The Sunday Mail
AFTER 30 days, 50 games, 107 goals, 5 000 kilometers run and several distinct phases of inertia and intrigue, Euro 2016 has its final. It is the right final too. If Didier Deschamps’ team could get there, France against someone else always looked the right way to end these warily embraced championships staged by a willing if slightly weary host, a nation still in a state of official emergency after a bloody and fretful year.
The cracks have showed at times, but not often and less so with every passing round.
In Marseille on Thursday night, birthplace of the original march on Paris, there was something genuinely cheering in the spectacle of 45 000 French, with relief as well as pageantry in the air, cheering their team off to the Stade de France.
There is a tendency to find some rather glib simplifications in the spectacle of sport, to swallow the idea that these gaudy formalities can provide a lasting balm for the bruises of the real world.
Midway through this tournament there was even a creeping suggestion that the two-week summer holiday jaunts of a few thousand Irish and Welsh could somehow heal the scars of Paris, uniting a nation behind the power of craic. The Celts have gone home now. But France still faces strikes, paranoia, soldiers on the streets and potentially grisly elections next year.
And yet there is a place for sport here.
The show rolls on.
There will be a party in Paris tonight and the chance for a little ceremonial communion is a genuinely alluring prospect.
France will be favourites, and they would be popular winners too.
Even their stodgy start in the same venue a month ago ended with Dimitri Payet, the boy from Réunion, producing a spectacular, galvanising winning goal.
They have been the most compelling team at this tournament.
There is, of course, another team involved.
Portugal are also deserving finalists, as all finalists are.
Their progress has been tenacious rather than thrilling and there will be a temptation to cast these teams in contrasting lights.
One thought occurs.
Given France’s emotional weight, what an opportunity this is for Cristiano Ronaldo to make an absolute public villain of himself.
Undeserved, no doubt. But a glorious infamy is a scuffed-penalty 1-0 win away.
It is a peculiar feature of Portugal’s run that Ronaldo, the team’s captain and totem, has been portrayed by many as the ultimate sporting egotist.
The oppositions are already forming before this final: heroes versus hair gel; liberté,égalité, fraternité versus me, myself and I; the needs of the many against shouting at Nani.
This is to misunderstand the nature of sport and also to belittle Portugal’s achievement.
There are still some excellent contrasts between the two finalists.
In Ronaldo and Paul Pogba, the Stade de France will host what looks like European football’s present against its future.
In textural terms, this could yet pan out as Portugal’s light drizzle against France’s violent hailstorms.
Plus, Portugal are the clear underdog, a nation of 10 million that has overachieved consistently against the hosts, two-times champions and the de facto cradle of the Uefa-zone game. – Guardian.
