It was sad last week when Scotland were eliminated from the tournament but there are certainly a few other countries where people will now be feeling the same.

In many cases they’ll actually be more surprised than we were and most certainly more disappointed. 

You only need to look at Group F, which was labelled the so-called ‘Group of Death’, with three countries competing for qualification that were seen as potential winners in France, Portugal and Germany. Here we are at the quarter-final stage and all three are out.

It’s certainly made it an interesting tournament and it’s always great watching matches where you’re not aware what the outcome is going to be or even that a completely unexpected outcome might result. It has to be said though, that the Euros have produced amazing conclusions over the years with the likes of Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Greece winning this tournament as complete outsiders. 

Even the last winners Portugal were unexpected champions. I certainly feel that the Euros actually offer better competition than the World Cup and it could only be bettered if Brazil and Argentina could participate. The overall standard is higher because, unlike the World Cup, there’s so little between the teams competing.

The football in this tournament has been very good and we’ve seen some exceptional goals too. The last 16 round provided us with real excitement and certainly major surprises. Spain lost a 3-1 lead to Croatia and looked in real trouble going into extra time but bounced back well to restore their lead and go through. 

On the other hand France, possibly tournament favourites, also lost a 3-1 lead but didn’t recover from it and went out on penalties. I just don’t imagine too many of us would have forecast or even imagined that Switzerland, Ukraine and the Czech Republic would have made the quarter finals and certainly not at the expense of major football nations like Germany, France, Portugal, Russia and Holland. 

England are improving and are certainly very fortunate with their lighter route to the final in terms of the opposition and also having only tonight’s game away from Wembley, should they make the final.

Ukraine have a decent team but England have a squad full of top-class players and should be in the semi final if they play at their best. However, nothing can be taken for granted in this tournament and there may be more shocks to come in the five matches still remaining.

AND ANOTHER THING

Although I’m enjoying the tournament as ever, I think some improvements could be made. These will make things better in the Euros and actually could be used in other international and domestic competitions going forward. I would introduce the following measures...

1 The matches that resulted in draws in the knockout rounds of the tournament shouldn’t have gone to extra time. This can result in tiredness in the players and we certainly see more injuries occurring in the extra time being played. Having extra time in two or even three of the knockout matches could be really detrimental to a country’s chances of challenging for the tournament. Therefore, so as not to hamper any team going forward, the matches should go straight to penalty kicks at the end of 90 minutes.

2 There has been a lot of time wasting in matches from teams in front. This results, generally, in referees only adding on time for injuries and substitutions when players are actually wasting a lot of time with goal-kicks, throw-ins and corners. Even the celebrations, after a goal has been scored, go on for over two minutes. This time is not normally added on and results in time running out for teams chasing a goal to get back into the match. My research has shown me that the average in-play time in a match is generally only just over 30 minutes per half. I would therefore make it the regulation that the match timer clock only runs when the ball is in play and that each half should be 35 minutes long. This would make the time wasting inconsequential and mean that the in-play measurement was equal for every game.

3 There have been so many examples of simulation (cheating) that I’ve witnessed in the Euros that I feel it should be dealt with more commonly. One example we regularly see is a player going down holding his face with the TV replay showing there was actually no contact. Now that VAR is prominent in such a major tournament, I feel that the people who are the adjudicators for the referee could give him instant information on whether a player is guilty of simulation in an incident that’s just occurred. He could then issue immediate yellow cards to the guilty parties. I feel that this would seriously reduce the number of examples we are witnessing in every match and therefore, clean up our game for the better.