Adrian Fry Spain’s three-nil defeat of Turkey demonstrated how, in Spanish hands at least, soccer is a language whose finest conjugations come by way of logorrhoeic feet, fully cognizant that the divide between Art and craft exists unpatrolled by linesmen. Morata and Nolito — their names anagrammatic of one another but for the handful of letters that make all the difference —had little choice, arithmetically, but to share out the goals unequally. That the lion’s share went to Morato was fitting; the bravery of his attack had Serengeti written through it like outsize feline incisor through impala flesh. Andres Intesta, cocktailing aplomb of gazelle and seagull acuity as he set up two of the Spanish goals, might have found being named Man of the Match a cruel reminder of the species he’d so effortlessly ceased to resemble. The Turks, stupefied as Dr Watson at Reichenbach, excelled in the role of vanquished foe.
John Samson The ball’s preposterous trajectory defied classical Newtonian dynamics but not Northern Ireland’s goalkeeper. ’Twas this giant’s cause to block its netbound way with a ready hand of Ulster, one of many acts of defiance against German bombardment unrivalled since the Blitz of Belfast. Mountainous Michael McGovern was mournful only momentarily after an erzatz-sounding German, Gomez, bisected the staunch defenders with a slithering shot harder to grasp than anything written by Nietzsche. The Sons of the Province dug deep in the Parc des Princes. The Teutons besieged but the Celts repulsed. Old victories, even those in defeat, were recalled. The games length, commonly called ‘The Ninety’ became the 1690. In the dressing-room after the game, as the manager stared into the dressing room mirror, he faced a poser. Would he nominate McGovern for a Sainthood? He certainly did not fear crosses.
J. Seery The only thing that differentiated the assault on the goal from the Assyrians’ wolf-like swoop was that their strip did not gleam in purple and gold. Starting inside their own half, advancing with passes of an elegance for which a cape-swirling matador would be awarded enough of the bull to make a Desperate Dan-sized cow pie, reaching the goal area with the inevitability of a Rossini crescendo reaching its climax, they shot from left, right and centre, like a firing squad chosen to represent all factions. The keeper, leaping like Nijinsky mounted on Pegasus, deflected and repulsed the ball without bringing it under control, needing neither a bumpy pitch nor a blinding light to make Sir Henry Newbolt proud of him. Anything after that could only be an anticlimax, possibly equal to that perfect Platonic anti-climax which resides in heaven.
G.M. Davis Bordeaux is famed for the quality of its wines but today Spain will be nursing a hangover while eating sour grapes, with the Last Chance Saloon looming as their potential Nemesis. With such a Damoclean sword poised to terminate with extreme prejudice their interest in this competition, the cosmic finger of suspicion will point at Ramos, that multicarded Titan of the Bernabeu whose egregious sins of omission in last night’s match helped bring down the pillars of del Bosque’s temple. We were reminded also that a patient choreography of Zen interpassing without a surcharge of Napoleonic firepower will not destroy Carthage. And when even the supersonic calm of David de Gea degrades to the nervousness of a Hamlet whose mind is eternally divided we are entitled to conjecture if we are observing the passage from maturity into decadence, or a feedback loop that moves with no progression.
Bill Greenwell Passo tempos, passo silêncios, mudos sem forma passam por mim: so wrote the great Portuguese novelist, Fernando Pessoa. It looks like he had Ronaldo in mind: all that passing, passing, passing, but ultimately, it was only time passing that mattered. The snow-shod, fish-finagling Nords suddenly swept past him with their harpoons sharpened. Birkir Bjarnason, his dexter boot pampering the ball as if it were an orphaned seal pup, suddenly seemed to glimpse both Freyja and Frigga, and sent a sharpened and icy stalactite through Rui Patricio’s net. It was even stephens: the elves of Hafnarfjörður were doing the vikivaki. The Iberian Coasters felt the berg-warriors’ brine washing across the bows of their saveiros. Now Ronaldo, eyes sulphurous, brylcreem bombastic and gazellous thighs steaming, made a final bid to be baker’s wife of Aljubarrota: but the ultimate strike eluded his Mercurial Superfly FG CR7s. (Iceland 1 Portugal 1)
Frank McDonald The gods decreed that the Russian bear was to lose — in Toulouse — to a little Welsh rabbit. The sapient will say that a single specimen of the hirundine family amounts to no aestival celebration but the swallow from the Pays de Galles, one Gareth Bale, made a glorious summer for his countrymen on their first visit to a major football championship for five score years and eight. Bale was bold in his ubiquity, weaving a spell around what passed for Russian defence. Poor Igor, the Russian custodian of the goalpost, was no Stravinsky displaying stylistic diversity but rather the Igor of a horror story for Mother Russia. We rubbed our eyes as we watched, wondering if we were experiencing a Plato’s cave of illusion and shadow. Thrice did the Welsh dragon breathe its fire and thrice did the Russian crime of neglect meet Dostoyevskian punishment.
Your next challenge is to submit a conversation between St Peter and a well-known figure from history (alive or dead but please specify) who is demanding admission to heaven (150 words maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 20 July.
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