Euro 2024

[TitoFan]

Congrats on surviving Slovakia. That was closer than I know you guys were hoping for.





But let's face it. The other half of the bracket is a "Murderers' Row". If Portugal and France win their matches tomorrow, that's gonna be one scary good set of quarterfinals.

[Mark TKO]

Should be buzzing this morning after reaching the quarters but far from it.

We were lucky as fuck last night plain and simple. These lads can't play together under Southgate. First shot on target in the 95th minute ffs and then second in first minute of ET. Then after that guess
what we were hanging on again.

The performances are not going to improve unless we miraculously find a winning formula in the next few days. We can only win ugly I feel - and luckily.

On current form there's little chance of us beating Switzerland and a Spain or Portugal would hammer us.

But somehow we're still in there...

[Master]

That was a pathetic first half performance. Keeping the ball at the back was very frustrating and just invited pressure.

Pure luck we got through from a 95th wondergoal by putting on Ivan Toney who set up 2 of the goals by putting the ball in the box.

Feel sick, can not go through that again.

Southgate needs to make changes quicker, the team are not playing well at all. Anyone with half a brain can see that.

[Memphis]

I know I'm banging my head against a brick wall here. I hate the saying but it feels like it is what it is with England now and we're going to continue to play shit and limp out or limp over the line. I'm trying to get my head around how could something so good, become so bad?

Look at the team that played France at the World cup

Starting Lineups - England vs France | 10.12.2022 (skysports.com)

Pickford
Walker
Stones
McGuire - Guehi
Shaw - Trippier
Rice
Henderson - Mainoo
Bellingham
Saka
Foden
Kane

I was proud of that Team. We went out in that game, but I thought we were the better side. We went toe to toe and came up second best. No problem. That's all I ask.

OK he's picked up a suspension, but I've no issue with the contribution of Guehi. A couple of mistakes here and there, but our frankly awful performances have been fuck all to do with him. Same with Mainoo. No issue whatsoever with his contribution. Trippier is an issue. He hasn't exactly done anything wrong, but the left side of the pitch is an issue full stop. The opposition can pretty much forget being hurt down that side.

Walker was a liability last night. Mentally he was caught out a few times, switched off. Dare I say it, he also looked like he was short of a yard of pace too? If his get out of jail card stops working he's fucked. We've seen players like Musiala and Yamal run riot, yet Phil Foden who is clearly trying, I don't doubt that, can't seem to make a telling or repeated contribution to a game.

Kane has chipped in with two goals now but lets be honest, they were sitters. His overall contribution has been dire.

Bellingham. Two goals, great second goal. No doubting that and yes he saved us. I think he might be a problem. He looked good in the opening game. Since then his contribution has been poor. Everyone seems to be wetting themselves over the "who else" celebration. A bit of tongue in cheek? Or is he buying into his own hype and genuinely believes it's all about him? I don't want to hear no bollocks about 'still only 21' or being tired. This is the Ballon D'or winner elect who's torn up La Liga. The newest Galactico. I preferred the 19 year old Bellingham who rampaged through the middle of the pitch and opened the game up.

Is Luke Shaw ever going to be fit? Is he going to come back and open up the left side of the pitch for us? Is it that simple? I have no fucking idea. But I've had my little rant and I feel much better for it. Actually I don't

[Memphis]

I thought Declan Rice was magnificent last night and our best player by a mile. I 100% believe him when he says that they would die for one another and the manager. I'm not sure some of his team mates are as on board as he is.

[Kirkland Laing]

Not worth getting worked up over England. They almost managed to lose to a nation of five million and got lucky. They'll probably lose to Switzerland and if they do go further and face an actual good team they'll get shown up.

This is the best thing I've read about England in tournaments:


The problem is the same problem and the problem is England have no tactics. They don’t have a method. But they know that, right? Germany, Spain and the Netherlands have ways of playing, shared characteristics that may not always work, but are there, as a base structure. There are patterns, models, texts, points in history where those methods seemed state of the art. Portugal has a way. Austria has a way.Even in the Premier League era, with its imported intelligence and bolt-on systems, the Pep-mimesis, England football remains the last redoubt of something blunt and essentially anti-academic, a culture of celebrity, big players, entitlement.
Why are England an incoherent team? Because there is no English coaching school, no coaching culture, no love of knowledge and method, nothing to pass down. Here is an amazing but still oddly overlooked fact. The last three English coaches to lead a team to a European Cup or European Championship final were Joe Fagan, in 1985, Terry Venables, in 1986, and Gareth Southgate, in 2021 (Fagan, incidentally, fought in the second world war).
The last English manager to win a title in the top five European leagues was Howard Wilkinson, in 1991. Most seasons there are no English coaches in the Champions League.
England is a football superpower. England is also an intellectual vacuum. Instead, every manager of the national team must invent the team’s tactics on the hoof, must make up how they are going to play. No wonder it always looks so difficult.

This comes historically from English football’s innate anti-intellectualism. The first time Walter Winterbottom brought a chalkboard into a team meeting there was a near-mutiny. It comes also from the primarily commercial ownership. English football has been carved up between competing commercial bodies since the late 19th century, those interests almost entirely self-serving and financial.
But amazingly it still seems unclear. English pundits have asked why other nations seem to be able to slot players in effortlessly, how it is every player knows their role, to be comfortable with the culture, as though this is simply a matter of the correct fevered last‑minute instructions being shouted by a man in a suit on the touchline.
There was an interesting discussion on the BBC a few days back when the journalist Guillem Balagué was asked about England and he said the team had an imbalance of talent and energy, that it needs to be recalibrated towards a more coherent shape. Immediately afterwards, a very likable former England striker, who just didn’t seem to have heard any of this, insisted that all England need to do is unleash, unshackle, un-manacle their talent, to somehow just be more England, to run, shout, make noises, be good, put the ball in the goal with English goal power. Which is fine. But … what exactly should we unleash. How do we unleash? How do we remove this sword from the stone?



https://www.theguardian.com/football...been-euro-2024

When I was little even then we used to play eleven versus eleven on a full sized pitch. The big centre healf would boot the ball up to the big centre forward and the rest of the kids would get sore necks watching the ball going through the air all game.

I have been in France quite a bit over the years and over there they split a football pich crossways into about six or eight slices and then from goal to goal creatingtwelve or more five a side pitches and they have games of as little as three on three depending on how little the kids are. They don't play anything bigger until they're teenagers. They get endless touches of the ball and learn technique and how to pass and even to play with both feet a little. Our internationals by and large are shocking at even the basics. Maybe we should alter things a little.

[X]

You can say all the negative things you like about Switzerland

But their flag is a big plus