Behind the scenes at Euro 16

Daily Mail and GQ sportswriter Martin Samuel is in Paris for Euro 16 and this is his Notebook for the Spectator. The matches are being played in France:

In the few days I’ve spent in Paris, I’d say the terror alert level is fluctuating between a little antsy, really quite nervous and eye-twitching, hair-tearing, run for your lives woo-woo.

It is not just the threat from ISIS et al – there are other security concerns:

The fear is that opposition spies will somehow learn England’s secrets.

And so, he says, a 9ft tarpaulin has gone up around England’s training base in Chantilly:

They’re clearly hoping opposition narks failed to notice John Stones’s last six months at Everton, Chris Smalling’s performance in the FA Cup final, or whatever the hell it was England’s forwards were up to against Portugal.

Graham Taylor was another security-conscious England manager. In  1993, playing a World Cup qualifier in Oslo, he became convinced that the team co-ordinator provided by the Norwegian FA was a spy. On the eve of the game, Taylor switched training locations and, distracting the poor chap with a fake telephone call, instructed the coach driver to depart without him. England then trained at a military sports centre, watched only by local wildlife and the chief sports correspondent of Norway’s biggest-selling newspaper, VG, whose house happened to back on to the ground. Photographs, and every last detail of the secret training session, duly appeared on its front page the next day.

England lost 2-0.

So here are Godley and Creme with “This Sporting Life” from their second album, 1978’s L: