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England Vs Italy

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3 minutes ago, Essjayess said:

I must admit i never watched the match so cannot comment on it, but from what ive heard on here it was the inevitable. Decades of watching England not win anything put paid to me ever watching them seriously again. Feel sorry for guys much younger than me who  maybe got swept along with this past weeks overhyped hope and euphoria, they will learn to not get hopes up over England ever winning anything..a mix of bad luck and hopeless penalty taking drains you after a few tournaments. Did ok to get to the final but happy i did not bother to  see it happen once again. Stick to club football following.

You see this sort of comment after every England defeat. It makes me wonder why these people just do as they say they're going to do and stick to following club football. 

The fact of the matter is, a squad with the second lowest average age in the tournament reached the final, taking the winners to penalties. I'm quite happy with how the national side is progressing and quite enthused for it's future. 

I'm not Southgate's biggest fan, but I do think we have a good squad here which will only get better. 

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2 minutes ago, Upo said:

England national team can hold their heads high.The same can't be said for some of England's supporters. What an embarrassment.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jul/11/euro-2020-final-wembley-fans-break-barrier-england-italy

Awful isn't it? I can't see us ever getting a tournament to host while every time we get given a chance we end up doing this.

Despicable. 

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It was evident from day one that Italy were the team to beat. Could never pick out a real weakness in them unlike every other team. They deserved it.

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2 minutes ago, TheGoogler said:

Awful isn't it? I can't see us ever getting a tournament to host while every time we get given a chance we end up doing this.

Despicable. 

It's sad, because most English fans are top tier.

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1 hour ago, TheGoogler said:

You see this sort of comment after every England defeat. It makes me wonder why these people just do as they say they're going to do and stick to following club football. 

The fact of the matter is, a squad with the second lowest average age in the tournament reached the final, taking the winners to penalties. I'm quite happy with how the national side is progressing and quite enthused for it's future. 

I'm not Southgate's biggest fan, but I do think we have a good squad here which will only get better. 

I do..when much younger i lived in hope and dreamed of more England triumphs but they never came. As i said..a mix of bad luck and bad penalty  misses when it mattered always hampered England. Think either the hope killed it for me or to many disapointments but  i follow club football, i never watch England matches live and as the years roll by i just see  the same thing happen each tournament. Im happy if you think England have a good squad and will only get better..that may be...but ive also seen and heard that many times to over the past 50+ years. But this is just my thoughts and feelings, by all means stay enthused for England's future.

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1 hour ago, Upo said:

England national team can hold their heads high.The same can't be said for some of England's supporters. What an embarrassment.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jul/11/euro-2020-final-wembley-fans-break-barrier-england-italy

Have to say 100’s of thousands without tickets and no restrictions. After saying that I have never seen scenes like that before a game.

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2 hours ago, sgncfc said:

But then, for some unknown reason, we sat off them and tried to hold on to 1-0. God knows why. At half time, it should have been changed - Sancho or Grealish, even Rashford for Trippier at that point and revert to four at the back. But nothing changed and Italy got stronger and stronger - they knew they would win.

No one can say that we deserved it on the night because we didn't; we stopped trying to win it and reverted to the Hughton-eque tactics which have served him well. 

So will he change, or are we condemned to wasting this latest "golden generation" of players on negativity?

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5 hours ago, Essjayess said:

I must admit i never watched the match so cannot comment on it, but from what ive heard on here it was the inevitable. Decades of watching England not win anything put paid to me ever watching them seriously again. Feel sorry for guys much younger than me who  maybe got swept along with this past weeks overhyped hope and euphoria, they will learn to not get hopes up over England ever winning anything..a mix of bad luck and hopeless penalty taking drains you after a few tournaments. Did ok to get to the final but happy i did not bother to  see it happen once again. Stick to club football following.

I did watch it in the end ,but your right in everything you say its bloody draining watching England eventually lose on pens. 

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The match swung in Italy’s favour from half time. Everyone could see the equaliser was coming long before it did. Southgate and his team we’re tactically out thought by the Italians and had no answers. It was the Croatia World Cup game all over again 

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A very sad end to a brilliant tournament. England's team has a bright future though and hopefully we will keep building. Proud of the lads. 👍

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I'm amazed by some of the criticism on this site. Southgate got a fairly ordinary group of players to the final and they took a brilliant team all the way to penalties. It was a remarkable achievement because in reality they're nowhere near that level. 

What England lack and have lacked since Paul Scholes, is a decent midfield player. There are a lot of good quality players who want to run with the ball in wide areas and cross it but no one like Insigne or Veratti who have great movement and can actually pass the ball forwards. 

The other issue is a complete lack of pace and movement up front. Kane is very good at what he does and makes the most of his talents but he was up against two of the best defenders in the world last night and it showed. 

On the plus side I thought England played with pride and passion and looked like a team for the first time in a very long time. 

The other plus point from the tournament was the quality of refereeing. The guy last night changed the behaviour of the players. They didn't bother to cheat because they knew it wouldn't work. 

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2 hours ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Southgate got a fairly ordinary group of players

🤣

It's the best England squad we've had for years.

What England lacked is brave management from the sidelines. Southgate is a great guy, a rare football man with integrity, but he's not a brilliant coach. His club record speaks for itself; took a fairly well-established Premier League side down into the Championship. He then went on to become the England U21s coach, presumably because he impressed some suits because his CV had "failure at Middlesbrough" and "three years with my feet up". He led his team into the Euro Under 21s in 2015 and, erm, finished bottom of the group.

Luck of the draw has disguised his myriad shortcomings. Look at the teams he has beaten in major tournaments; Panama, Tunisia, Sweden, Colombia Ukraine, Czech Republic, a past their prime Croatia and Germany and Denmark (after 90 minutes). In every single one of those matches we were either favourites or massive favourites.

He's also failed to win games that we were either marginal favourites (Croatia 2018, last night) and massive favourites (Scotland).

As soon as we go up against anyone who is on or around the same level as us, we fail.

Don't get me wrong, beating teams we should be beating is far from a given for England, look at Roy bloody Hodgson's tenure, absolutely dreadful and Southgate is a massive, massive step-up from that.

But he's tactically naive and a bottle job. Last night was a bigger bottle job than his 1996 penalty. His persistence with Mason Mount throughout the tournament was bad enough in and of itself, but when you factor in that he was keeping Foden, Grealish and Sancho out of the side it beggars belief. Putting a 19 year old who has never taken a senior penalty as your 5th penalty in a European Championship final is staggering. Getting an early lead and resorting to Hughton-ball despite the fact that we have an array of attacking talent was almost certain to not work against a team like Italy.

Mancini v Southgate last night was like man v boy. If you stuck the former in charge of the England squad, England lift the trophy. In fact, I think if you stuck most of the managers of their respective countries that were at the Euros this year in charge of England's squad, they would have lifted the trophy.

Lovely bloke, top man but he's holding this squad back from their potential. And their potential is to win one of the next five years major tournaments. And that's sad, given how long we've waited.

Edited by canarydan23
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Out of interest did anyone apart from me think that Jorginho should have seen red for the foul on Grealish. Generally I thought the referee did great by letting play go but that was a shocker which in the PL would have been reviewed and a straight red shown. Who knows if it would have altered the outcome but certainly a talking point.

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I always thought Italy would beat us 2-1. We started off better, but for most of the game Italy were the better side and we should have beaten. With penalties it was always hard to determine - we’d won our previous two shootouts and have been practicing them, but Italy made it to the final on penalties.

 I think if Rashford watched his footing he would have scored, and that might have changed the confidence of the remaining takers 

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5 minutes ago, canarycop said:

Out of interest did anyone apart from me think that Jorginho should have seen red for the foul on Grealish. Generally I thought the referee did great by letting play go but that was a shocker which in the PL would have been reviewed and a straight red shown. Who knows if it would have altered the outcome but certainly a talking point.

It was absolutely a red. In general I thought the ref was poor: he let Italy get away with numerous professional fouls which all should have seen yellow cards with no intention of winning the ball. He got the big decisions right but gave the majority of the small decisions in Italy's favour.

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As has been said, very Hughtonesque, if they don't score, we can't lose. Kane was poor as an attacking force last night, just as he was against Germany, when we also played with seven defenders. Does that not tell you something? Fear is something Southgate has to beat before he can become a top manager, fear that he might give the ball away when attacking, fear that he may concede a goal whilst in search of a match winning second goal, fear that if he picks an attacking player instead of a defensive one it might backfire (even yesterday Saka in preference to Sancho or Grealish, was this because Saka has played as a wingback and has a little more of a defensive make up). 

I can not remember England having such a good quality of attacking player for years but most of them were sitting on the bench whilst the few who were playing had to play to a super defensive system which did not help them. Do we no longer play to our strengths?

One quality Southgate has brought us is a modicum of luck. He was awarded an OBE after the last World Cup when we beat Tunisia (in added time), Panama, then lost Belgium. Beat Colombia (on penalties), and Sweden before losing to Croatia. Hardly a team of any note there except Belgium. 

This completion we beat Croatia 1-0, managed a goalless draw against Scotland, another 1-0 against the Czech Republic before beating Germany 2-0 (where our goalkeeper was our MOM) beat a poor Ukraine 4-0 before beating Denmark 2-1. No Spain, no France, no Belgium, no Portugal. The luck ran out.

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22 minutes ago, canarydan23 said:

🤣

It's the best England squad we've had for years.

What England lacked is brave management from the sidelines. Southgate is a great guy, a rare football man with integrity, but he's not a brilliant coach. His club record speaks for itself; took a fairly well-established Premier League side down into the Championship. He then went on to become the England U21s coach, presumably because he impressed some suits because his CV had "failure at Middlesbrough" and "three years with my feet up". He led his team into the Euro Under 21st in 2015 and, erm, finished bottom of the group.

Luck of the draw has disguised his myriad shortcomings. Look at the teams he has beaten in major tournaments; Panama, Tunisia, Sweden, Colombia Ukraine, Czech Republic, a past their prime Croatia and Germany and Denmark (after 90 minutes). In every single one of those matches we were either favourites or massive favourites.

He's also failed to win games that we were either marginal favourites (Croatia 2018, last night) and massive favourites (Scotland).

As soon as we go up against anyone who is on or around the same level as us, we fail.

Don't get me wrong, beating teams we should be beating is far from a given for England, look at Roy bloody Hodgson's tenure, absolutely dreadful and Southgate is a massive, massive step-up from that.

But he's tactically naive and a bottle job. Last night was a bigger bottle job than his 1996 penalty. His persistence with Mason Mount throughout the tournament was bad enough in and of itself, but when you factor in that he was keeping Foden, Grealish and Sancho out of the side it beggars belief. Putting a 19 year old who has never taken a senior penalty as your 5th penalty in a European Championship final is staggering. Getting an early lead and resorting to Hughton-ball despite the fact that we have an array of attacking talent was almost certain to not work against a team like Italy.

Mancini v Southgate last night was like man v boy. If you stuck the former in charge of the England squad, England lift the trophy. In fact, I think if you stuck most of the managers of their respective countries that were at the Euros this year in charge of England's squad, they would have lifted the trophy.

Lovely bloke, top man but he's holding this squad back from their potential. And their potential is to win one of the next five years major tournaments. And that's sad, given how long we've waited.

I can agree in part about how we went about tonight- too defensive once we went ahead, questionable subs and the penalty order was head scratching.

However...

I think you're largely ignoring the psychological aspect of football management and putting it all on tactics. England's problems in previous tournaments haven't been talent or tactics based, they've a team that struggles with pressure and being favorites. Southgate, along with this talented young squad dealt with all of that with huge aplomb. 

I also don't think its fair to call him tactically naive- he changed our system multiple times in this tournament, always to good affect. A tactically naive manager wouldn't have switched to 3 at the back 3 Germany, nor would they have totally switched formation for the next game v Ukraine. 

Finally, the point about attacking talent. There is a fairly frustrating group of England fans who seem to think we just stick all our talented attackers on the pitch at once and we win. Football doesn't work like that. There is no tactical set up that will let you play Grealish, Sancho, Sterling, Foden, Mount and Saka all at once so you have to make choices. At the start of the tournament he got pelters for choosing Sterling, who then went on to be our player of the tournament. I also personally believe his use of Grealish has been generally spot on- he's an impact sub right now, he's far too unreliable in possession and at tracking back to start and build your attack around. I'd argue we should have seen more of Sancho and that he should have allowed players like Foden a bit more time off the bench. Outside of that I think he got his selections largely spot on. There is a reason top coaches keep picking Mason Mount- he works hard, does the simple things well and allows other players to be at their best.

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7 minutes ago, Yellow Wal said:

No Spain, no France, no Belgium, no Portugal.

Why this weird obsession with having to beat the 'name' teams. If France were that good they'd have beaten Switzerland. Belgium flat track bullied their way through the group stage before fluking a win over Portugal and being handily beaten by the team we just took to penalties. 

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4 minutes ago, king canary said:

Why this weird obsession with having to beat the 'name' teams. If France were that good they'd have beaten Switzerland. Belgium flat track bullied their way through the group stage before fluking a win over Portugal and being handily beaten by the team we just took to penalties. 

Because they were the better teams we were lucky enough to avoid. 

'The team we took to penalties' don't you mean the team we were unable to beat because we were afraid to try?

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Got to say I was critical of Pickford on a couple of threads,  but he was superb tonight. Let down by the others unfortunately. 

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2 minutes ago, Yellow Wal said:

Because they were the better teams we were lucky enough to avoid. 

'The team we took to penalties' don't you mean the team we were unable to beat because we were afraid to try?

In my opinion they are only the 'better teams' because of the name. Belgium I thought were particularly poor as soon as they got out of the group stages, Portugal looked deeply average and France believed their own hype.

England beat whoever was put infront of us. The teams you mentioned couldn't do the same thing. So in my opinion they are not 'better teams' apart from maybe on paper.  

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15 minutes ago, king canary said:

In my opinion they are only the 'better teams' because of the name. Belgium I thought were particularly poor as soon as they got out of the group stages, Portugal looked deeply average and France believed their own hype.

England beat whoever was put infront of us. The teams you mentioned couldn't do the same thing. So in my opinion they are not 'better teams' apart from maybe on paper.  

I would agree that you can only beat the team in front of you but I would prefer to have the Czech Republic in front of us than Spain and I would prefer to face Ukraine rather than France. Wouldn't you agree?

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The more I read about happenings in and outside Wembley, the more the result seems like justice having been served. Booing during national anthem, stealing seats from Italian fans, racist abuse, laser pointers, fighting... You would not see that in Germany or any continental non-ex-eastern block country. Compare that to the behaviour of Finnish and Danish fans during and after Erikssen's collapse. For shame.

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