The first European Championship with 24 teams wasn't to everyone's taste.
Some atrociously dull games and unambitious pack-the-defense tactics from weaker teams lent weight to critics' laments that the addition of eight more nations watered down the quality of the football. But the wider door also ushered in underdogs who delighted and, in the case of Wales and Iceland, amazed.
The convoluted process for determining which teams advanced to the knockout stages produced drama but also took super-brains to understand.Of the 107 goals before Sunday's final, where France play Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal in the tournament's 51st game, one of the best was scored in the first match. Dimitri Payet's curling, left-footed late winner for the under-pressure host nation against Romania made the West Ham winger the first darling of a tournament where expected stars barely glittered, to name just goalless German forward Thomas Mueller and his Bayern Munich teammate Robert lewandowski. The Pole's record-equaling 13 goals in tournament qualifying were followed by just one more strike in France, when Poland was counting on him most.
Thankfully, the group-stage departure of Russia and the last-16 loss of England, humiliated 2-1 by a country, Iceland, with a population one-tenth that of inner london, saw the back of their mindless hooligans. Fun-loving fans from surprise semifinalist Wales had the last laugh, and the slow hand-clapping Icelanders left in the quarterfinals with a last "HUH!" — a battle-cry subsequently adopted by delirious French crowds when les Bleus beat their major tournament nemesis since 1958, Germany, to make the final. In short, the 31-day tournament, held amid intense but not overly intrusive post-terror attack security, produced a harvest of both highs and lows.
HOOlIGANS
The lowest of the lows. The viciousness of seemingly combat-trained Russian thugs who charged English fans before the teams' 1-1 group-stage draw in Marseille , and again in the Velodrome Stadium itself, surprised French police geared up against terror threats but not street fighting. Almost all of the 35 people injured, one critically, in the street battles were British. England fans itching for a rematch with Russian hooligans that thankfully didn't materialize disgraced themselves the following week with drunken, loutish behavior up north in lille, met by sprays of police tear gas and several dozen arrests. And a 2-2 draw between Czech Republic and Croatia was interrupted when flares were thrown onto the pitch and Croatia fans fought among themselves.
NO KIDS
A sourpuss UEFA edict against players having their children join them on the pitch for post-match celebrations was a kill-joy low. UEFA said it was concerned for small kids' safety and that the European Championship is "not a family party." A high was the kids of Wales players running on the field at the Parc des Princes in Paris after their dads beat Northern Ireland 1-0 in the round of 16, being cheered on by Wales fans as they shot at goal with their little legs.