I’ve only just got round to installing Shockwave on my computer, so this discovery is a bit late, but anyway - the BBC Euro 2004 Virtual Replay applet is great (though not if you don’t have broadband or better). It reproduces all the main highlights from the matches in a 3D Shockwave environment. You can view it from different camera angles, from the perspective of different players and (most uselessly of all) from the perspective of the ball. The quality is fairly good, even bizarre incidents like Stiel being lobbed from 75 yards in the Croatia-Switzerland match (thoroughly recommended viewing) are faithfully reproduced. How they do it is a mystery, it looks like they string together a library of moves and animations, but how they translate that from the original video I’m not sure. However they do it, it’s fairly quick, you can get highlights of the day’s games by lunchtime the next day.

Watched the Portugal match tonight, they looked relatively ineffective and overawed by the occasion, though the Russians were fairly useless at everything, apart from falling over in the penalty area. And Spain stuttered too, they were my tip for the tournament (though I’m not willing to put money on it) before it started, though there’s still plenty to go. England should beat Switzerland tomorrow, if not then a public flogging is in order. And Italian players really should try and find other reasons for their lacklustre start, other than the quality of their socks.

Anyone else get that “French player in drug test failure” email today? Got it from four separate sources in a couple of hours - an ultra-virulent meme if ever there was one. If it was actually Carlsberg who sent it out, well done to them for such a catchy campaign.