This Euro's moral

Pedro in control

He chose a medium range strategy for this final and it worked remarkably well. He didn't whistle for every contact, but chose a quite tight freekick practice whenever he felt it to be necessary. The two yellows were convincing although the first one was of a darker kind. He talked to players where he sensed a bit of tension although the two-hands-in-the-air-choreography seemed to wear out a bit towards the end when he tried to appease Torres and his new Italian "friend".

Not such a difficult task

The final was not a really difficult task, but he made it look quite smooth. There was a handball appeal in the Italian box where a header came to an Italian arm from a range of less than two metres. Yes, the arm is in an awkward position, but if he jumps he will not press his arm against his body, so I guess it was okay to wave "Play on" although many of you will call for a penalty. With 4-0 in the end, it was meaningless and merely an academic discussion if the handball rules are really something people can understand. I often don't and I felt quite a lot of penalty decisions were harsh not to say ludicrous (CL semifinal Alaba or the one on Boateng against Greece).

What to take from this EURO...

Many of the old guard have left the building, and we are stranded with quite a number of ordinary, bland and sometimes mediocre referees to fill the gaps. Apart from the mistakes we gave seen by some of the big names (Stark, Kassai) I feel that many of the refs at this tournament could not weather a real storm and handle a really challenging match (Lannoy, Thomson, Kuipers, Eriksson). Some were quite good (Webb, Cakir and also Proenca) but I don't see really big shots to come who could be a new Collina or a new de Bleeckere. It'll be interesting to see if not European refereeing might head to a sort of crisis because the standards have not been at the level where I expected it to be. Nevertheless Proenca is within the top three for me at this EURO.