Morning all.
It’s a grey day here today. Not just in terms of the weather, but Ireland’s World Cup hopes ended last night after a penalty shoot-out defeat to Czechia. I watched most of this, it wasn’t a great game, but having gone 2-0 up early on, giving away a daft penalty just moments after the second went in felt like a pivotal moment.
They scored a late equaliser to force extra-time, Ireland were unable to make the most of a couple of half-decent opportunities subsequent to that, and a couple of bad penalties having taken the advantage in the shoot-out meant that was that. It means Irish fans will have to watch this summer’s tournament from afar, which may be no bad thing given the US president yesterday bemoaned the fact that the UK was ‘afraid to give us … the now famous Ireland …’ at a briefing for his illegal war in Iran.
Your guess is as good as mine.
Elsewhere, the Arsenal involvement in the play-offs saw all three players contribute to victories for their countries. Viktor Gyokeres scored a hat-trick for Sweden as they beat Ukraine 3-1. The first was a close range finish, the second a nicely taken goal from inside the box, and the third a penalty. As I said yesterday, this could be a confidence boost for him, but you just never know. Let’s hope so. The more rhythm and form he can produce, the better, because we really do need him and all our attacking players to step up once we get going again.
Riccardo Calafiori played the full 90 minutes for Italy as they beat Northern Ireland 2-0, while Christian Norgaard scored the 4th goal in Denmark’s 4-0 win over North Macedonia. A close range header for a set-piece? He’s showing Mikel Arteta what he can do, screaming ‘Pick me!’.
Technically speaking, there was another Arsenal player involved last night, Jakub Kiwior is on loan at Porto this season until the move becomes permanent in the summer, and he played in Poland’s 2-1 win over Albania.
It means further involvement for all of those guys, and the final fixtures on Tuesday are as follows:
Bosnia and Herzegovina v Italy
Czechia v Denmark
Kosovo v Turkey
Sweden v Poland
Across the Atlantic, Gabriel Martinelli featured in Brazil’s 2-1 friendly defeat to France, and today there are friendly games which could see Kai Havertz involved for Germany as they take on Switzerland. For very understandable reasons, he looks short of match fitness, so hopefully whatever playing time he gets will be beneficial for us as long as he doesn’t tweak anything in that knee that Arsenal have been managing since his return. Piero Hincapie and our Spanish contingent of David Raya, Martin Zubimendi, Cristhian Mosquera could feature as Ecuador and Spain take on Morocco and Serbia respectively.
Common sense applied to England’s game against Uruguay this evening, with Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka given some ‘time off’ before joining up with the squad. There’s little Thomas Tuchel can learn from playing them in a friendly anyway, but you can understand why, in the last get-together before the summer, why he’d want them around at some stage.
There might be minutes for Ben White too, and Tuchel spoke about his history with England which, as we all know, has been tricky over the last few years. Anyone with a functioning brain understands that his issue was never with England or the shirt or the badge, but Gareth Southgate’s assistant. As ever though, it’s been an opportunity for some to stick their knives in with the kind of low-rent jingoistic bollocks you’d come to expect from the worst kind of bottom feeding hacks. Even one or two who should know better, and who know fine well why he made himself unavailable, have fed into this nonsense.
Fair play to Tuchel, who said he didn’t want to the know the details of that previous issue (even though I’m sure he is fully aware of what went down), and said:
I can imagine there are some strong opinions out there, but he deserves a second chance. People have to trust me that he behaves very, very well. He has not put a foot wrong with me.
Once I asked Ben if he would be ready to play for me and for England, he straightaway, without hesitation, said he would love to come back and was desperate to come back. He has my support, hopefully he gets the support from the spectators and we take it from there.
I’m sure there will be some boos, that’s par for the course when sections of the press have got people wound up over something that happened years ago so they can generate some headlines, but I also think Ben White will look at those people the way he looks at an opposition goalkeeper after we’ve scored from a set-piece and he’s blocked them off with some sly movement at the last minute. Noni Madueke could also feature for England later, while Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly have U21, and Max Dowman will play for the U19s.
Keep fingers crossed for a clean bill of health for all involved. Right, I’ll leave it there, and there’s an Arsecast from yesterday below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. Have a good Friday folks.
