Football - Euro 2020 Championship

Grumpyrocker

I doubt a similar forum in Italy is discussing weather penalties are a shit way to win.

And if England had won, I doubt we would be doing it either. 

Shit way to lose, fine way of winning. 

menamestom

p90fool said:

crunchman said:

p90fool said:

I'm well aware of that, and conversely that England don't even qualify for the Euros half the time, but I think a team who've won a major international competition once since inventing the sport 170-odd years ago can at best be described as a bit of a hurdle to the major teams rather than as serious, regular contenders. 

England deserve every credit for the way they've played and conducted themselves this time, it's really only the idea that the trophy belongs in their cabinet which is a bit silly, and that's a media rather than a team thing.

It's definitely got boring, what was a good football song and a bit of fun in 1996 is pretty tired by 2021.
I suppose what ended up as a de facto home tournament for England didn't really help.  In '96 the 'Coming Home' didn't only refer to the trophy but the European football world coming to England.  The whole of footbal came home. 

No doubt other countries have songs / sayings etc but perhaps they don't get rammed down everybody's throats.
The English media probably does get amplified around the world and no doubt the exposure is high due to BBC etc, but I'm hoping we move on from it.

At least we got rid of that bloody band and The Great Escape song.....

CHRISB50

menamestom said:

At least we got rid of that bloody band and The Great Escape song.....

No they were still there. The BBC commentary mentioned them at some point. 

I hadn’t noticed them all tournament and thought they’d finally realised how fucking irritating they are and packed it in. 

Unfortunately not. 

Kilgore

DrCornelius said:

p90fool said:

MagicPigDetective said:

England should drop this Coming Home business. It sounds ridiculous to other nations even galvanizes them.

Definitely. As a non English person I just find it annoying that a country who've fluked a single win in a century or so have such a sense of entitlement about where the trophy(s) belongs. 

Just as the 55 years of hurt thing implies that a second tier sporting nation have somehow been robbed of their rightful place on the podium for generations rather than just being an average team, these things must sound even more pathetic to countries who have won the European Championship or the World Cup many, many times.  

If Greece banged on about football coming home or seven years of hurt English fans would laugh in their faces, but their winning record is identical, except it was 48 years more recent and was even filmed in colour.

Surely its more to do with the fact that the game was invented in England, thats why its 'coming home' ? (or not as the case may be !)

Exactly. 

And Greece does sort of claim that the Olympics are their "thing" which is a bit rich since its about 2400 years since they last won all the medals.

 Based on that precedent I think we can expect England to be still claiming footballs coming home for the 4420 AD World Cup   

Fretwired

Kilgore said:

DrCornelius said:

p90fool said:

MagicPigDetective said:

England should drop this Coming Home business. It sounds ridiculous to other nations even galvanizes them.

Definitely. As a non English person I just find it annoying that a country who've fluked a single win in a century or so have such a sense of entitlement about where the trophy(s) belongs. 

Just as the 55 years of hurt thing implies that a second tier sporting nation have somehow been robbed of their rightful place on the podium for generations rather than just being an average team, these things must sound even more pathetic to countries who have won the European Championship or the World Cup many, many times.  

If Greece banged on about football coming home or seven years of hurt English fans would laugh in their faces, but their winning record is identical, except it was 48 years more recent and was even filmed in colour.

Surely its more to do with the fact that the game was invented in England, thats why its 'coming home' ? (or not as the case may be !)

Exactly. 

And Greece does sort of claim that the Olympics are their "thing" which is a bit rich since its about 2400 years since they last won all the medals.

 Based on that precedent I think we can expect England to be still claiming footballs coming home for the 4420 AD World Cup   

The Scots claim they invented modern football .. :-)

https://www.thenational.scot/sport/19431641.football-coming-home-no---scotland-invented-modern-game/

UnclePsychosis

@Bridgehouse the pundits are absolutely right that it's progress "of sorts".

In the cold, objective light of the day there are clearly things England need to improve. There are many parallels between how the game last night went and how the Croatia game in the WC went, which can lead you to some interesting questions about Southgate's tactics and his in-game management.

England had a great tournament and should be proud of themselves, but it doesn't mean that difficult, honest questions shouldn't be asked. 

ICBM

DefaultM said:

Just seen some of the racist twitter stuff and wow. Some of these same people will have happily taken the Aldi vouchers Rashford helped get them to help in the school holidays.

Marcus Rashford has already done more for his country than most sportsmen ever manage, regardless of what he failed to do in a game of football under immense pressure. He can be forgiven for that since in the long run it doesn't matter, but the government who put us in the position where his campaigning was necessary, I have a lot less sympathy for. Sorry if that's politics.

Philly_Q

p90fool said:

Just as the 55 years of hurt thing implies that a second tier sporting nation have somehow been robbed of their rightful place on the podium for generations rather than just being an average team, these things must sound even more pathetic to countries who have won the European Championship or the World Cup many, many times.  

Elis James and John Robins had an entertaining discussion yesterday about when the "hurt clock" began running.  It can't have been the day after winning in 1966.  World Cup 1970 wasn't bad either, so the hurt must have actually started in the failure to qualify for the 1974 WC, more specifically in failing to beat Poland in October 1973...

So really it was 23 years of hurt when they recorded the song and now its about 48.

DefaultM

ICBM said:

DefaultM said:

Just seen some of the racist twitter stuff and wow. Some of these same people will have happily taken the Aldi vouchers Rashford helped get them to help in the school holidays.

Marcus Rashford has already done more for his country than most sportsmen ever manage, regardless of what he failed to do in a game of football under immense pressure. He can be forgiven for that since in the long run it doesn't matter, but the government who put us in the position where his campaigning was necessary, I have a lot less sympathy for. Sorry if that's politics.

Its a government that will vote for 50% off restaurant food and post photos of themselves taking advantage, but then vote against extending an initiative to feed kids.
I'd most likely throw up if one of these people came anywhere near me.

Kittyfrisk

DefaultM said:

ICBM said:

DefaultM said:

Just seen some of the racist twitter stuff and wow. Some of these same people will have happily taken the Aldi vouchers Rashford helped get them to help in the school holidays.

Marcus Rashford has already done more for his country than most sportsmen ever manage, regardless of what he failed to do in a game of football under immense pressure. He can be forgiven for that since in the long run it doesn't matter, but the government who put us in the position where his campaigning was necessary, I have a lot less sympathy for. Sorry if that's politics.

Its a government that will vote for 50% off restaurant food and post photos of themselves taking advantage, but then vote against extending an initiative to feed kids.
I'd most likely throw up if one of these people came anywhere near me.

Waste of vomit...

Bridgehouse

UnclePsychosis said:

@Bridgehouse the pundits are absolutely right that it's progress "of sorts".

In the cold, objective light of the day there are clearly things England need to improve. There are many parallels between how the game last night went and how the Croatia game in the WC went, which can lead you to some interesting questions about Southgate's tactics and his in-game management.

England had a great tournament and should be proud of themselves, but it doesn't mean that difficult, honest questions shouldn't be asked. 

Indeed not. 

My original comment was more around the punditry and it's hypocrisy. Only a few days ago, "Southgate is a master tactician and has worked out how to get past the old obstacle of a semi final", today? "We have made progress of sorts, but same old same old and is he the man for the job?" So which is it then, pundits?

My take? He's worked out how to make an England team an actual team. He's worked out how to encourage players to play for their country with passion and he's now worked out how to get them to control the pressure up to a higher point than before. 

Last night he made some tactical errors himself. He will learn from that, it's the first final of any description he's ever managed a team in. The players will learn an enormous amount from this as well. They are mostly young - many of them have 3 or 4 more tournaments in them. The Italian team has peaked - there's more than a few that probably won't even be in the WC next year. 

With regards to "In the cold, objective light of the day there are clearly things England need to improve" I agree. However, in years past you'd struggle to see how, or have any evidence they could.

With this team, there are still things to improve, but we have seen hard solid evidence that they are capable of improving many aspects of their game - and have done so really successfully. For once, I've got some confidence that they actually can make the improvements that manifested themselves as a requirement last night.

digitalscream

menamestom said:

digitalscream said:

But hey...as I said, if that sort of thing's acceptable in football, then it's just another reason not to watch. The governing body could easily stamp it out with a 10 minute sin-bin for yellows and mandatory yellow/red for dangerous play, just like in rugby, but they don't because the fans obviously don't object.

I wouldn't say it's accepted, it's certainly pushing the rules and a long way from sporting behavior, but the rules don't class shirt pulling as dangerous and it wasn't a clear goal scoring opportunity so the rules state yellow card.

I suppose the rules could be changed but most fouls of this type don't result is something that looks so dramatic and football injuries tend to be studs to leg or elbow to head, I can't really think of any examples where somebody has been injured by their shirt.  IT did look bad and I'm not defending it, it's just not common enough in this extreme to completely change the rules.

Either way, if this classifies as a reason not to watch football the same could be applied to any sport, all sports have an unsavory side and many sports with dangers have things far more dangerous that go unpunished .  IMO.

As an England fan I'm not sore about it, what it says to me as Saka had got past him is he should have come on earlier.  Chiellini on a yellow and Saka running at them could have caused more problems.

The problem with those rules is that it doesn't take into account the level of risk to the player being fouled. As a somewhat-relevant example, pulling someone's shirt in the middle of their back while they're more or less stationary inherently poses less danger to the player than reaching around the neck of a player running full-tilt, grabbing the back of the shirt neck and putting all of your weight into basically throwing them to the ground with a garotte around their throat.

Both are "shirt-pulling", but one could cause lasting damage with a couple of mm either way.

As an aside, what it says to me is that Saka deserves props for deciding against doing the typical footballer thing of rolling around on the ground like he'd been shot, even though it was a situation in which he might've actually had some justification for doing so.

Lev

menamestom said:

Creed_Clicks said:

@p90fool that is a good point. I don't think Italy or Spain are as obsessed with trophies "coming home". I didn't realise it would have been on the radar for the Italians (it's coming home) so can understand the Italian gloating online since.

Coming home refers to modern association football being invented in Cambirdge in the 19th century.  It can only actually 'come home' to England.

Edit:- other forms of the game marginally similar to this were played around the world prior to the English version, but this is considered the closest to what we play now and the origins of the game we see now.

Which is all very true. However 90% of opposition supporters & players don't know or care about the context so it comes across as a bit condescending (as evident in Kasper Schmiechels interview). This and the booing of anthems I think serves only to motivate the opposition rather than helping England.

DefaultM

Nice surprise from bet365, I had Jorginho to be carded in 90 minutes and he got one in extra time so they've sent me a free bet. I'm going to lay it off and I'll actually come away in profit. A football miracle.

FarleyUK

Philly_Q

Bridgehouse said:

My take? He's worked out how to make an England team an actual team. He's worked out how to encourage players to play for their country with passion and he's now worked out how to get them to control the pressure up to a higher point than before. 

Last night he made some tactical errors himself. He will learn from that, it's the first final of any description he's ever managed a team in. The players will learn an enormous amount from this as well. They are mostly young - many of them have 3 or 4 more tournaments in them. The Italian team has peaked - there's more than a few that probably won't even be in the WC next year. 

With regards to "In the cold, objective light of the day there are clearly things England need to improve" I agree. However, in years past you'd struggle to see how, or have any evidence they could.

With this team, there are still things to improve, but we have seen hard solid evidence that they are capable of improving many aspects of their game - and have done so really successfully. For once, I've got some confidence that they actually can make the improvements that manifested themselves as a requirement last night.

(Apologies for editing the quote)

I'm fairly knowledgeable about football in a facts and figures kind of way, but I'm utterly clueless about tactics and game management.

However, for what it's worth, it seems to me that most international tournaments over the last few decades have ended with England exposed as an ill-prepared collection of talented (and not so talented) individuals who can't really play as a team and don't really think or act as a team off the pitch.  Whereas now, Southgate has put together a squad more like a club team, who genuinely want to play with - and for - each other and their country. 

And as for tactical errors, even to my hopelessly untrained eye it seems that just a few tweaks, like key substitutions and their timing, could have made all the difference.  They are getting close.  It's certainly not a case of ripping it all up and starting again like they usually do every few years.

I'm not an England supporter but I'm full of admiration for the way Southgate and the team have conducted themselves during this tournament.  They deserve enormous credit.

rawk100

The most disappointing thing about last night was the "streaker" that ran on the pitch, i was hoping for a naked lady with massive knockers but it was actually just a bloke with his shirt off....hopefully Southgate will sort that out too in time for the world cup.

sev112

I always thought the coming home was purely that in 1996 a major football tournament was being played in England for the first time since 1966

and alongside that we were all hoping that we might win it.  

It had nothing to do with the right to win it, or arrogance or inventing anything. 

Just that we were playing a massive tournament in England again

and that was fun

Teetonetal

The frustrating part about last night, was that the game was very winnable, but we got deeper and deeper and more panicked until they scored. After that England got much better again.

Still, that is football, only one winner and lots of what ifs and could have beens.

Sad that the biggest talking point abroad is fan behaviour, even in the Swiss press. Ashamed to be English at times.

FarleyUK

Teetonetal said:

The frustrating part about last night, was that the game was very winnable, but we got deeper and deeper and more panicked until they scored. After that England got much better again.

Still, that is football, only one winner and lots of what ifs and could have beens.

Sad that the biggest talking point abroad is fan behaviour, even in the Swiss press. Ashamed to be English at times.

Not just there - I'm on a call with a load of US colleagues, and it's the main talking point. They can't believe the way the behaviour has suddenly turned on the players and the manager, just because they didn't win.