Euro 2016 General Discussion Thread (8 Viewers)

Euro 2016 Outright Winner?

  • France

  • Spain

  • Germany

  • England

  • Belgium

  • Portugal

  • Italy

  • Croatia

  • Austria

  • Poland

  • Switzerland

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • Ukraine

  • Wales

  • Sweden

  • Ireland

  • Iceland

  • Czech Republic

  • Romania

  • Slovakia

  • Northern Ireland

  • Albania

  • Hungary


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chester

Too busy to bother
May 20, 2006
15,055
:seven: Shearer says the premier league has blinded us, its not the best league in the world and only foreign players make the difference.
Finally somebody over there saying the obvious.
Took them years of disappointments with the NT and in the European competitions before realizing this.
 

PhRoZeN

Livin with Mediocre
Mar 29, 2006
15,815
Finally somebody over there saying the obvious.
Took them years of disappointments with the NT and in the European competitions before realizing this.
This time next season he will go against his words. The English have short memory in football. Wash, rinse, repeat, cycle.
 

Orgut

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2002
18,132
Juanfran: 'Draw would have been fair'
"It would’ve been fairer if we drew and went into extra time."

Actually a 3-0 result would have been fairer than a draw!

Just admit Italy were better and deserved to win its not shame as you win some you lose some!
 

JuveJay

Senior Signor
Moderator
Mar 6, 2007
72,078
Absolute shocker. The worst England performance I've ever seen, and probably the second worst result they've ever had after the 1950 World Cup loss to USA.

Woy is absolutely clueless, and it transposes onto the team.

Kane taking corners and free-kicks over and over, despite them failing time and again. This is where Woy has to step in after a couple of games and tell him to step away. He mentioned this '"special technique" that Kane has. What is special about it, the ability to look like a retard each time? It's doubly farcical as England lose aerial threat in the area. An English #9 taking corners? Nice novelty.

Ridiculous subs, taking players off who are playing well seemingly for the sake of it. Subs are important at international level, and he got it wrong. In one of the group games Lallana was the best player and he subbed him off. Last night Sterling, for all his crap performances, was the one player who added width to the team and stretched the Iceland defence. Subbed off. The game was crying out for Rashford from 65 mins, he subbed him on for 5 mins and he caused havoc. Utterly clueless manager. Vardy? No we'll get some static forwards on because Iceland will really struggle with them.

Rooney as CM. He's useless there, it's easy to see. Last night he was abysmal, absolutely dire. I'm laughing my ass off seeing the papers give this guy a 6 because he scored a penalty. In the second half I counted 6 times in a row where he aimlessly gave the ball to an Icelandic player, and that carried on on-and-off for the whole half. He wasn't the only one but he wasn't leading, it was a team of headless chickens. Rooney should do the honourable thing and retire, he's causing too many tactical issues for the England attack and he's had his best days. Thanks Wayne, now move on.

Tactics. What were they? Woy didn't take any wingers aside from Sterling, yet deployed a system in every game which would have suited classic wingers, rather than the wing forward options like Sturridge or Rashford. English players are dumb and need something they know. But more to the point, why did the approach of a team who won all ten qualifying games (in a piss poor group) suddenly change to a different approach in the friendlies and then tournament? It was working and then he changed it. England wouldn't have won it but they wouldn't have wandered around like chickens in the yard waiting to be slaughtered. Rooney added yet more question marks. Questions like "why is this guy on the field?".

How could he possibly not have known the basic defensive set up against Iceland's long throw in? Arun Gunnarsson has played in English football nearly his entire career and the lemmings couldn't defend against a goal the Dog & Duck would try to score on a Sunday. It just shows how soft defenders have become with the new Premier League, it was all too rough for them. Is having 4 shots on goal to Iceland's 5 acceptable? It's a pathetic effort.

Joe Hart. Fucking nightmare, let's be honest. His horizontal dive has always been suspect, but this tournament took the biscuit.

The defence - shit, shit and more shit. Walker is a good footballer and great athlete but not a defender, we all know that. Smalling goes to sleep. Add in the keeper and it's always a possibility that a soft goal can come at any time.

The strikers. Vardy underused, criminally. Smashed the Premier League up all season? Nah fuck you lad, sit on the bench. Kane looked like he had just survived Auschwitz, clearly used up all of his energy, and letting him take set pieces just rubbed salt in the wounds, his confidence went. Sterling is a soft bitch but is also being hung out to dry. Sturridge another good time player. Rashford obviously doesn't deserve criticism, he did great in his cameos because he's not had years of the England squad wearing him down until he's a jibbering wreck. Give it time.

I see the term 'abject failure' being bandied about a lot, it's about as close as you are going to get to describing it.

And no not every England fan thinks the PL means England can do something in a tournament, they retain the same hopes as others, but most know the PL is foreign managers and foreign players. Still, it's funny to see those same English players fail spectacularly time and again in tournament conditions. There was a fleeting hope after the qualifiers, it was a new and young team who wouldn't be burdened by the past failures of the 'golden generation'. Yet that past team would have swept this Iceland aside, even if it meant later failure. There was no cohesion, it was 11 guys wandering around.

I'm pretty sure that England will go into the WC2018 qualifiers and sweep most of the teams aside again, and I'm also pretty sure that it'll mean fuck all when it comes to the finals themselves. England aren't tournament smart. They're not tactically savvy, not even tactically average. Not sly or clever or anything that wins you tournaments. And now on paper they're just good, nothing more. Not world class.

The very best England can hope for is to throw money at a foreign manager who can do to them the same as Eddie Jones has done for the rugby team. But where is that category of manager who is going to give belief to these players? Those managers are already all employed in the PL for next season. There is a lot of irony in that.

Oh, and congrats to Iceland, epic and historic performance.
 

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