Euro Zone: Sunak v Starmer can’t compete with Georgia’s stunning victory over Portugal

With election day looming in Britain, did Euro 2024 take a back seat during Wednesday’s TV debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, especially when England weren’t even playing that night? Well, the peak audience for the debate on the BBC was three million ... compared to 6.4m for Georgia v Portugal on ITV.

This disinterest appears to be mirrored in the England camp over in Germany. While not wanting to seem, cough, presumptuous, the English FA offered its players guidance on voting by proxy or by post in next Thursday’s election, but: “Politics talk? Eh ... none at all. We get the BBC and ITV, but we’re only showing the football on our TVs,” said Ezri Konsa. “And Love Island – we’re big on that!” That could be 26 abstentions, then.

WORD OF MOUTH

“It all went well. I called my mum and told her.”

Lamine Yamal after learning that he’d passed Spain’s equivalent of the Junior Cert. Next: Georgia.

Spain recover from early shock to stroll past Georgia and into quarter-finals

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Jude Bellingham praises England’s character after late comeback

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Jude Bellingham wills incoherent England past Slovakia on sheer shameless self-belief

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EuroZone: Trying to put outrageous words in Gareth Southgate’s mouth

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“I saw the graze on his chin and his nose and I burst out laughing. He was lying there with his face bloodied, hands and chin.”

Ezri Konsa on the, eh, amusing side of Anthony Gordon’s bike crash.

“Usually, God comes first. I’d expect him to be at church, but he could turn up.”

Marc Guehi on whether his Da, a pastor, will travel for the Slovakia game or stay behind to offer up prayers.

NUMBER: 0

That’s how many goals have been scored direct from free-kicks at Euro 2024 so far. Mind you, there was only one in all of Euro 2020, so there’s time to catch up.

Belgian town closes the border with France, fearing the worst

Having ordered the closure of the bridge that links Wervik to its French sister town of Wervicq-Sud just over the border, you have to wonder how confident the mayor of the Belgian town is about his nation’s hopes of beating France on Monday.

“The French are much more chauvinistic than we are,” Youro Casier told Politico. “We know from experience that after a French victory they like to provoke ‘les petits Belges’ and tease them with their cars,” he said, recalling, with no little pain, that 2018 World Cup semi-final defeat. “They come driving around here, honking and getting out to dance in the streets. We want to avoid triggering people in to doing stupid things.”

The bridge will, then, be blocked with concrete slabs from kick-off time on Monday to six the following morning, although pedestrians and cyclists will still be allowed use it. But, Casier warned, “they cannot honk”.

QUOTE

“I’m happy that the Mbappé soap opera is over because we lived it every week. Will he leave? Will he stay? Did he do a sh*t after breakfast?”

Emmanuel Petit, relieved that the will-Kylian-join-Real-Madrid saga is at an end.

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