found itself eliminated after the first two matches, whereas the tournaments that have 16 or 32 participants have many more teams crashing out that early.

Some pundits have suggested that certain games at Euro 2024 were proof that the tournament should go back to only eight teams, never mind 16, but that obscures the runs that Georgia and Turkey went on this year. Not only did they play out a supremely entertaining game among themselves, but both got to the knockouts, and Turkey were clearly good enough to beat an Austrian team that held its own against the Dutch and the French in the group.

If the World Cup and the Euros are festivals of football, it makes sense to invite more teams to enjoy the party. A good run, like Georgia this year or Iceland in 2016, is like a once-in-a-lifetime pleasure for those countries' fans (and it doesn't matter if there aren't many of them), and also nets them money that they wouldn't have access to if they didn't qualify.

Given that the Champions League (as I bang on about ad nauseam) is increasingly the province of a few clubs from just four countries, and in practice really only Spain and England, it's good to see that the Euros are going in the other direction and sharing the wealth a bit, even if the winners still usually come from the same pool of Spain, Germany, France or Italy. Though even here, Portugal, Greece, Denmark and others show how a less accomplished team can put together a decent run.

All this is to say, I'm filled with my customary wistfulness at the end of a tournament. At some level, the quality of the play, or how far Italy gets, is kind of beside the point (though I'd have been in a hell of a better mood if Italy had won today!). The main thing is getting up early to catch ridiculous matches that I wouldn't normally cross the street for; figuring out whose house to watch the big games at, or whether to go to the pub; and the constant roasting between me and my friends who support other teams.

Euro 2024 is now consigned to the ages. It might have featured the most embarrassing Italy performance since 2008, but it was great while it lasted. And now I can look forward to World Cup 2026, which will be here on home soil, and which will hopefully feature Italy for the first time in a generation.

UK Election 2024: Labour's Coming Home

Amid all the Euro 2024 fueled jubilation, I haven't had a chance to comment on last week's election in the UK (or on yesterday's election in France). But ever since the results came in, I've been thinking about the return of the Labour Party to 10 Downing Street, and the parallels with New Labour in 1997. What crystallized it for me was rewatching the Britpop documentary, Live Forever, which is overall a pretty good encapsulation of what was going on back then.

Comparing the results of 1997 with those of 2024, they look pretty similar. Labour had 418 seats then and has 411 now. In both elections the Conservatives are in second and the Liberal Democrats are third, though now the Tories have way fewer seats than in 1997 (121 vs 165) and the Lib Dems have more (72 vs 46). One of the big changes is that there are more parties represented in Westminster now, with the notable ones being Reform and the Greens, neither of which picked up seats in 1997 (Reform didn't exist, but UKIP, its predecessor, was one of a couple of Eurosceptic parties that put candidates forward). The Scottish National Party has a similar number of MPs as it did then, in part because it suffered an electoral wipeout, while Sinn Fein has grown to be the largest Northern Irish party, which would have been unheard of then.

Keir Starmer is from the same wing of Labour as Blair was, specifically the more centrist wing. Like Blair, he came in after a stinging defeat for Labour under a more leftwing leader; though apparently Jeremy Corbyn is a bit further left than Neil Kinnock was. Starmer's also relatively young, though he doesn't give off the same cool-guy vibes Blair did. Not that I've had an opportunity to see lots of Starmer interviews, but it's hard to see him noodling on a guitar or playing head tennis with Kevin Keegan. On the other hand, he did chat to Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning of the Guardian Football Weekly, so there may be a cool bone in his body somewhere.

The cultural moment is very different from 1997, though there are some interesting similarities. The big difference is the sense of exhaustion that's permeated Britain in the last couple of years. The country was hit hard by the pandemic and by Brexit, and by the mess the Tories left. Britain under Margaret Thatcher and John Major was a two-speed economy, with all the growth concentrated in the Southeast and the more industrial regions left behind. Britain under this vintage of Tories has that dynamic, though the hollowing out of anywhere outside London and the Home Counties has just accelerated in the past 30 years, plus it's suffered from austerity since 2010.

To put it another way, Britain before 1997 was just stultifying, where many young people had no option but to go on the dole. Britain up until 2024 hasn't even let them do that, because of the cuts to benefits implemented by the Tories (and to an extent by New Labour before them). Instead, young people have had to leave university in debt because of higher tuition fees, find worse and more cramped flats to live in (all in London, because that's where the jobs all seem to be), and pay for all this with increasingly precarious zero-hours contract jobs that offer no security or chance for advancement. The celebrations feel more muted now, probably because no one has any energy for a proper knees-up.

Culturally, Britain doesn't really feel like it's on the ascendant now, either. Part of that is the nature of the culture industry, and specifically the music industry - there's a reason why the Live Forever documentary is about music rather than sport or art or cinema. 

One side effect of all those young people on the dole was that they had time to make music, so we saw a great flowering of unique artists like Morrissey and the Smiths, Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Cure, New Order and loads more. These artists, who sang in their native accents and didn't try to emulate American mannerisms like some of the more popular singers and bands, so we got the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, and these gave way to Suede, the Auteurs, and eventually to Blur, Pulp and Oasis. 

Now it seems a lot harder to find the new Morrissey or David Bowie or Robert Smith or Noel Gallagher. I'm sure there are great bands all over Britain, but none of them seems to have broken through to the mainstream or to the US. My suspicion is that Taylor Swift is the most popular artist in Britain right now, even though she's not British herself. 

This isn't to disparage any of the great grime or UK garage bands out there, by the way - Britpop was a lot of things, but it wasn't diverse, and there were precious few non-white faces among all the bands I loved as a teenager. Whereas now you can have someone like Stormzy headlining a stage at Glastonbury. It's just a sign that the culture industry is more fragmented than it was back then.

Of course, the 90s were a strange moment for Britain overall. It wasn't just music, as Live Forever points out, and as John Harris's book The Last Party also stresses (though Harris's book is more focused on music). British cinema was getting exciting, though the only names I can really point to are Danny Boyle and Ewan MacGregor. In art, Damien Hirst was probably the most visible face of an art movement that includes Tracey Emin and was doing all sorts of innovative stuff in the 80s and 90s. Live Forever even goes beyond its musical remit to talk to designer Ozwald Boateng, who was also held to embody the virtues of the UK back then.

Just about the only thing that seems to have the same hold on the British imagination now as it did in 1997 is football. The England team of the 90s benefited from an explosion of funding following the creation of the Premier League, and from a lot of goodwill as the game cleared out the violent hooligans and became something that everyone, notionally, could enjoy. Just as importantly, black players were starting to come through and play regularly for England, better reflecting the cultural and ethnic mix of the country.

The English game of the last few years may not have suffered from violent fans or a European ban like it had in the 80s, but since Gareth Southgate was hired as head coach of the men's national team, results have been a lot better, with England reaching the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup (the first time in any tournament since 1996), then the final of Euro 2020 (the first since 1966), and after a disappointing, but actually on-par quarterfinal exit from the 2022 World Cup, England is currently one of four teams remaining in Euro 2024.

Incidentally, I'm going into this level of detail to record the ongoing savage culture war that's raging over whether Gareth Southgate is a good manager or not. I'll probably go into that in detail in another post, but here it's worth pointing out that Southgate makes for a nice callback to the 90s, because he was in that Euro 96 team that reached the semifinals before losing to Germany (indeed, it was his missed penalty that sank England). You kind of wonder how much that sense of the country being behind the team has permeated how he approaches the job now - certainly London didn't feel as bound by love for the England team during the years that Sven-Göran Eriksson, Fabio Capello or Roy Hodgson managed them.

I suppose, coming back to the Starmer vs Blair theme, that Starmer appealed to football via the Football Weekly podcast because that's the one thing that still ties together a majority of people in Britain, or at least England. Blair could invite Blur and Oasis to policy confabs and No 10 cocktail parties, because they were the biggest bands in Britain and most people knew about them. He could champion British filmmakers and artists because all of them were firing on all cylinders, whereas now Starmer really can only use football to connect with people.

There's also a cynical comment to be made here: with culture so fragmented along lines of ethnicity, race, sexuality, etc, football is the only thing that won't subject Starmer to accusations of favoring one group over another. It sounds a little stupid to say it, until you remember how apoplectic certain subsets of England fans got when the team would take the knee for racial justice in 2021.

In 1996, about a year before Labour won the election, Britain was enthralled by the first tournament on home soil in a generation (remember, the Scots also qualified). The song of the moment was Three Lions, by the Lightning Seeds along with comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, characterized by its chant that "football's coming home". Blair used that slogan on the campaign trail, tying himself into all the cultural strands that the electorate loved.

Three Lions fell out of fashion for a while, but made its comeback in 2018, and has been trotted out at every tournament since then. Just our luck, then, that it's being sung on the terraces in Germany just as, back home in the UK, Labour's coming, at long last, home.

Euro 2024: Let's Hope the Semis Are Shorter Than the Quarterfinals

Well, here we are, three games left to go in this tournament. The quarterfinals panned out pretty much as I predicted (despite my heavy hedging), and now we've got Spain v France and the Netherlands v England.

With regard to the round just ended on Friday, I thought it was fascinating that three of the matches went to extra time, of which two went to penalties. France v Portugal was, as I predicted, a dour old game and not really reflective of the levels of talent on either side. I kind of wonder if Portugal is so hooked on how they won in 2016 (three draws in the group stage, a succession of low-scoring matches in the knockouts) that they feel they have to play each subsequent tournament like that. They certainly played a more swashbuckling game in 2022, but were knocked out in the quarterfinals by Morocco, so maybe they think the way to another trophy is this negativity? It can't only be down to Cristiano Ronaldo dragging them down.

France, meanwhile, seem to be operating on this same strategy. Either that or someone is threatening to kill a family member every time they score a goal from open play? Whatever the cause, the squad I identified as the tournament's strongest has been quite disappointing. Which doesn't seem to have affected their ability to win matches, of course.

Spain v Germany was the pick of the round, as I said last time, and I think the actual game bore that out. Germany was surprisingly physical - or at the very least, channeling the spirit of Harald Schumacher - as Toni Kroos took Pedri out of the game, and tournament, with an absolute leg breaker of a tackle early on. Violence aside, both teams showcased their quality, and it's a little bit of a disappointment for me that Germany's tournament is already over.

England v Switzerland... well, it's an improvement over the last few games for the Three Lions. I've been engaged in increasingly weird arguments over the merits of Gareth Southgate, who I agree is tactically limited, but the fact that he's led the team to a third semifinal in four tournaments speaks for itself. If he goes on to win the tournament, he'll have pretty much the same record as France coach Didier Deschamps, which is an odd thing to consider.

Another interesting point about the England game, as mentioned in the various podcasts I listen to, was the confidence the team had in taking the penalties. Each one of England's penalties went in, a marked change over the Euro 2020 final when Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho all missed (and came in for horrific racist abuse afterwards). That clearly weighed on everyone's minds this time, but not so heavily that they missed any of their spot kicks.

I do think the Netherlands will make it awkward for England, though. They were the only team to win in 90 minutes, keeping a lid on a rambunctious Turkey side that has lit up the tournament (though not as much as Georgia). I should note here that it was hard for me to root for Turkey as underdogs - I don't hold the Armenian Genocide against all Turks like my mom does, but the fact that one of the players, Meri Demiral, celebrated with a rightwing nationalist salute after beating Austria was a concern. In any case, Turkey was the one remaining surprising team, and it figures that their run would have to end eventually.

I still think Spain is the favorite to beat France, and then to beat either the Netherlands or England in the final. They bounced back from the early injury to Pedri and never fell behind against Germany, which implies a healthy amount of guts and tactical nous. There's a possibility that France tries to strangle the game like they did against Portugal, but my suspicion is that Spain's wingers will be too much for the French.

The England-Netherlands game is harder to call, but I suspect the Netherlands will win. They didn't inspire much confidence in the group stage, but their forward line is working better together than England's. The Dutch defense feels a little more dodgy, but with Harry Kane evidently playing through an injury, it's hard to see how England will score much. Sure, they have Bellingham, Foden, Saka and Gordon, but they also have a misfiring Trippier on the left and Declan Rice isn't quite there yet. Though it might be different if Luke Shaw starts in place of Trippier...

Listen, we can go in circles trying to predict this one. I'll leave you instead with an odd stat that came to me as I was driving today, to wit: Spain has won three Euros, France has two, the Netherlands has one, and England has won none. I don't know if that's a royal flush or whatever (I think you can tell I don't play poker), but it struck me as odd that the distribution should fall out that way. We'll know on Wednesday afternoon who's likely to add to their total.

Euro 2024: Round of 16 Throws Up Few Surprises But Sets Up Quarterfinal Matchups Par Excellence

So now that the round of 16 is over the wheat has been separated from chaff, a metaphor that's really only apposite in the case of Italy. The other seven losing teams gave a good account of themselves (apart from Belgium, but more about that anon), and would have enlivened the next round if they'd managed to reach it. Special kudos go to Georgia, who may have lost by the second-largest margin against Spain, but despite that made it a contest, especially going ahead through that own goal that they forced Spain's le Normand into.

If I have a complaint about this round, it's that there were essentially no surprises, and the one giant-killing we saw (Italy at the hands of Switzerland) was more of a mercy-killing. I posted about it on Saturday, so there's not much left to say, but I'll repeat that I'm excited to see how Switzerland gets on in the quarters.

But in every other case, the big-name team won. Not always handily, in the case of Portugal, France or England, but they did it. I do find it interesting that France, whom I considered to have the strongest squad at the tournament, and England, who may be a little lopsided thanks to form and injuries but still has a great forward line, labored so much. 

My impression is that the teams that tend to win tournaments aren't always the most technically gifted (see the Dutch in 1998 or 2008, or the Portuguese in 2004) but rather the ones with the best team cohesion. I figured that was what always kept England from doing better in previous tournaments (though it should also be said that routinely getting to the quarterfinals under Sven-Göran Eriksson wasn't a bad achievement). Further, I always appreciated that Gareth Southgate may be limited tactically, but his real achievement was getting the team all playing for one another. What's weird is that he seems to have lost his gift for man-management at this tournament, though he's done well to get them to the quarterfinals, and is in with a decent shout to get them to the semis - which would be the first time an England team managed something like that.

(I like reminding people that he's gotten the team further than any manager since Alf Ramsay in 1966, and Ramsay only had that one good tournament, whereas Southgate has had two overachievements - 2018 and 2021 - and one par performance, in 2022).

On that side of the draw, England v Switzerland feels like the hardest to call. Switzerland doesn't normally get this far, and I think they have some structural problems, but England seems unclear on which version of the team to field. That said, I think the quality of England's players will tell, and that they'll beat the Swiss to make the semifinals. I also think that they'll meet the Dutch there, because as exciting as the Turks were against Austria, I think the Netherlands will have too much firepower for them.

The other side of the draw is much spicier. At least, if you don't consider France v Portugal. I'll dispense with that one quickly: I think France will beat Portugal in a dour slog, probably by just a single goal, and possibly after extra time. But that won't matter, because either one will lose to whoever wins the remaining quarterfinal.

Germany v Spain is pretty clearly the pick of the round, and in a just world, would have been the final. Instead, one of these teams will have to go down to a disappointing defeat so early in the tournament, when they both at least deserve the semifinal. My suspicion is that Spain will spoil Germany's party, because they've been clearly the strongest team, even if they haven't truly been tested. On the other hand, Germany will have the crowd behind them, and as I said, the most gifted team doesn't always win. That said, I think either Spain or Germany will go on to win the entire tournament, regardless of who they face in the semis and the final.

At any rate, now we're at the sharp end of the tournament: the biggest teams have dispensed with almost all of the fairy-tale overachievers, and now they have to fight it out amongst themselves. It's disappointing to me that Italy ended up being the only big name to go out at this point, but it'd be unfair if we won every tournament, right?

Euro 2024: Life is Meaningless and Full of Pain...

 And on top of that, it is an endless journey through this vale of tears, etc, etc.

I'm not exactly heartbroken that Italy went out at this stage, because if they'd nicked a result against Switzerland, it would have increased the likelihood of a 2012 style humiliation. But it was a tough performance to watch. There was no pressing, not much passing, no midfield worthy of the name. Gianluigi Donnarumma kept Italy in it, and Federico Chiesa valiantly led the otherwise nonexistent line, but apart from them this was abject, even without considering that Italy were the current holders.

Whatever. I can look forward to us not qualifying for the World Cup in two years, and then Euro 2028 after that. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing how Germany, Spain, England and the surprise packages of Austria and Switzerland get on.

Euro 2024: Matchday 3 and All the Heartbreak

Well, here we are, the end of the Euro 2024 group stage. The wheat has been separated from the chaff, the fourth-placed teams ruthlessly eliminated and the knockout rounds mapped out. Despite the lack of surprises in the early stages of the tournament, there have been a couple of interesting happenings - though no real giant-killings or shocks at big teams crashing out early. The closest we came is the Netherlands coming in third in their group, though they also turned out to be the top-ranked third-placed team.

Ukraine going out at this stage was a little bit of a surprise, if not a shock, but their group turned out super weird. Everyone finished on four points, and because the head-to-head records didn't apply, it came down to goal difference - which meant that Ukraine's opening 3-0 loss to Romania is what did for them. If they could have beaten Slovakia by more goals, or if they could have beaten Belgium... But this is just how the round-robin system works. There was little to separate the four (I believe I called this the Group of Meh), and in the end it came down to a fine margin like that.

There were two types of surprises. The first, and most positive, was certain unfancied teams qualifying for the Round of 16. Slovenia, Austria, Romania, Slovakia and most of all Georgia all fall into this category. Slovenia was lucky to find itself in a group with an England and Denmark (and Serbia, it should be said) who weren't firing on all cylinders. Same with Romania and Slovakia, given how strong Belgium were in previous tournaments. Georgia, on the other hand, came through a really tough group by beating Portugal (who were, admittedly, already qualified and playing their B team), while Austria came through an even tougher group and won more points than either France or the Netherlands. Regardless of what happens next, that's a good achievement for both teams.

The other type of surprise was how many of the fancied teams didn't dominate. England may have come first, but only Romania topped their group with fewer points. On the other hand, I expected France to dominate more, given that, man for man, they probably came in with the strongest squad at this tournament. Instead they could only muster a draw against a Poland that had already been eliminated as of Matchday 2. For me, though, Belgium is the biggest disappointment - I understand that national teams can't just conjure a well-balanced squad out of thin air like Manchester City or Real Madrid, but the sense is that Belgium called up a lot of players who are past their sell-by date. I think the real injustice for Ukraine is that they couldn't beat this Belgium (though that means Ukraine probably wouldn't have done much in the knockouts; many of us are still scarred from Ukraine-Switzerland in 2006, one of the worst games ever).

As far as goals, this phase of the group stage had the fewest goals per game of any match day of the past three Euros tournaments, at 1.67. This wasn't helped by the fact that there were no fewer than three 0-0 draws on Matchday 3, more than in all of Euro 2020's group stage. This tournament had as many goalless draws as Euro 2016, which had four, but which distributed them better. I guess, after all the excitement of the first two rounds, this is when teams decided to be a little more cagey - or they just had more trouble finding the net, as evidenced by England, Italy, Belgium and others' travails.

The own goal chart, meanwhile, grew by only one, thanks to Donyell Malen's contribution against (or rather for) Austria. This means Own Goal is the highest scorer so far at Euro 2024, but less prolific than in the last tournament. Of course, if you're not scoring goals, that means there's less opportunity for own goals. Kind of a shame, if you think about it.

With regard to the knockouts, and how those will shake out: the fact that no big teams crashed out early means that they're all still there to play one another. Of course, one side of the draw has Spain, Germany, Portugal and France - none of them are drawn together in the Round of 16, but they'll face each other if they get through to the quarterfinals, until one of them will get to the final (I don't think this is getting too far ahead of myself, by the way, since these are the best teams in Europe).

England and Italy and the Netherlands are on the "easier" side of the draw, though if they beat their rivals as expected, they'll also whittle each other away until the final. I think the Netherlands can expect to make short work of Romania, but then they'd probably face Austria again in the quarters, and who knows how that'll end up. England, meanwhile, should also see off Slovakia, which will get them a quarter final against Italy or Switzerland, both of which should be doable. I hate to say it, but I'd be surprised to see Italy beat England, even this team that has no enterprise.

A final word about England. Everybody's disgusted with that 0-0 against Slovenia, and rightly so. But a lot of commentators and a lot of my friends (who aren't commentators) are really dismissive of Gareth Southgate. I keep reminding everyone that he has the best record of any England manager apart from Alf Ramsay, who actually won a tournament. That isn't to say that Southgate has no flaws, or that his team selection has been weird, but I think that's more not knowing wtf to do with big names who are injured or tired (Kane, Saka, Bellingham) but who insist on playing.

Frankly, Southgate's probably out of here after this tournament, and like Joe Biden, he's not going to win over the haters, so he might as well go down swinging. Because, also like Joe Biden, the other options aren't very enticing - though it should be noted that (hopefully) Eddie Howe or Graham Potter won't attempt to foment an insurrection and overthrow the British government. One can't be sure of Frank Lampard as England manager, but in his case I don't think it'd be malice so much as accident-prone-ness to an impressive degree.

Anywho: after today we get our first break from football in a couple of weeks. I'm kinda sad about that, but also kinda not, since it means not having to figure out ways to watch games at my desk or determine if they interfere with work calls. On the other hand, I can always tune into the Copa America, which should be fun, if not quite as close to my heart. Still, it'd be fun to see the USMNT do well.

Here's hoping to a good rest for all the players over these next couple of days, and to a bunch of surprising results in the knockouts!

Euro 2024: Matchday 2 Brings the Surprises

My last post talked about the lack of surprises, but that was written before all the teams had played one another even once. Now that each team has played two games, I figured it was time to see if any trends could be teased out yet.

The first is that Matchday 1 had the highest number of goals per game since the European Championships switched to this 24-team format. In 2016, teams were evidently cagier than they are now, because there were just 1.83 goals per game. By comparison, 2021 had 2.33 at the same period, and 2024 goes even better with 2.83 goals per game. The difference is 6 goals (28 in 2021 vs 34 in 2024), which comes from the fact that the opening game, Germany vs Scotland, registered five goals for Germany and one for Scotland, whereas one game in the opening match day in 2021 was a goalless draw.

There's a similar increase on Matchday 2 compared with previous tournaments, with 2.25 goals per game in both 2024 and 2021, against 2.08 in 2016. What's interesting there is that represents a decline on the first match day for the two most recent tournaments, but an increase in 2016.

I don't think I've heard anyone mention the amount of goals per game, but I suspect there are a couple of explanations. One is that the new format has made teams more willing to attack: because the four best third-placed teams go through, and goal difference is one of the key criteria for determining which four are considered the best, it creates an incentive for teams to go all-out. 

If that's the explanation, then it would be an example of football's governing bodies successfully pushing teams to play more aggressively. This is notable because previous initiatives included the "golden goal", whereby the first goal in extra time after 90 minutes would be the winning goal, and the "silver goal", where a goal in extra time didn't immediately end the game, but if it were the only goal in that period of extra time, then it would be the winning goal. 

The golden goal was intended to make teams more aggressive, but instead made them more defensive, because they knew that getting caught on the counter-attack would lose them the game, whereas they'd have more control of their own destiny if they held on until the penalty shootout. The silver goal rule was an attempt to soften this, but was soon abandoned because it also led to teams being more defensive.

On the other hand, it could be part of a wider trend in football toward playing a more attacking style. I haven't bothered to crunch the numbers to see how many goals per game have been scored at the World Cup or UEFA Champions League, but I suspect that in the latter case, at least the finals have become less goal-heavy affairs. Since the Champions League is undergoing a format change in the coming season, it may change the goals per game ratio there, but for now it's too early to tell.

The case for the increase being part of a wider change in football is still valid, however. The shift was underway already in 2016, but essentially the Dutch way of playing football, as filtered through the Barcelona academy, has taken over the European game. Given that pretty much all national sides are playing some form of this pressing or gegenpressing game, you don't see too many sides setting out to play ultra-defensive football like Greece in 2004.

Coming back to my comment about fewer surprises, there have now been a few. Romania roared out of nowhere to beat Ukraine 3-0, and then Slovakia beat Belgium 1-0, a result that everybody seems a little desperate to characterize as the biggest upset in Euros history. Some pundits have pointed out that it's such a big upset based on their FIFA rankings, which don't necessarily track as closely to their relative positions in UEFA, or indeed in qualifying for this tournament. But I suppose we can let them have this one.

Turkey vs Georgia wasn't a real shocker, but based on the highlights, it was an extraordinarily entertaining match. Group B in general was also rather entertaining in Matchday 2, though I was a little less enthused by Italy getting dominated so much by Spain. My first impression was that Italy set out to play for a draw, given that both had won their previous games and being on 4 points after the first two matches essentially guarantees getting to the knockout rounds. However, none of the pundits I listen to on Football Weekly or Totally Football suggested that, rather that Italy was so dominated by Spain that it's surprising the match ended only 1-0 (and that was an own goal).

Speaking of own goals, the podcasts have been talking a lot about how many there have been so far in the tournament. There have, indeed, been 6 so far, compared with 5 at this point in 2021 and 2 in 2016 (which were also the only own-goals in the group stage that year). I think this also stems from the tendency of teams to play more aggressively, which means more action in front of the goal face and more possibility for errors like Rüdiger's goal for Scotland or Calafiore's goal for Spain.

I seem to recall someone in a past tournament mentioning that it might have something to do with player tiredness, which sounds pretty likely, given how many games per season the top players are in. The third match day in 2021 featured 3 own goals, so it'll be interesting to see if that trend continues this year, or if the teams will be more cagey as they seek to secure their spots in the last 16.

None of the matchups in Matchday 3 strike me as classics in the making, but I'll obviously be watching Italy-Croatia very closely, hoping for a good result. On the one hand, I don't know that Italy has a great record against Croatia, but on the other, Croatia doesn't have a great record at the Euros. But after a string of decent performances, including winning the damn thing last time out, it'd be really disappointing to have Italy crash out at the group stage, like in 2004.

As far as winners for the whole thing, now that I've seen the teams in action, I think Germany and Spain are the teams that are playing the best. I haven't done the permutations to see if they'd meet before the final, but based on their form so far, whichever of them wins is likely to win the whole thing. France has been a bit disappointing, given that I thought (and still think) that they came into the tournament with the strongest squad, man-for-man, of any teams. England may still find their feet, but it seems a little less likely - I'm rather a big fan of Gareth Southgate and how he's finally gotten them all pulling in the same direction, but the match against Serbia felt a little bereft of ideas. That said, I think there was a lot of the same chat after England's 0-0 with Scotland last time out, and they ended up getting to the final.

As a final thought, it's a little early to tell who might go further than expected. The Euros, like any tournament, are dominated by the big teams, but not as much as the World Cup, and Portugal were the latest kind of unfancied side to win it, in 2016. I think a Greece-style upset is off the menu, though, because we haven't seen a big giant-killing performance like their group-stage win against Spain. 

At any rate, it's interesting that, going into the final round of group matches, only Poland has been definitely eliminated. This comes back to the point about teams going for it, since they can lose a game or draw all three and still progress. Here's hoping that Matchday 3 will be as good as what we've had so far!