I saw Zlatan Ibrahimović before he saw me. At least, I thought he would see me. “Hey Zlatan, any chance of a word?” I asked. The Swedish superstar, who promised ahead of his team’s opening game at Euro 2016 that “the king and legend can still deliver”, had just dragged his country to a 1-1 draw with the Republic of Ireland. It was his cross that was turned in by the unfortunate Ciaran Clark for the equaliser.
Ibrahimović did not flinch nor break stride. He was walking relatively slowly, chest out, head up – a touch of Eric Cantona about him. And he carried on walking. You win some, you lose some.
Welcome to the post-match media mixed zone. At the end of each game, players must navigate a zigzag pathway from the dressing room to the team bus. It is lined with journalists seeking the hard currency of quotations and can often be tense or uncomfortably squashed. However, the hanging around for players is leavened by silly jokes and messing about among the media scrum.
I’m covering my sixth major finals here in France and based in Paris during the group phase. So far, I’ve done four matches and filed various other features, previews and interviews.
Half the battle is getting the player you’re waiting for to stop. Generally speaking, those who have played well will; those who have not, won’t. Clark walked towards the Stade de France exit hurriedly after the game on Monday evening, shaking his head a little nervously. When players stop to talk after a disappointment, it speaks volumes for their character.
The first question is always important and an Irish colleague had the perfect one for Ibrahimović. “Zlatan. King, legend. But enough about me, how did you think the game went?” As I said, the joking really is constant.
Ibrahimović strolled on before suddenly stopping further along the zigzag. The media surged towards him – there must have been 100 people straining to hear him, stretching out their dictaphones.
The man at the front of the scrum had the next question and, because it was Ibrahimović, he went for something off the wall. “How do you get opposing players to score goals for you?” he asked, with a nod towards the striker’s role in the own goal. “Are you a magician?”
There was a long pause. “Yeah, that’s it,” Ibrahimović replied. Then he walked off. On another day, a cheeky question might have worked. Not today. You win some, you lose some.
And so it was back to hanging around. There’s an awful lot of waiting in the job of a football correspondent – for players and managers to turn up, for contacts to call back, for press conferences and matches to start. Then, normally, there is a crazy rush to pick out the moments of interest, write them all up and email the copy over.
I am regularly asked about how I write my match reports. I get the feeling that some people, mainly my aunties, think I head home, pop on the smoking jacket, wait for the muse and then get cracking.
The reality is a little more frantic.
We have to file our copy on the full-time whistle, which means writing throughout the game. The 15 minutes of half time are golden and, at the end of the interval, we send half of the report based on the action so far. On the final whistle, we send another quarter – the intro, the most important part – to sit at the top, and a final quarter to go at the end.
Game-changing, late goals are a nightmare. At the Stade de France on the opening night of the tournament, I watched France’s Dimitri Payet thrill the host nation with a marvellous 89th-minute shot from outside the area. It gave his country a 2-1 win and me the job of turning my report of French frustration into one of joy and relief, all in about seven minutes. Sometimes, the final whistle is simply impossible.
The facilities at the Euros are fantastic. In the press boxes, there are TV monitors on every desk, allowing for analysis of replays; there are power points for laptops and, most crucially, reliable Wi-Fi and wired internet connections.
Without an internet connection, you cannot file your story. Should the stadium connections fail, there is the option to tether to your phone, if the network is not too busy, and jam an email through, or, possibly, to put your copy on a memory stick and ask a colleague who has had better luck with connecting to send it for you.
Time is tight and every reporter can tell filing disaster stories, the sort that take years off your life. I will never forget being in Baku on the bus to the airport after Wales’s Euro 2004 qualifying win over Azerbaijan and fighting desperately for a connection via my phone, as the battery on my old laptop ticked down.
When I successfully filed in those days, my computer would emit the sound of Homer Simpson saying “woohoo”. I eventually heard it just as the laptop ran out of battery and died. Then came the call to the sports desk in London. “Yeah, got that,” the editor said. “OK, cool,” I replied, with a calmness I did not feel.
Before every tie here in France, both teams hold a press conference, featuring the manager and a player. Reporters wear headphones to have the content translated into the language of their choice.
They are often dull, although not, for example, when the Romania manager, Anghel Iordănescu, ranted at a journalist over what he felt was an inaccurate story about one of his substitutes smoking a cigarette.
It is a huge logistical and security effort, and the rules are the rules. Access to the teams is carefully managed. The best stuff comes after the matches and often from the scrum in the mixed zone.
What shines through is the scale and spirit of the occasion and, for me, the camaraderie among the reporters from across Europe.
It might surprise a few people, but football writers in England invariably have close friends on so-called rival newspapers. My closest mates in the industry work for the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Sunday People, along with the Guardian. Because we work on the road, we are always at events with guys from other papers. In France, that extends to our colleagues at L’Equipe, La Gazzetta dello Sport of Italy and Germany’s Bild, to name but a few. There is a good deal of sharing of insights – the detail that can make the difference to pieces. It is a pleasure to be here.
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