Colm O'Regan: If Ireland was at Euro 2020 we would have been bate out the door

'Some international tournaments are so poor you watch them thinking ‘Ireland would nearly have won this’. Not this time. We had no place there.'

I jumped out of my seat. For Switzerland. Switzerland! I never cheered as loudly for anything Swiss in my life before. And I remember receiving my first Toblerone. Switzerland’s equaliser against France at 3-3 was just one of lots of moments at this Euro 2020.5 that made me punch the air.

I never thought it would come to this. There hasn’t really been a rollicking championship since Euro 2000. The year I became a man. (And by that I mean the year I watched Euro 2000).

Of course when Ireland’s involved it’s a different thing. But Ireland at a tournament is like family. You have to love them but that doesn’t mean you always enjoy their company.

There was no worrying about What Might Have Been. Some international tournaments are so poor you watch them thinking ‘Ireland would nearly have won this’. Not this time. We had no place there. We’d have been bate out the door. That’s fine. We’re in transition and with defeats costing nothing in ticket prices, there’s never been a better time to rebuild. So if we couldn’t get through the mysterious Nation’s League -at one point I was in danger of accidentally qualifying- then we didn’t deserve it.

So far -this is written before the quarters- it just hasn’t let up. There have been shocks and games that don’t go according to plan. The ball hitting the crossbar or the post, where someone nearly scores and the ball goes up the other end and someone nearly scores there and we are begging for a someone to put the ball out of play so we can digest what we’ve just seen. Lots of goals. 

And particularly goals from crosses. My favourite type of goal. A punchline to an elaborate set-up. The perfect punctuation to the sentence that preceded it. The sudden brutal blow after the delicate dance before it.

Proper Football. The kind we misremember from a childhood watching the 1986 world cup. Or a never-ending game played in a rough field, darkness falling, you in your short trousers slamming home a NextGoalWins before collapsing and dreaming of Deasy’s lemonade.

And international championships are also an antidote to modern club football which is often just full of perfect manscaped replicants with 6.0 packs clinically executing the game plan and creating outcomes that don’t diverge too much from the xG. (Don’t ask.)

But internationals, there are still the last vestiges of hardy hoors. You’ll still see the odd North Macedonian like Goran Pandev, who looks like he could do a good day’s work in the bog. Or Giorgio Chiellini a nice man who might also rip out the stove again through the wall if you were late paying him for the job. You wouldn’t mind any team getting as far as possible. Even England, ok no but I mean like you can’t hate them when half the team is Irish.

The air-punching happened on the 28th of June. Two matches. Fourteen goals. Probably the greatest day of international football ever. There were more goals on that day than in the whole tournament the year Greece won it. Okay, that’s not true, but it felt that way.

And the thing is, I’ve watched only a small fraction of it. And a lot of that is on the RTÉ Player on a phone while emptying the dishwasher or in the car while waiting. Or on the big computer as I field fundamental questions about ‘Why do they want to score a goal?’ from the Eldest. 

But it didn’t matter. When it’s this good I like reading about it, watching minute-by-minutes, hearing guests on podcasts get excited about what they’ve seen. It’s still a group experience. And there aren’t many of them these days.