Euro 2020 football is well under way now and it has provided us with a lot of talking points already. Italy and Belgium showed early quality, England were uninspiring but managed to win, and of course, Christian Eriksen and how the Danes showed unity at a critical time.
Monday provided us with even more talking points as Scotland hosted Czech Republic, Poland played Slovakia in Saint Petersburg and Spain welcomed Sweden. Let’s have a look at how the latest games went.
Scotland 0 – 2 Czech Republic
There will certainly be 1 name on the back of every paper in Czech Republic today and his name is Patrick Schick. Schick scored either side of the half to provide the Czechs with a confidence-boosting, first game victory. Just before halftime, Scotland switched off for a few seconds and a Vladimir Coufal cross was met by the head of Schick who put it into the bottom corner. It was a bad time for Scotland to concede just before half-time, but things got worse for them only 7 minutes into the second half when they lost the ball in midfield and the ball was presented to Schick.
The Bayer Leverkusen man had the awareness to notice David Marshall off his line and an audacious lob from the halfway line put the Czechs 2-0 up and well in the driving seat. Scotland will take some positives from the game, they had most of the possession, 19 goal attempts and played with a lot of passion.
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Poland 1 – 2 Slovakia
The bookmakers had this one down as easy win for Poland. Their team consists of several high-profile European players, one of which being the most prolific striker in Europe right now. Robert Lewandowski (compared to Harry Kane in this article) had a quiet evening though as the Slovaks defended with high energy and passion. The game looked like it was going to go the way as expected as Poland dominated possession in the first 15 minutes. It was on 18 minutes that a Robert Mak shot was tipped onto the post only for the ball to come back out in the most unfortunate of directions and hit a helpless Szczesny on the back of the head sending the ball over the line for a goal, 1-0 Slovakia.
After half-time, Poland flew out the boxes and immediately scored after only a minute. Karol Linetty scored only his third international goal. Poland now expected to go on and win, but just 16 minutes later, Grzegorz Krychowiak was taking an early bath after receiving his second yellow card of the match. 7 minutes later, Slovakia would capitalise on their 1-man advantage with a spectacular strike from Skriniar.
Spain 0 – 0 Sweden
Spain and Sweden would play out the tournaments first 0-0 in what can be described as a frustrating time for the Spanish. Spain had 75% of possession and registered 17 goal attempts to Sweden’s 4. Spain had several chances, mainly from their Atletico Madrid midfielder, Koke. He missed a couple of decent chances in the first half. Sweden really has Robin Olsen to thank for a point gained, as the goalkeeper was forced into making some fantastic saves.
Sweden will now be more confident of qualifying for the knockout stages as they weren’t expecting to get anything from this game. Spain, on the other hand, will have some cause for concern as they weren’t able to make the most of their superior stats.
