{"id":539,"date":"2021-07-02T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T08:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/?p=539"},"modified":"2021-07-07T13:48:54","modified_gmt":"2021-07-07T04:48:54","slug":"stephens-blog-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/?p=539","title":{"rendered":"Stephen’s blog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dear Newsletter Readers (regular and those not so),<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter and I hope it finds you well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are a lot of sporting events going on in the world at the moment; if you are a tennis fan there\u2019s Wimbledon, if you\u2019re a soccer fan then there\u2019s the Euros 2020 and the Copa America soccer competitions currently being played and if you happen to be fan of all sports then let\u2019s not forget the Olympics which will be with us shortly, not quite as we would like them to be with us because of Covid, but with us nonetheless.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I\u2019m a soccer fan and coming from the UK as I do I\u2019m particularly invested in the Euro 2020 soccer competition as England are through to the quarter finals after beating our old nemesis Germany 2 nil.  Interestingly enough, back at the beginning of the 20th<\/sup> century leading up to the 1940\u2019s England was always the team that was feared the most, not just by the Germans, but by most other footballing nations because we were a very formidable soccer force.  However, we have not been very formidable for a long time and as such teams like Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium and of course south American teams like Brazil and Argentina have pretty much been the forces to be reckoned with for quite some years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am hoping that the performance against Germany was not a one off performance and that it becomes the norm for England to perform like they mean it; let\u2019s face it we have a lot of young talented players that are playing in leagues all around the world which makes for a very eclectic group of players when they all come together.  However, it\u2019s the coming together and performing as a productive unit which is where England lets itself down.  Knowing how predictably unpredictable we generally are when it comes to putting in good performances to win games and then performing diabolically when losing them makes for a very nerve racking 90 minutes in front of the TV screen and if it goes into extra time then that\u2019s another 30 minutes of being on tenterhooks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in the last Rugby World Cup England played very well to beat the All Blacks to get to the final only to lose to South Africa.  I believe the English rugby team thought that their win over the All Blacks was like the final for them and they treated it as such, but when it came to the actual final it was as though the team had no energy left and they\u2019d lost quite a bit of focus.  The possibility that we might be able to get to the final of the Euro 2020 soccer competition and maybe even with it seems quite alive after beating the Germans; however, it\u2019s easy to lose a bit of focus and end up getting eliminated.  The immediate concern for Gareth Southgate and the team will I am sure be on playing better than they did against the Germans in order to beat Ukraine convincingly tonight in the quarter final in Rome.  The Ukraine team is not to be underestimated by any means, they have had a good run so far and they are not ready to give up yet, so I am sure they will push England all the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do I think the result will be? \u00a0Well, I have an idea, but I\u2019m not going to say.\u00a0 All I hope is that it\u2019s a good game to watch for all the people that will be in the stadium and for those like me that will be watching it on the telly at home; as long as both teams play entertaining football and England deservedly come out on top at the end of the game then that will do me.\u00a0 As the old saying goes \u201cAnything can happen in football\u201d, so all we can do is hope that it\u2019s England will be going through to the semi-finals at the end of the game and not \u00a0Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until next week, keep safe and enjoy your weekend. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Newsletter Readers (regular and those not so), Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter and I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stephens-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alphabendi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}