Euro '96

Bulgaria vs Spain on ITV Hub now.  Its annoying they don't have a time clock, I thought by 1996 all broadcasted matches had one by then.

Edited by Sharpshooter - 12 May 2020 at 1:19pm

I’ve actually done some digging as I cant find a pricing schedule for tickets. I went through EBay and it looks like tickets increased in £10 increments. You could attend for as low as £15, but a lot of tickets on sale seem to be between £25-£45, which in 1996 would have been reasonably steep. I recall with Rugby World Cup ‘99 tickets were steep enough, and only encouraged full houses in some games, and Ireland’s games against Romania and USA were relatively poorly attended. Worse still was only 3,000 showed up for the remarkable USA v Romania game at Lansdowne Road.

For us, this was a tournament we should have qualified for. We were cruising in our group, having walloped the North in Belfast and beaten Portugal at home. We didn't even need to win the group. A good second place would have qualified us automatically!

Sharpshooter wrote: I personally think a lot of people in the UK just aren't interested in watching much foreign or non English football. The fact La Liga, arguably the biggest league in the world along with the Premier League, struggles to secure broadcasting rights here, and even when they manage to, the viewing figures are utterly abysmal.  Sky Sports had to give it up for a reason.  Most matches were barely getting 50k viewers. England v Tunisia got 17m viewers in the UK, whereas game of the tournament France v Argentina gets 6.5m.  Where are the those other 10 million people?  Are there people literally who just watch England and nothing else?  I don't expect France v Argentina to get the same ratings but its a big drop off. The last free-to-air Champions League Final on ITV, Barcelona v Juventus in 2015, got 4 million viewers.  Just barely beating Casualty on BBC 1 at the same time.  Terrible. Same crap goes with tennis outside Wimbledon.

Edited by pre Madonna - 12 May 2020 at 4:53pm

16 teams is the right number, without diluting the quality. In 92, the likes of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Romania, and Ourselves were left behind, and Denmark would have been. Add to that the decent Czech team of the time, and the Welsh team with the likes of Rush, Saunders, Hughes and Giggs, and you would have had an exceptionally competitive tournament with little filler.

I would argue that a continental tournament only needs the very best. It isn't  like a World Cup. The top 8 is plenty and guarantees that there will be no filler. The likes of Spain, Italy, Portugal,  Romania and ourselves were left behind because we weren't good enough.

pre Madonna wrote: Sheringham offered something very different to the others and was always going to be picked. Shearer and Ferdinand were always going to be picked and Fowler was the young wildcard who seemed to be able to score every type of goal. I don't think there was much debate about the forwards.

Het-field wrote: 16 teams is the right number, without diluting the quality. In 92, the likes of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Romania, and Ourselves were left behind, and Denmark would have been. Add to that the decent Czech team of the time, and the Welsh team with the likes of Rush, Saunders, Hughes and Giggs, and you would have had an exceptionally competitive tournament with little filler.

I'm playing devil's advocate as I broadly agree, it was more my dismay that people can think 24 is acceptable for any reason other than money.