I'm not a football guy. I still can't quite figure out the offside rule. But what I do know is that... we lost.

But I do love to watch the major championships. That is, when they're in the right time zone. UEFA was in Europe, obviously, and so I would have had to consistently be up at 3am to watch most games. No chance!

We actually did last time, when we were younger folk, at least a couple of times for England.

The atmosphere is always fantastic even over here with all the expats who, if anything, have doubled down on their patriotism to maintain their identity in a sea of Asian faces.

I was fairly confident just from the basic reputation of the England team that we would lose, but to my surprise we actually beat the Netherlands and reached the Finals! I was shocked and so made the dedication to hit the sports bar at midnight and wait it out to watch the game among the masses.

It was amazing! There's so much disdain for the England team online it's actually pretty annoying. England can never win, even if they... well, win. But they never win anyway so I guess it doesn't matter either way heh.

If they lose, they're losers and deserve that position. If they win, they got an easy draw and had cheated their way to victory. Their manager, Gareth Southgate, has it even worse. If they win, they win in spite of his presence. If they lose, it's Southgate's terrible and boring game plan.

He was, briefly, regarded a hero for getting them to the finals again. Now the masses are demanding he resigns. Nevermind the fact that the team is doing significantly better now than they have in decades under his leadership.

So, with all this hate, it was nice to see perhaps a majority of Brits in the crowd, although an almost even share of Spaniards, too. The music was classic 90's and 00's English pop and football anthems:

Three Lions, Vindaloo, Hey Jude, Mr Brightside, Atomic Kitten's 'Whole Again' ('We can bring it home again'), Take Me Out.

The list goes on. All total bangers everybody was singing along to at the volume level of a fighter jet blasting off 3cm from your face.

The Brits were rambunctious as hell, as to be expected, with half-full cups of beer being thrown across the room into innocent bystanders and people trying to get drinks being harassed by the cheers of whatever classic song was being played at the time.

But it wasn't all English. Spain had a 50/50 share of attention. They had their own songs alternating between our own such as:

Er... well I'm sure they're famous in Spain

But nobody was singing along. Kinda like their team when their anthem came on.

Their crowd was almost as energetic and loud as we waited 3 hours for the game, but undoubtedly more respectable because, let's face it, us English are barbarians.

Bets are on

I put my free ballot ticket thing into the England box assuming I win a prize if we win, secretly knowing we wouldn't win, but openly hoping we would. That hope got stronger through the night and as the game started and progressed, this feeling skyrocketed into the stars and back down into the gutter about 170 times.

I may not know all the footy rules, nor the players or any nuance, but I understand basic game theory and team sports. Being English you can't really escape at least a hearty dose of exposure to football throughout your entire life.

I knew enough and also not enough to result in an absolute thorough enjoyment of the game. I wasn't passionate enough, as my friend was, to feel absolute anxiety and devastation the entire 90 minutes, but I was enthusiastic enough to appreciate all the intricacies and the underdog feeling that we've had to endure for 58 years (Having not won a single cup since 1966 and still being considered one of the top teams somehow).

I knew, for example, that their game style is 'boring and defensive'. But the way they flowed around like on the field blocking Spain at every turn through the entire first half of the game was fascinating to me. Spain was constantly looking for an opening and just couldn't get through.

You could visibly see the emotional annoyance the Spanish players were feeling, frustrated that they hadn't already won. Most of the online world considered this to be an upcoming annihilation, a straight and easy 4-0 to Spain kinda thing. And it just didn't blossom that way.

I was also fascinated at just how completely different the second half of the game was. Although Spain generally dominated overall (I think over 60% possession of the ball was by Spain), and had far more opportunities to score, they really saw results in the second half.

I couldn't tell if Spain had a talk and somehow switched on, or if England had an argument on the sidelines and switched off. But the results speak a thousand words, with the first goal happening within a minute or so of the whistle.

From that point on, Spain just fired shot after shot over and over just waiting for one to go in. It was only a matter of time before another one finally went in.

True, England got a corker of a goal but, it didn't mean much in the grand scheme, other than saving them from complete humiliation. 2-1 against Spain is a respectable result.

But I did feel like something happened in part 2 before the game even began that was just a huge error on somebody's part. Defense seemed to whisk away like a fluffy cloud. Their reputation for being boring and defensive seemed bizarre at this point. It's almost as if they kept forgetting they had to stop the ball going towards their own goal. I lost count how many times England literally passed the ball to Spain.

Spain, of course, were incredible, precise, surgical and fast. The number 17 striker guy was formidable and scary from the get go to me. But I think England could legitimately have had a chance to win. They clearly have the skills.

If you look at the power of the defense in the first half - unbreakable - and the stunning speed and precision of the last, like, 3 minutes when they started getting desperate. It genuinely does seem like there's some questions to be asked when it comes to their strategic approach to the game.

Supposedly, our team has some of the greatest players in the world, such as a guy called Bellingham. And yet, he did virtually nothing the entire game. I don't think I even saw him on screen until the last couple of minutes.

I've got so much more to say but nobody reads this shit anyway lol.

I'm Going Home

Yeah well, I tried. It was 5am and many thousands of fans not only from our huge sports bar but from many others dotted around the area. The queue to get a taxi was up to 128 cars on the app, and the roads were otherwise empty. No public transport available.

We walked for a while before splitting off with our own tactics to get home. I got a shared bike and cycled maybe 15 minutes South until I found a sport where the queue was merely 18 cars. I sat around for a bit and eventually got home by 6am. Tired, but sober (I had my 2 free entry drinks but the last thing I wanted was a hangover at 37 years old).

For me, it was an absolute blast of fun. But I couldn't help wonder what could have been, if I was there to witness an England victory after FIFTY EIGHT YEARS. I think it would have done more than simply made some fans happy.

Football is a major cultural feature of England, like the Royal Family and bad teeth. It unites everyone, it gives people the only opportunity to truly let off steam and just go mental in their otherwise dreary, increasingly impoverished lives.

A win at UEFA, I think, could have had some very powerful psychological consequences to our society. With a new government coming in after a devastating 14 years of elitism, corruption and incompetence, a cherry on top to really spell out a positive Omen for the future of the land would have been a victory right here and now.

A happy society is,a productive society, after all.

Alas, Spain took that from us by being too damn good. And they've won so many times at this point it's not even significant in that same way to them. Winning is almost par for the course at this point in Spain. It's to be expected. Yawn.

Reminds me of the days in Tennis, which was like a full 15 years, when the only winners of every. single. major. tournament. Was either Federer, Nadal or Djokovic. In terms of rankings, the top 4 were consistently those plus Andy Murray. For like, my entire life growing up in England and beyond lol. It was ridiculously predictable and nobody could seemingly overcome them. boring (but also cool).

Anyway that's enough for now.