Euro Summits: Plenty of pace in an entertaining Euros retrospective

Journalist Jonathan O’Brien goes back to the humble beginnings of the European Championship in an impeccably researched and lovingly written account of one of our most popular football tournaments

Wayne Rooney of England is brought down for a penalty by Mikaël Silvestre of France in the first round of Euro 2004: the teenager was one of the stars of the competition. Picture: Getty

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Euro Summits: The Story of the Uefa European Championship 1960 to 2016

By Jonathan O’Brien

Pitch Publishing, €24.40

Given the huge amount of fanfare around Uefa’s European Championship in recent years and the hype already mounting for this summer’s delayed tournament, it’s hard to believe that Europe’s premier football competition was once a hard sell.

Without the vision, work rate and obstinacy of a “mild-mannered, bespectacled bureaucrat whose playing career never got out of ...