Euros

The world champions have awoken in France, and the rest of the field have been warned. Germany’s comprehensive 3-0 victory over Slovakia in their round of 16 encounter gave evidence to the brilliance, balance and cohesion this German side is able to muster. 

Jerome Boateng scored a wonderful opening goal in the eighth minute, Mario gomez added a second in the 43rd and Julian Draxler capped a superb individual performance with Germany’s third in the 63rd minute. 

For almost an hour, this match was essentially one long double take at the scoreboard with Ireland leading 1-0 through Robbie Brady’s second minute penalty. The Boys in Green played admirably but came undone when French hero Antoine Griezmann powered home a header in the 57 minute. Griezmann quickly added to his total with the go ahead goal in the 61 minute.

Shane Duffy was sent off for denying Griezmann a clear goal scoring opportunity in the 66 minute, and France rarely looked troubled as they saw out the game in Lyon. 

Portugal defeated Croatia 1-0 after 117 minutes of sleep-inducing tedium. To call it a tactical battle is to turn a blind eye towards both sides' lack of ambition and risk taking. A show that promised the likes of Luka Modric, Ivan Rakitic, Nani and Cristiano Ronaldo resulted in 116 minutes of football without a shot on target — Ricardo Quaresma sparing us from the second shootout of the opening day of knockout fixtures. 

We’re well into the summer of soccer, and it’s been an all-consuming affair that leaves little time for anything else. The Euros kickoff early; the Copa America keeps us up late. With all due respect to our friends, family and significant others, we wouldn’t have made a single different lifestyle choice over the past three weeks. Here are 8 signs that you’ve spent all of June doing nothing but watching international soccer.

The Euro 2016 group stage is done and dusted, providing its fair share of heroes and villains. Players like Gareth Bale, Dimitri Payet and, just recently, Cristiano Ronaldo have enlivened the proceedings, but which five supposed stars have flopped at one of the world’s most prestigious events?

Thanks to the forgiving nature of the expanded tournament format, a few players on this list still have time to make amends for their performances. For a couple of them, it’s off to the beach and an early summer break.

First there was this from Germany manager Jogi Low.

Then there was this.

And now there's another one.

Not again you weirdo.. pic.twitter.com/TwhXyXlrHr

Iceland are the toast of Euro 2016. They made it out of the group stage undefeated (only the third team to do that in their Euro debut) and beat Austria, a team that features one of the best young players in the world, Bayern Munich's David Alaba.

Iceland will face England on Monday to go to the quarterfinals, a match that Roy Hodgson's men will be heavily favored in by people who aren't fans of either team.

When Cristiano Ronaldo dismissed Iceland as a country with a “small mentality” following their opening 1-1 draw at Euro 2016, he couldn’t have possibly predicted that Portugal would need to look up the final Group F standings to find them.