The Angle and the Bear: Football Live

On this second day of the 2016 European Football Championship, Slovakia and Wales have already played against each other to the strain of the Welsh national hymn, Gareth Bale did what he could, and the game was won 1-2.

9:00 p.m. England vs. Russia begins in a Marseilles stadium.

9:07 p.m. I'm not impressed by how either team is playing thus far, but to be fair teams do seem to temporarily capsize through nervousness from time to time in these early games.

9:10 p.m. A player just tripped over his own soccer ball that he was holding between his legs . . .

9:12 p.m. To generalize cruelly, I haven't been impressed by the English team in the past World Cups, and not here either. Not a great deal of finesse or elegance, more crude power. British journalists (well . . . you see the conflict of interest there) have been insisting for years that England Has a Chance to be at the top, and I've never been convinced.

9:14 p.m. When I'm thrilled if a pass is completed . . . it doesn't necessarily say good things about the quality of a game. On the other hand, the game is roaming over a great deal of the field, rather than streaming up to a line of defensemen and breaking apart like waves over a coastal boulder, therefore more interesting to watch.

9:24 p.m. In the follow-through motion after an advance on the Russian goal, an English and Russian player slid along in each other's arms as if they were in a skating rink. The conditions of the ground appear a little questionable. But there is no rain?

9:28 p.m. At last England passes three or four times consecutively, and bounces the ball into the goal as it had tried to do earlier, and it lands in the near corner of the goal. It was offside.

9:35 p.m. The Russia goalie carries out an excellent fist-away (Faustabwehr in German; I can't think of the proper English term right now), as Wayne Rooney fires a fast ball at him and he raises his fists to ping it away as if pulled by a string.

9:39 p.m. England's coach seems 'pleased.' He strikes his hand against the top of the bench roof in frustration as he turns from the field.

9:41 p.m. Another ambitious but misguided English shot at the Russian goal. To be fair, they are often very close, which cannot be said of the generous 'volleys' that are sometimes fired into the stratosphere over the opponents' end of the field whenever desperation strikes a soccer team.

9:44 p.m. Players are being forced by ill-mannered antagonists into performing tumbling rolls, pleasing to the gymnastically attuned eye, but not pleasing to the referee.

9:46 p.m. Half-time! Nobody's happy? It seems to be hot in Marseilles, too. Sweat is puddling darkly on the Russian players' crimson jerseys; forming rills down the forehead of Harry Kane et al.

10:03 p.m. Half-time over. Russia's defense have been passing the ball amongst each other. This expedient is often the death-knell of all watchability. (Although it worked for Spain in past World Cups, apparently.)

10:22 p.m. A goal? A car just honked, in celebration?, outside the apartment here in Berlin. But since I'm watching the slower internet footage, I'll know in a few minutes if anything indeed happened.

10:28 p.m. England gets a goal. Of sorts. The line of Russian defencemen looked terribly young, so my protective instincts were too awakened to appreciate the goal against them — which was still just, since the English team has seemed better throughout the game.

10:45 p.m. Three minutes' added time. We can admire the Russian defence's passing skills that much longer.

10:47 p.m. *Cough* Never mind. Russia just scored by practically running it into the goal.

10:48 p.m. 1 - 1, I guess.