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?