Euro 2024: Saliba bosses it as France go through

Morning, there was some good, a lot of bad, and a healthy dose of ridiculous at the Euros yesterday.

So, let’s start on a positive note and focus on the good. It wasn’t France v Belgium as a contest, because that was a tedious game of football generally speaking. There were occasional moments of quality, like a brilliant cross from Jules Kounde, but they were usually followed by wastefulness – like Marcus Thuram heading the ball off-target.

The good came in a familiar package for Arsenal fans: William Saliba. He was absolutely immense at the back, and up against a player like Romelu Lukaku who can make it physical, he demonstrated the full range of his qualities. His reading of the game was superb, his anticipation top class, his passing outstanding, and when Lukaku or anyone else tried to make it about strength, he held them off like they were 7 stone weaklings.

I wonder now are there things that Didier Deschamps doesn’t like about him. Probably, because he is a very strange man, but throughout this tournament Saliba has been consistently excellent. Of course this is no surprise to any of us, and I do find it odd that after two years of top class performances in the Premier League and a very good season on loan at Marseille anyone needed to be convinced by him, but football is strange at times. He wasn’t just confined to defensive brilliance either, he actually had a good go at breaking the deadlock up the other end too, but fired wide.

Other good things: I enjoyed Mike Maignan’s 5-a-side save, forgetting he could use his hands, he cleared one off the line with his feet, like when a centre-forward has to go in goal. On top of that, the late goal for France was good – not that I particularly cared who won, it’s just that it spared us another 30 minutes of tedium. For all their talent, France are very boring, and Belgium were crap, so it wasn’t any fun. There was no sign of Leandro Trossard either, even when they needed a goal late on he was…

Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/07/euro-2024-saliba-bosses-it-as-france-go-through/

Author : arseblog

Publish date : 2024-07-02 05:42:27

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