Day 32 - A Paris pour match 999

Au Revoir, Lille

I woke up late and did a quick blog post in my blue room before handing the keys back. It really was a great stay in Lille and what a privilege to see such a remarkable game in the middle of it.

The drive from Lille to my niece, Anna's place in Paris was smooth and I arrived there about 4:30 pm. Anna came to meet me and guide me into the communal car park under her apartment. Perfect.

We chatted over a lovely cup of tea - my first for weeks - before I had a shower and a bit of a kip. I hand the car back tomorrow and then catch a train back down to Marseille for four days - hopefully with some nice weather - and the incredible prospect of watching France v Germany in the semi final.

Then, it was off to the match to see if it would be France to play Germany.

France 5 Iceland 2 - Match 999

Yes, is the emphatic answer to that. France ended Iceland's dream and confirmed their place in the semi finals.

From Anna's it's about a fifteen minute journey to the ground. The metro line 13 goes from pretty much her flat straight to the ground in 5 stops. Once at the stadium one cannot help but be impressed with its space ship looking roof. Unfortunately, the miserable weather that Paris has experienced this summer just continues and it was cold and wet, but it didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm, least of all Icelandic fans who had nothing to lose.

The Stade de France is very impressive

The atmosphere again was great. I love the Icelandic national anthem. Very moving. And, of course, we all know how stirring the French one is. I was sat next to a nice, quiet, German from Munich - yes, a Bayern fan. I did a fake yawn when he told me!

I couldn't help thinking "it should be England playing here tonight". Sad.

France celebrate yet another goal

The game started rather like the Iceland v England game did with Iceland falling behind pretty much straight away. Giroud found himself in acres of space on the left and slotted the ball comfortably in the corner. But from there, any similarity started to disappear. Iceland tried to come straight back into the game and France, like England, even fell for Iceland's well practiced long throw in and flick-on routine. The difference this time was the Iceland player wellied the ball well over the bar. From there, the games diverged enormously. A Pogba header made it 2-0 after twenty minutes and then two goals in two minutes, from Payet and then a delightful flick over the advancing goalkeeper from Griezmann, just before half time made it 4-0. I couldn't help thinking that England could have done the same, if only events had gone their way early in that first half. Maybe this is just wishful thinking but games of football do spin on tiny events like this.

And this was just the half-time score

Iceland fought back manfully in the second half and scored two goals themselves but France got a 5th - the second by Giroud, to seal the win. Whereas England froze like frightened rabbits, France had the confidence to see it through and won comfortably in the end.

Highest scoring match so far

So seven goals, the highest scoring match of the tournament so far. Apart from watching England lose, I have been very lucky in France 2016. I've seen probably the two best games (Hungary v Portugal and Wales v Belgium) and seen the two highest scoring matches. Hungary 3 Portugal 3 was the other. This was my 9th match in France this year and my 999th match ever.

Algis Juozasson?

One amusing little side story about Iceland is that every member of their team has a surname ending with "...son". Hold on. Let me just check that for factual accuracy...

Well almost. There is one, slight exception, Eidur Gudjohnsen, ends "...sen". All 22 others in the squad end "...son" but I suspect it doesn't change anything here. This is because in Iceland, people are named after their parents. So, I would be Algis Juozasson, because my Dad's first name was Juozas. He would have been called Juozas Antanasson, because his dad was Antanas. My son would be called Kestutis Algisson. It's the same with females, they are named after their mother. So my dear wife, Lesley, would be called Lesley Lesleysdaughter. Her mum would be called Lesley Winnifredsdaughter, and so on.

It's fair because it doesn't favour the man over the woman but without good geneological records it's terrible at tracking one's ancestry. This, of course, is no problem because Iceland keeps excellent geneological records and has done for centuries.

But hearing the Icelandic announcer read out the names of the team, three times now, it always gets me thinking about the inequity of the naming system most people of the world use. One where the woman, most of the time, is expected to take the name of the man they marry, and very rarely is it the other way around.

A bit of Reproductive Biology

As a human biology tutor who teaches the topic of reproduction and embryology every year, I must say I know this is not right. From a biological perspective, in fact, it's obscene.

Look at the facts: A man produces an astronomical number of sperm in a life-time. From puberty until death, billions and billions of them. In the time it takes to say the word "sperm" a median man will have produced more gametes (the collective name for sperm and eggs) than a woman does in a lifetime.

The eggs a woman releases, all 450 or so of them, are produced in a much more caring and nurturing way. They are actually made when the "woman" is still a foetus and still inside HER mother's womb. Whereas the testes are a gamete producing factory on steroids, the ovaries carefully nurture a few eggs, selecting one and only one (usually) to be released once a month.

The sperm is the smallest cell in the body. The ova is the biggest, 80,000 times bigger than the sperm. From your dad, you get a tiny packet of DNA. From your mother, everything else. The first cell from which each and every one of us comes, called the zygote, is pretty much entirely the original mother's egg. All the membrane, comes from your mother, all the mitochondria, all the rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum, everything. 

Looks bad for males, doesn't it? Men just produce billions of sperm as if to say "of you go, chaps! Good luck!" Whereas women release one, specially nurtured and selected, egg as if to say "there you go dear, we love you!" Quantity versus quality never had a more appropriate example.

The Ova is 80,000 times bigger than the sperm. It contains almost all the good stuff that made you

But, of course, it doesn't end there. What happens to the zygote? It implants in the womb - the mother's womb, where, like a parasite, it embeds itself and starts to develop into a little human being. For nine months it literally sucks the life blood out of the pregnant woman, until it puts her through agony actually giving birth - unless you have an excellent midwife, of course.

It doesn't end there either. After birth, what do most babies do? Go on the breast, the mother's breast. And so it continues, with the mother usually providing most of the care for the little one as it grows up. Let's face it, the man could have cleared off and shagged scores of other women while all this was going on, and some do.

So, after all this, after the relative contributions to the newborn child from mother are so grossly unbalanced, what do most people of the world do? Name the child after the father!

It's wrong, I tell you!

This was the train of thought that went through my mind in the middle of the night a few months ago and when I woke up, my dear wife Lesley had to hear me rant about it rather like I've just done here. Sorry!

I want to start a campaign. Let the child take the woman's name at birth, not the man's. We should all do this retrospectively too, if we care. I want to do this myself, even though it would be awkward giving myself another name and even though it would seem to be turning my back on my Lithuanian heritage (it wouldn't, of course!)

So what name should I choose? It's made very difficult, of course, because my mum's maiden name was just her father's and so on ad infinitum. How could this be resolved? How far back would one go?

Well I think I have the answer. Each person should determine who is the longest surviving member on their maternal line, or if married, their wife's maternal line. That person should decide whether she wants to keep her current (perhaps married) name or her maiden name, or any name she likes from he maternal ancestors' maiden names.

In my case, I determined that my mother-in-law should decide, and when I asked her she said she'd choose the name "Hughes".

Lesley Hughes

This is why I have been wearing that name on the back of my Wales shirt for this tournament. No 35 is because that is the year my mother-in-law Lesley was born.

There you have it. A problem, and two solutions.

Tricolour of last names - the one in the middle is the wrong one!

Back to reality

I was worried it would take a long time to get back from the ground as many of the 80,000 would be heading to the metro station like me. But I have to say it was all very well organised and the free service got me back here in only half an hour after the match.

So endeth another great day in France. Two days without football now before the two semi-finals: Wales v Portugal and France v Germany. If only Russia hadn't equalised with the last touch of the game against England, it might have been so different.

Aljice
Paris