Bobfoc

My biggest hope is that we don't get a lot of racist booing and my second biggest hope is that the players aren't too tired to put on an entertaining tournament. I'd love a Home Nations winner, but I'd also settle for a different new winner. Belgium would be the most likely first-time champions, you'd think.

Does that online Panini sticker album cost money to try?

E3 is just around the corner, but Geoff Keighley is also kicking off his Summer Game Fest today with a two-hour show. There will be game reveals, interviews and the usual padding, including a performance by Weezer.

Control is going to be free on the Epic Store later today.

Yes, and a load of others too. The console has a decent level of backwards compatibility with the previous two generations. Honestly, I'd browse the Game Pass catalogue to find some interesting things to play. There's enough variety that something is bound to catch your eye.

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet is that Microsoft now owns 23 studios, and all of their future games will come to Game Pass on day one. The chances that there won't be something you like there are tiny. As for the Series S, while its graphical power is inferior to the Series X, it still has an SSD and an increase in processing power over the Xbox One and Xbox One X. You'd still get the benefits of better loading times.

I think we'll be saying this about every major international tournament soon.

It's a good read. I don't imagine Sam Allardyce would have done something like this. I'm less enthusiastic about the national team than I am about my favourite club, but the last week has made me want England to win more than I have done in the past.

Sounds like a childish impression of a ghost.

I'd be perfectly happy if it alienated certain fans. They're the ones who boo the opponents' national anthems and start street riots.

I think I'd have settled for second place there.

Exciting game at Notts today. I'm not confident about going to big public events yet, so I watched on BT Sport. The next match is away at Torquay, which is probably preferable to playing Stockport, but it will still be a tough one.

I remember that advert. Wasn't there one with Ruud Gullit a year or two later?

I'd say it's worse. The World Cup format, while rubbish, eliminates a third of the teams after the group stage, just as the Euros does. The Copa America format only eliminates a fifth of the teams, and after each team plays four matches.

I don't care for Marvel, but I do very much like Firaxis and XCOM. This could be one to keep an eye on.

Cameron Norrie is through to the third round. He'll almost certainly face Rafael Nadal, so that ought to be the end of his run, but he's done himself proud. He's been in the form of his life recently.

Notts County are now owned by an analytics company and have been using their data to inform their signings. It seems like a good system, and examples like Brentford and Barnsley give me a glimmer of hope for the future.

Scotland came within a couple of minutes of beating The Netherlands. That should grab more headlines than the England match.

Looks as though Alexander-Arnold is hurt.

Why is Lingard starting if he's not in the Euros squad?

Not long until the all-digital E3 now. Microsoft's show will be on Sunday 13th June and Nintendo's will be on Tuesday 15th June.

Gareth Southgate has said that anything short of reaching the semi-finals would be a failure for England. I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. If they won their group and narrowly lost to France, Germany or Portugal, I wouldn't class that as a poor showing. On the other hand, perhaps losing in the quarter-finals to a weaker team would be. How the draw opens up is often a big factor in how far teams of England's standard progress. The semi-final runs in the 1990 and 2018 World Cups were exciting, but their knockout games were against Belgium and Cameroon in 1990, and then Colombia and Sweden in 2018, three of which they scraped through after extra time and/or penalties.

I believe so, yes.

And Ward-Prowse, it seems.

Petra Kvitova has pulled out of the tournament. Ironically, it was because of an injury sustained during a media interview.