David Marshall's Euro Diary Day 11 - Well I'll be Damned, Austrian Resistance! (Patreon)

Do you remember when I telt ye? Because I telt ye! Your man Dave said last night: “watch Austria and The Netherlands because it will be a good game and Austria will provide a shock”. Danny Murphy said on comms that no one could see this coming, but I did! Me! Dave!

Austria clearly believed it too as they flew out of the traps and were ahead inside six minutes. Donyell Malen could only poke the ball into his own net when trying to clear a dangerous low cross from Alexander Prass.

Austria kept going and could have been 2-0 ahead when Marko Arnautović fluffed his lines when through on goal. I was worried that Austria would regret this as The Netherlands were starting to grow into the game.

They managed to see it through to the break and held the lead going into the second half. Now they just had to be tight and not concede after 60 seconds. They didn’t! Austria conceded the equaliser after 75 seconds. A cool finish from Cody Gpako and I thought at this point that they would go on to win the game now as they looked the team in the ascendancy.

However, just before the hour mark, Austria were back in front thanks to a fantastic diving header from Romano Schmid. A good time for them to get that goal because they hadn’t got started at all in the second half.

The Dutch got level again through another fine finish, this time from Memphis Depay. He’s been possibly The Netherlands’ best player so far and thoroughly deserved his goal. A rare moment of poor refereeing here as the goal was originally ruled out for handball then took an age to be overturned by VAR. Not really sure why the referee was sent to the monitor here because that was one of those where it either was it wasn’t, and it clearly wasn’t.

Surely the Austrian's chance had gone now after being pegged back twice? There was to be one more twist in the tale as Marcel Sabitzer fired home the eventual winner with 10 minutes left to play. A result that meant Austria won the group and the Dutch needed to settle going through in the wee idiot’s third spot.

Fair play to Austria, they deserve to go through as winners, they’ve been the best team to watch in their group and took advantage of the two bigger sides not firing. I believe we can now say they are this tournament’s definitive dark horses.

In the afternoon’s other game, France and Poland saw out a 1-1 draw after each scored a penalty. I need to talk about Robert Lewandowski’s penalty. I love big Bob and I am glad he got a goal in possibly his last game at a major tournament, I’m even glad he got two chances at it. But how was his penalty allowed to stand? If that was one continuous movement I need to get on the phone to Michael Stewart for a lesson on biomechanics. He moved in fucking chapters!

For the evening games, this will be quick! I know I said I wasn’t going to watch the England game but it takes two to lie - one to lie and one to read the lie.

I was recording the Pedro show tonight and it was the Progres episode. I’d rather do that show 10 times than give that England game my full attention. Well done, you topped the group, you incredibly dull, boring bastards. Denmark, another incredibly dull team, went through in second after their third draw. This group really has been a massive turd on top of a delicious steak.