Football 2024/25

[steviewevie]

Alan Shearer just makes it worse.

 

Hopefully Spain vs Italy will be more enjoyable.

[steviewevie]

f**king sh*t. Sack Southgate. Too much wokery etc

[thetime]

23 hours ago, Neil said:

comedy hour is about to start. 😛 

🤭

[Punksnotdead]

I was watching Royal Ascot so only saw the last 20 minutes. What I saw was Pickford lumping the ball into the box again and again. I didn't realise Sam Allerdyce had taken over as England boss! 😄

[Neil]

how come kyle-sex offender still gets picked?

[thetime]

Question is why are England so arrogant? One world cup 60 years ago. 

[thetime]

That Kalvin Philips comment by Southgate, is going to haunt Southgate for the rest of his career. 

[steviewevie]

14 hours ago, thetime said:

Question is why are England so arrogant? One world cup 60 years ago. 

I guess when you have top players from Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal etc in your lineup you expect a bit better than what we've seen so far.

[Neil]

Jermaine Jenas pointed out on BBC One that the longest VAR wait of the tournament came with the English officials.

[Ryan1984]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

Jermaine Jenas pointed out on BBC One that the longest VAR wait of the tournament came with the English officials.

Brexit means Brexit.

[lost]

VAR was working perfectly well until Stuart Attwell turned up.

[charlierc]

19 hours ago, Neil said:

Jermaine Jenas pointed out on BBC One that the longest VAR wait of the tournament came with the English officials.

We've truly arrived at the party huh.

[charlierc]

On 6/21/2024 at 9:03 AM, thetime said:

That Kalvin Philips comment by Southgate, is going to haunt Southgate for the rest of his career. 

Bizarre thing is that I can sort-of see where he's coming from. Phillips & Rice was an effective double-pivot at the last Euros and worked right for having a front 3 in front of it, plus Phillips' skill-set was good as a player to link defence and midfield while giving Rice more freedom to push on. After Denmark, however, wasn't really the time of place to make this point.

 

We are where we are I guess. 4 points from 2 games isn't the worst place for England to be - in fact it's where we were at this point in each of the last 3 Euros and also at the last World Cup - but the Denmark performance wasn't very good. Trying to teach Alexander-Arnold how to be a CM on the fly isn't working, yet bizarrely England's forward play lacks without his passing, creating one dilemma.

 

Plus there's a real problem with the fact the left flank is a no-go zone. Foden clearly wants to play more in the middle, or even on the right, Saka no longer seems to be able to play on the left despite being left-footed, and Southgate doesn't seem to want to throw-in Gordon despite him being a stand-out left-winger this season. Plus only bringing an unfit Luke Shaw as an outright left back is backfiring.

 

So... pfft. Maybe it's us. Maybe we just think as English people we should win the thing without paying attention to the signs, and this squad is just unbalanced in a way that feels like true squad alchemy ain't there.

Edited June 22 by charlierc

[pink_triangle]

17 hours ago, charlierc said:

Bizarre thing is that I can sort-of see where he's coming from. Phillips & Rice was an effective double-pivot at the last Euros and worked right for having a front 3 in front of it, plus Phillips' skill-set was good as a player to link defence and midfield while giving Rice more freedom to push on. After Denmark, however, wasn't really the time of place to make this point.

 

 

Although for balance I assume Rice/Phillips were playing against Italy which was as big a bottle job as you will see in international football. I’m not sure performances at this stage matter. From memory Italy were in the same group as Wales last time and I never thought I was watching the champions.

[charlierc]

1 hour ago, pink_triangle said:

Although for balance I assume Rice/Phillips were playing against Italy which was as big a bottle job as you will see in international football. I’m not sure performances at this stage matter. From memory Italy were in the same group as Wales last time and I never thought I was watching the champions.

That can be the way tbf. France's performances at the 2018 World Cup's group stage did feel laboured and stodgy but in the knockout phase they were near enough bullet-proof.

 

You are right about Rice/Phillips (although Rice was substituted after 75 minutes) but I don't think we can necessarily call a game decided on penalties a bottlejob. In that game, Italy were just the better side but there's certainly a sense England were ambitious if they thought you can grind out a result for 88 minutes.

 

It is worth noting that if England win their group and Italy finish second in theirs, which is the likeliest looking pair of positions right now, they would face one another in the quarters. Though admittedly England beat Italy home and away in qualifying for these Euros so I guess we'll see who the omens are more negative for in due course.

[pink_triangle]

1 hour ago, charlierc said:

 

 

You are right about Rice/Phillips (although Rice was substituted after 75 minutes) but I don't think we can necessarily call a game decided on penalties a bottlejob. In that game, Italy were just the better side but there's certainly a sense England were ambitious if they thought you can grind out a result for 88 minutes.

 

The fact penalties were needed and Italy were the better team are why it was a bottle job. 1-0 up at home against an average Italian team, to not win from that position is in my view worse than the misses under Sven.

[pink_triangle]

It would be just like Scotland to draw a game that’s must win for both teams!

[steviewevie]

All getting a bit confusing 

[steviewevie]

Whoops, wrong thread!

[Neil]

Who knew Scotland are a bit sh*t at football l!

[steviewevie]

Oof. Bit cruel that.

[pink_triangle]

Over the 3 games Scotland didn’t deserve to go through. I thought they were the worst team in each game and one of the poorest teams in tournament. I was convinced this year would be the time they got through, but it just didn’t happen.

 

While I don’t think they played to their potential. I looked at the 5 strikers and they only have 14 international goals between them. They just lack that quality up front and got punished.
 

 

[charlierc]

8 hours ago, pink_triangle said:

The fact penalties were needed and Italy were the better team are why it was a bottle job. 1-0 up at home against an average Italian team, to not win from that position is in my view worse than the misses under Sven.

In fairness Italy had beaten Belgium and Spain, who were very good teams, they were unbeaten in a record-setting run in international football and they still had some utter bastards in defence, so I wouldn't have declared them average.

 

It's football. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn't. Easy to say in hindsight that if England had made it 2-0 before half-time, they'd have had it in the bag, equally, they were just starved out by the Italian defence.

 

I don't think Sven's were that bad either, mind. Lost in 2002 to the tournament's best team in Brazil, even if failing to take advantage of ten men was a definite misfire, knocked out on pens in 2004 having lost Rooney to injury and had a goal incorrectly disallowed, then knocked out on pens in 2006 having lost Owen, Rooney and Beckham.

[charlierc]

27 minutes ago, pink_triangle said:

Over the 3 games Scotland didn’t deserve to go through. I thought they were the worst team in each game and one of the poorest teams in tournament. I was convinced this year would be the time they got through, but it just didn’t happen.

 

While I don’t think they played to their potential. I looked at the 5 strikers and they only have 14 international goals between them. They just lack that quality up front and got punished.

Scotland's performance against Switzerland was alright, but I thought tonight they were pretty terrible. Not as bad as against a Germany team that just overwhelmed them, but tonight they just never looked like scoring, and the defence didn't leave me convinced that it was fully watertight, even if it took until pretty much the final kick for a Hungary breakthrough.

 

Also hope that Hungarian striker who was knocked out is ok. Was a pretty unsettling moment where they had to rush out a huge medical response to get him treated.

[charlierc]

So a last minute equaliser for Italy last night that put Croatia pretty much out means that England are through to the last 16, along with France and the Netherlands.

 

I guess it's something.