Sixteen-year-old Lamine Yamal replied with a goal for Spain. When he was a baby he appeared in a photoshoot for a charity calendar, cradled in the arms of Lionel Messi. With the pictures’ reappearance last week people said that some of Messi’s magic must have rubbed off on him, though Yamal’s father suggested it could have been the other way round, and ‘maybe it was Lamine who blessed Leo.’ Within minutes Dani Olmo scored again for Spain, deflecting off France’s Jules Koundé. The better team won but as the French forward Marcus Thuram said, ‘Vive la diversité, vive la République, vive la France. Le combat continue.’
‘the only manager to take England to albania phone data two major finals’. Harry Kane, in defence of England’s slow start to the tournament, said in a press conference: ‘The bottom line is, we haven’t won anything as a nation for a long, long time.’
In fact Southgate is one of two England managers to reach two major tournament finals, along with Sarina Wiegman, the Lionesses’ manager, and we won the Euros ‘as a nation’ as recently as 2022. Yamal has been called the ‘youngest player ever to score at the Euros’ but he was eleven days older than Isabell Herlovsen, who scored for Norway against France in 2005. I’ve wondered if a win for the men’s team would feel any different from the women’s. I wonder if I’ll ever find out.