David Marshall's Euro Diary - Spain Soar as France Bore (Patreon)

After a historic 24 hours on these shores, we turned our focus back to the continent as eight became six. We had two potential crackers for what could have been a smashing Friday of football, well we got one at least.

We started off with Spain vs Germany in a potential final before the final. Quite possibly the two best teams left in the tournament, one of them would be going home early. The team who would be making their exit were already home so it worked out quite well for everyone really.

The first half did have somewhat of a feel of the two teams feeling each other out. The Germans seemed to take the approach of kicking lumps out the Spaniards and Spain were forced into an early change with Dani Olmo replacing the injured Pedri. I wonder if Germany will regret that now?

The best chance of the half came to Kai Havertz who rose in the middle of the box to direct a header on goal but into the arms of Unai Simón. Goalless at halftime and hard to pick a winner at this point.

Spain started the second period strongly and Alvaro Morata should have done better with a chance on the six-yard line, I feel I could just copy and paste that line every time Spain play.

But it would be Spain who drew first blood when Lamine Yamal found Olmo lurking at the edge of the box and he supplied a perfect finish into the far corner of the net. A wonderful goal, think Frank Lampard at his best floating into the box undetected.

Germany came fighting back however and the introduction of Niclas Füllkrug helped them no end as his physicality was causing Spain all sorts of problems. The chances then started to come thick and fast for Germany as Füllkrug hit the post and Havertz came close to chipping Simón after a poor kick out.

It looked as if though Spain were going to hang on until the 89th minute. A deep cross to the back post was headed back across the box by Joshua Kimmich into the path of Florian Writz who smashed the ball home.

To extra time we would go and where chances were had for both teams I think the story of the match is going to be the amount of German attacks that were almost great. A common theme of this tournament has been poor decisions in the attacking third and I think Germany exemplified that perfectly today. They will surely look back on this match and think what could have been.

The decisive moment of the match came in the 119th minute when Mikel Merino supplied a perfect header from an Olmo cross to put Spain back in front. Spain would have to survive one last nervy moment when Füllkrug came inches away from finding another equaliser deep into injury time.

Spain would hold on and pass their toughest test of the tournament so far. I don’t think you will find many people who will argue that they are the team to beat.

To the evening game and France vs Portugal, another potentially great game and would this be the moment where France finally clicked into gear? No.

Truth be told, this was mostly a dull affair which goes along with every other game that France has played at this tournament. The pace of the game at times was beyond slow to the point where it looked more like walking football rather than the quarter-final of the European Championships.

This was a huge missed opportunity for Portugal who had the better of the chances and they will surely rue leaving Christiano Ronaldo on the park who was far from effective. I am very much of the opinion that Roberto Martinez is an absolute fraud of a manager but I think you can add spineless to that now too. I saw it perfectly summed up by someone on Twitter who said Ronaldo was like the guy who has booked the park and organised the game so you had to let him play.

We would go all the way to penalties, which is always nice but I could really have done without enduring another half an hour of this snorefest. France would prevail in the end as Joao Felix would be the only player to miss.

France have now made it to the semi-finals without scoring a single goal from open play. Didier Deschamps said after France’s win in the Last 16 that “if you don’t like the football, turn the channel”. I suppose you can’t argue with the results, but if it wasn’t for the fact I’m quite looking forward to Spain giving France what they deserve I may have just taken his advice.