With the group stage at Euro 2024 concluding on Wednesday evening, we now know the pairings for the last 16, although we have to wait a whole 48 hours for the knock-out phase to start, two rest days having to be endured. Ken Early gives his assessment of how it’s all been going, reckoning that “the German organisers can feel relieved and pleased: the tournament has, despite everything, been a big success so far”. The train service has caused no little chaos for the travelling supporters, but their contribution to the event has been immense, the noise the Turkey fans made during their “spectacular, rain-drenched 3-1 win against Georgia” still ringing in Ken’s ears. England, the pre-tournament favourites, “have contributed most of the angst and melodrama”, but having ended up on the opposite side of the draw “to most of the sides they would fear”, maybe Gareth Southgate still has time “to stumble upon a solution”?
Cork could find no solution to their shortcomings when they were knocked out of the football championship by Louth last weekend. “Watching them in Inniskeen on Sunday afternoon would have shortened your life,” writes Ciarán Murphy. Louth, then, march on, Gordon Manning hearing from their “silent assassin” Craig Lennon ahead of their quarter-final meeting with Donegal on Sunday. Mayo’s summer is done and dusted, though, after their defeat by Derry, Gordon talking to Andy Moran about the prospects of Aidan O’Shea coming back for another year in the green and red.
How many medals will Ireland win in Paris this summer? Well, Nielsen’s Gracenote Virtual Medal Table has, Ian O’Riordan tells us, a good record on predicting this class of thing, and the news is good - their updated tally shows Ireland collecting a record nine: two gold, two silver and five bronze. They’re even overlooking Rhasidat Adeleke and Ciara Mageean, so make that eleven.
Jake Passmore is also Paris-bound, the 19-year-old just the third Irish male diver to qualify for the Olympics. “I almost don’t really have a word to describe the feeling,” he tells Ian of the phone call he received informing him that he’d made the cut.
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Aidan O’Brien has a fair chance of striking gold himself in Sunday’s Irish Derby at the Curragh now that it’s confirmed that he has four runners in the race, Los Angeles, Grosvenor Square, Euphoric and The Euphrates.
In his America at Large column, Dave Hannigan doesn’t often get to write about 72-year-old legendary NFL coaches dating people who are 48 years younger, but Bill Belichick has afforded him the opportunity after embarking on a relationship with Jordon Hudson (24). The upshot? Belichick has been subjected to unending “ridicule and abuse”, “the airwaves crackling with a potent amalgam of mockery and mortification”. He has, writes Dave, become “a punchline”.
TV Watch: It’s a rest day at Euro 2024, but if you’re pining for football Premier Sports 1 have two games from the Copa America tonight and in the early hours - Panama v United States (11.0pm) and Uruguay v Bolivia (2.0am). In cricket, England meet India in the second of the T20 World Cup semi-finals this afternoon (Sky Sports Cricket, from 3.30pm), the winners taking on Australia in the final.
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