Football - Euro 2020 Championship

ewal

SOD was absolutely the guy for me tonight. I've watched him from when he was a youth player for my team, forever written off because he doesn't play for a fashionable team bankrolled by billionares. But he stood toe to toe and alongside the so called cream of the crop and didn't flinch for a minute. If only the England goalie hadn't saved his shot - it would've been the absolute dream.

I'm not sure where we will end up this tournament, but I do know that with people like him involved, we are on the up.

The one post match analysis session where I actually wanted the default all English pundit panel and I didn't get it, because we had been served up a tokenistic provincial show instead.

ewal

And to say Scotland were devoid of anything in the final third is total red and white spectacled pish.

rainer2859

Highlight was Graeme Souness teeth….

ewal

Which thankfully we didn't have to suffer in Scotland. I watched with the sound off and the radio on.

JerkMoans

Most entertaining thing about the entire match was Phil Foden’s hair

ewal

Do you think the B(ritish)BC will broadcast Gazza's goal against Scotland 756 times before the next round of matches, or do you think they've got it out their system?

Shrews

All part of Southgate's masterplan to win a tournament with a group of knackered Premier League footballers. Most of these players have got three high energy games in them at best, they won't get to the final by playing six high energy games and being exhausted when it counts. 

Sleepwalk into the knockouts in 2nd or 3rd with no injuries, no further bookings and a team who haven't made the effort to get out of 2nd gear yet.  We don't want to win the group and face France, Portugal or Germany, better to face Sweden. We're exactly where he wants us to be, so expect another snore draw against the Czechs, which will see them 1st and us 2nd.

I don't think Kane has run for the ball has he?  Uncharacteristically well off the pace.

Meanwhile, the Welsh and Scots if they qualify will be completely exhausted and be out in the next round. 

Southgate legend. 

MagicPigDetective

Souness was great tonight! Made Ian Wright sound like a fool. Well done Scotland, so much passion and great play. I've had so much fun watching clips of the Tartan Army. Awesome. Boogie Woogie!

 On the England front, I'm Welsh so commenting from the outside, (also a Liverpool fan), but I've been saying it from the start, I can't understand why Jordan Henderson is not in your team. He's done the lot, a big game player, box to box midfielder, a battler and a leader with a winning mentality. Unless he's not fit ( he must be by know, and maybe fresher and less exhausted than others), he should be in the team. England's midfield were awful tonight.

Legionreturns

sev112 said:

Legionreturns said:

TeleMaster said:

I don't get why they can't break these teams down and why Kane is so absent. Scotland sat behind the ball for the last 30 mins and it is difficult to score against that, but I felt that they were beatable. Even though Scotland had a few chances they didn't have the quality to score. Not a huge threat and England should have done better.  

Derbies do bring the best out in the underdog so perhaps that was part of it. 

I think you may need a touch of realism with your red rose tinted glasses tbh. 

"Break them down?" 

Scotland were by far the better team. Had more attacking guile, organised and kept their shape and showed far more desire and ambition. 

They were the ones who were held, and unlucky not to break England down. 

This is a typical England team at a major tournament. Big money players that turn it on all season for their clubs, but look like they can't be arsed with international football. 

Well played Scotland, you probably did enough for all 3 points there. 

There we go again, you don’t win games through effort, and there’s no such thing as a moral victory,  England were agreed devoid of creation and effort.
But Scotland were devoid of anything in the final third.  You can’t discount that, Scotland were poor in attack, and poor in finishing the few half chances that were created (mostly by poor English defensive control).  So they don’t deserve either real or moral 3 points.  If the6 had a number of chances that hit the posts, or Pickford had a worldly or the ref ripped them off then maybe, but there were none of those. They deserved the 0-0 draw they got, and quite feasibly would have been a fair 1-0 loss had Stones header been 4” to the left.  So in terms of real chances they me be pleased with 0-0.
yes it is much better to watch good effort driven midfield play, and I was pleased to see them playing better than Engkand in midfield, but 2 games in and they have no goals
Wishful thinking don’t get you 3 points ,and Scotland need to raise their game higher just to get a draw against Croatia, and even higher to get the win they need.

Pickford made a great save, and the stats don't lie.

duotone

Around £400 Million on the pitch wearing England shirts. Pretty disappointing. I’m not surprised tbh, but am disappointed.

Looks like Kane isn’t fully fit/injured. (So far 3 shots in the 1st 2 group matches, all 3 off target)
Would prefer Rashford or Calvert-Lewin starts ahead of him (although that obviously won’t happen) in the final group match.

To me it seems like we qualify against poor/average teams at best & then he sticks to those same ‘old reliable’ players, but in a tournament like this the quality of most teams is much higher. They are actually ‘up for it’ & give a shit. 

Is Southgate picking his best team available to him? Jason Sancho stats this season are: 38 games/16 goals/20 assists. Can’t believe Southgate isn’t giving him a chance.

AlbertC

Just an absolutely classic England tournament performance, i.e. utterly disappointing. Why do I ever think it’s going to be anything other?Lacking class and ideas about how to break down a defence and devoid of guile. 

Kane’s performance seemed like an abject lesson in how to be completely anonymous in a match. 

p90fool

MagicPigDetective said:

Souness was great tonight! Made Ian Wright sound like a fool. 

I was amused to hear both the commentator and Ian Wright describe England's performance as poor from "one of the favourites to win the tournament".

I mean what the absolute fucking fuck are these arseholes talking about?

A bit of support and patriotism, fine, but favourites to beat France, Germany, Portugal etc? 

Lovely parody here;

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/wales-arrogantly-expecting-to-win-whole-thing-as-usual-20210617209245?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1623923331

Hattigol

Gassage said:

Worst hair in modern football.

Phil Foden: "Hold my beer"...

And as for last night, England are shite, have almost always been shite and I feel confident in saying will always be shite. 

Well done the Scots. Before celebrating too much though, do keep things in perspective and remember you haven't actually scored a goal yet...

munckee

p90fool said:

MagicPigDetective said:

Souness was great tonight! Made Ian Wright sound like a fool. 

I was amused to hear both the commentator and Ian Wright describe England's performance as poor from "one of the favourites to win the tournament".

I mean what the absolute fucking fuck are these arseholes talking about?

A bit of support and patriotism, fine, but favourites to beat France, Germany, Portugal etc? 

Lovely parody here;

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/wales-arrogantly-expecting-to-win-whole-thing-as-usual-20210617209245?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1623923331

To be fair I don’t know any England fans who think/thought we would win it. The bookies make us contenders because so many people bet on us to win and the  media stir it. But it’s not in their interests for drama to say we can’t win. 

From before the tournament I’ve thought any top team would put us out. We don’t have a good enough central defence and we don’t have a playmaker.  The closest we have is Grealish who doesn’t get a start.  

YellowLedBetterMan

That was proper shite last night.

Sideways, backwards, no urgency is the sort of football Spain get mocked for. Teams like the Scots who are happy to drop deep into flat banks of 5 and 4 are hard to break down when you slow the game down to a crawl and play in front of them. Have a bit of creativity, play more direct and break them down before they've had a chance to drop in, otherwise you're doomed to just play nothingball for the entire game.

The subs were awful - used 2 out of 5 possible and both of them were the wrong sub to make. Sterling shouldn't have played beyond the 60th minute and Calvert Lewin should've come on instead of Rashford.

Couple that with Tyrone Mings being the worst England centre half I've ever seen and it was frustrating viewing.

I'd go almost entirely different 11 for the Czech game. Give Sancho, Saka, Calvert Lewin, Ben White and our boy Jude a run out.

scrumhalf

England beat Croatia: we're great, fantastic, we'll win the tournament

England draw with Scotland: we're dull, we were crap, we'll be lucky to make the quarter finals.

The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between. 

munckee

Okay munckee said:

RaymondLin said:

Kane needs to score lots.
Foden needs to create and score lots.

Our defence needs to hold up and i don't think it does, all this talk of having too many world class right backs is pointless when our center backs are not on the top of their game.

I think our midfield is weak.  Sterling is not the player he was last season, Henderson is off his game too.  Rice is not world-class. Phillips, I like Phillips but he is also not tested enough at the highest level having played just 1 season in the PL and never in Europe.

I think our goalie is also a bit suspect, Pickford in goal doesn't give me confidence.  He looks like he is going to make a mistake everytime the ball goes near him.

This is the issue, we don't have a good enough defence against the better teams.

Realistically I thin kwe have a tough group, we could easily lose to Croatia and Czech Republic and Scotland will play their best game against us for sure.  If we win our group we might make the semi otherwise early cabs for the squad.

This was my pre tournament thoughts and pretty much the same. Chances now I think though are we play our one good game against the Czechs win the group and go out to Germany or draw and get a more winnable game before getting knocked out by whoever we meet after that. 

hassleham

Yes, Kane is playing badly, but so is Sterling! The only thing he did last night was go down for a possible penalty. If he hadn't scored a relatively lucky goal in the first game then people would've said he'd had a poor game and he maybe wouldn't have started the Scotland game. We've got to start giving our younger players more of a chance but I can't help thinking Southgate will stick with the same boring game plan until we get knocked out.

Apart from the first 15 minutes against Croatia, England haven't even looked like a team so so far.

p90fool

scrumhalf said:

England beat Croatia: we're great, fantastic, we'll win the tournament

England draw with Scotland: we're dull, we were crap, we'll be lucky to make the quarter finals.

The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between. 

Absolutely, they're a middle ranking, second tier team who sometimes punch above their weight. 

The commentator said before kickoff that England had a reputation for arrogance, and then went on to call them one of the favourites, and when Scotland put 20 odd passes together never mentioned a single Scottish player by name.

I've never heard an England player or coach make outrageously optimistic claims, but the media and commentary teams are absolutely full of it, that's where the arrogance really is. 

TeleMaster

Legionreturns said:

TeleMaster said:

I don't get why they can't break these teams down and why Kane is so absent. Scotland sat behind the ball for the last 30 mins and it is difficult to score against that, but I felt that they were beatable. Even though Scotland had a few chances they didn't have the quality to score. Not a huge threat and England should have done better.  

Derbies do bring the best out in the underdog so perhaps that was part of it. 

I think you may need a touch of realism with your red rose tinted glasses tbh. 

"Break them down?" 

Scotland were by far the better team. Had more attacking guile, organised and kept their shape and showed far more desire and ambition. 

They were the ones who were held, and unlucky not to break England down. 

This is a typical England team at a major tournament. Big money players that turn it on all season for their clubs, but look like they can't be arsed with international football. 

Well played Scotland, you probably did enough for all 3 points there. 

England are by far the better team. One adequate performance by Scotland against a rival does not change the fact that England are the better team. 

But they do have trouble scoring against teams who sit back and defend aggressively and play to snatch a cheeky goal. 

I saw no real threat from Scotland and the best chance of the game came from England who were unlucky not to score. But taking nothing away from Scotland, it was a good solid performance and they got the job done.