Holiday of someone else's football

Here, after all, what is especially important to understand. Any major international football tournament is, first of all, a great human story that is happening right in front of your eyes. And this is precisely what is happening in the meadow, by and large, both valuable and interesting. For it is to this story that you feel unconditionally involved, whether you are a player on the field, a coach on a bench, or a fan. And here it is not even so important whether a fan is in a stadium or in front of a flickering TV screen. Your emotions directly before your eyes turn into a score on the scoreboard, and it is this score that becomes the property of history.

This is all true.

But this very long-suffering European Championship, which has just ended, is a very special story.

The tournament, which was supposed to take place last year and that is why it is still so bashfully called "Euro-2020" - it is also important for certain, however softer it is, not at all sporting aspects.

And just waiting and the state of the holiday.

Moreover, the holiday is not only and not so much a football one, but also a holiday of a gradual exit from the COVID-19 pandemic: too many people in the same Europe have just felt at least relatively free.

And they, of course, really wanted this holiday.

At least in the football stands, in which many of them have not been for more than a year.

To the fullest.

With songs and dances, as they say.

With tears of despair and with the triumph of at least football justice.

We must pay tribute - this championship has justified these expectations.

And, as they say, with interest.

Starting from the first matches of the group stage, when the trouble on the air, directly on the football field during the game, which happened in front of a multi-million audience with the Danish Eriksen, the leader of his football team, at first almost knocked out the Danes (remember the most offensive defeat from Finland on start), and then, having rallied the team, almost brought them to the final.

This is already crazy drama.

But then the intrigue only twisted: the England team stood in their way.

Yes, albeit not without the help of a fairly left penalty kick, but England in this championship in general, apparently, was assigned a rather cinematic role of the universal football evil.

And how sorry it was for the Poles with almost the best striker in Europe, Robert Lewandowski: a minute foolish relaxation with the Slovaks, stemming in many respects from the eternal Polish ambition. But they really had a great team. But, as they say, they snatched away from much weaker Slovaks, apparently, from old memory and - do heroic deeds, do not do - they did not even leave the group, like ours, although they were much better than many of those who later played in the playoffs ...

Well, when the knockout games began, the drama was only added, starting with the game England - Germany at the legendary Wembley, which became the undoubted decoration of the tournament.

A match with a fantastic background and an equally insane plot, in which everything was intertwined, including compensation to Gareth Southgate, the English coach, for not personally scoring a penalty in a long-standing tragic match for the islanders with the Germans.

And then there was also a consistent departure of the favorites: the French, Germans, Belgians, Spaniards.

And the Italian national team, which became the European champion at the end of yesterday's final, had almost every next game a real holiday and a football drama.

Of course, the ending was also good.

There is nothing even to invent.

Previously gorgeous Italians could not pull themselves together after a quickly conceded goal, and, in spite of everything, nevertheless, in the literal sense of the word, they “drove” the British for the entire first half.

At the same time, let's give the islanders their due: from the very beginning, the cruelly designated 0: 1 was even purely dramatic and perfect.

But the Italians, under such circumstances, simply could not help but score and withdraw the situation at least in extra time, when everything was decided.

However, it doesn't matter: even the penalty kicks here were nothing more than a cherry on the cake.

Everyone was worthy of the holiday and victory.

In short, it was a wonderful European football championship.

Which, unfortunately, missed us a lot.

Although the Russian St. Petersburg was one of the hosts of the tournament, our team performed at this festival of European football not even unsuccessfully.

Our team performed frankly faded and uninteresting even for their own fans, which is much worse.

Moreover, our team, one might say, performed in no way at all.

However, let's go in order.

Let's be frank: the performance of the Russian team at the just-ended European Championship, unfortunately, cannot even be considered a frank failure - it just, as they say, performed in its strength. And this just became especially offensive for the great, including the once great football country. There is no need to belittle ourselves - we actually know how to play football: the same Englishmen just before our very eyes played for the first time in the final of the European Championship. And they never became champions of the continent, and never at all. The USSR national team won the European Championship first, back in 1960, and played in the final, and even more than once. Including in the last tournament for herself, when she won silver after the great Dutchman Marco van Basten managed to break through the equally great Russian goalkeeper Rinat Dasaev in exactly the same final as yesterday,a fantastic blow, as they say, between the ears.

But here, this time, even purely from the point of view of setting goals, we were initially much more modest: for our team, the official task was to reach the final bullet of the European Championship, with which the team coped quite well. But no one even at the level of setting goals promised us a way out of the group. Moreover. The author of these lines, I must confess, has never been a special fan of the sparkling coaching talents of Stanislav Salamovich Cherchesov. But the head coach of the national team was right, there was nothing to dismiss him for, and there was nothing to blame for: what tasks the bosses set for his team - so he solved them, these tasks, in general.

As a matter of fact, it was not his football bosses who fired Cherchesov, in fact (and it’s difficult to call it a dismissal - in fact, “they left of their own accord”).

Stanislav Salamovich was just completely satisfied with the football bosses.

And Cherchesov was dismissed, and this fact must be ascertained — I don’t know whether this is good or bad — the usual “public pressure”.

And just not because the game of Cherchesov's national team did not correspond to the task set before it by the sports authorities.

And for the fact that the game of the national team did not meet people's expectations.

Which, of course, may be overstated, but if you please correspond.

Or don't try it at all.

And let's be honest: Stanislav Salamovich himself has nothing to do with it.

In fact, we are not talking only about the performances of our football team: we are talking about a systemic crisis of what is called “sports of high achievements” in our country in general. Just remember the recent ice hockey world championship. Let us recall the basketball humiliation actually parallel to football. Well, it's probably better not to talk about some mega-popular biathlon in our country. And this in the very near future, we do not even doubt, will come around even louder after the approaching Olympics in Japan. Where are we, in contrast to the European Football Championship, let us remind you that we are going, additionally humiliated from the very beginning: without a flag and without an anthem. However, this conversation, apparently, is still ahead, although the reaction of people to potential defeats after all this is not at all difficult to calculate.

Here, in fact, everything is simple: no one demands, for example, from our sports bosses to sprinkle ashes on their heads, shout: "Chef, everything is gone!" and even submit applications for dismissals "of their own free will", as, in fact, they did with Stanislav Cherchesov. They are simply required to admit that the current state of the industry entrusted to them, to put it mildly, does not correspond to the level of a great sports power, and, whatever the excuses may sound, this is just a mathematical fact. And the people are tired not so much of defeats, including on the football field, for example, defeats, here all people are adults, it happens from time to time, everyone understands this very well. The people are rather tired of the fact that for some reason they constantly fool their heads. And for some reason, and for his own money, he is constantly called to a holiday, which in fact for some reason happens to others.

And football yesterday was really great, and Italy deservedly won.

Although for some reason England is also somehow a little sorry.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.