Euro Cheats!.

[bananaman 0]

Good old-fashioned anti-German feeling eh? How very sad.

The fact that they have nothing against us makes it look even more pathetic. They''re not still governed by Hitler, you know. Things have moved on, so why don''t you.

[Kathy 733]

Lighten up bananaman. To compare having a laugh at the Germans losing, after all the pain inflicted on us in previous tournaments, to the second world war is really rather silly. I dont like Ipswich much much but its nothing to do with some Iceni Northfolk Southfolk war.

[Herb 0]

My anti German (football team) bias has absolutely nothing to do with Hilter or WW2.
I wasn''t even born then so that would be silly. My bias has been formed through much more recent events, such as the 1990 World Cup and Euro 96.

I''m sorry, but Germany have been the most consistently spawny team in the history of world football, constantly turning in negative, defensive, seriously lacklustre perfomances that would make Gary Megson wince, before spawning a late goal which deflected off the left backs arse or something. Not just against England, against EVERYONE!

So before you basically accuse people of racism, consider that there may be much more sensible reasons for their bias. Because its a bias regarding football and has nothing to do with hatred or racism.

[sheded 0]

And so the pantomime rolls on !........ a swiss t**t of a referee ( was he paid off ? )... blows the whistle that robs us of , what looked like, a perfectly valid goal !.......... that
"decision" really took England out of the competition ...... having said that lets talk about that penalty spot .... right ! it was a heap of loose sand !! ....... why didn`t Becks see this , and stomp it flat before shooting ? ........... he has had a poor run in this competition .... now he doesn`t work out what the result of kicking a ball on top of a mound of irregular sand might do to the flight of the ball !!....... IMO he has lost the plot ... that tattoo on the back of his neck ?.... whats that all about ? .......... " strange " that the Portugese players knew exactly what to do before taking the penalty........ like jumping on the sand heap before shooting ! ............ I just wondered about this sand heap ... when the camera homed in on it after Becks shot, it was literally heaped ! , this heap would not have survived the entire match !! ...... so how come it looked like a collapsed sandcastle just before the shoot out ? ........... but Becks SHOULD have seen it , and done what was required ...... :o(

[bananaman 0]

That''s utter crap and you know it.

They played fantastically well in both tournaments you mention, but you only think of England. I think you are confusing their "spawniness" with ours. Remember the Spain game in 96? We were awful and had Seaman to thank for the penalty victory. The draw with Switzerland 1-1 and the beating of the "mighty" Scotland after they had a pen saved? And did you forget, Germany scored a perfectly good goal in the semi that was ruled out for nothing? Home bias perhaps? What goes around comes around (last night).

In 1990 they had by far the better team, and we "spawned" our way through to the semis - remember Lineker''s two penalties to save the game against Cameroon? And the group stages we were nearly eliminated in? And how about the Belgium game, again we were awful. They had the talents of Matthaus, Voller, Klinsmann et al but you accuse them of being lacklustre? You''re just plain wrong.

They were awful in the last world cup, but you still have to beat the teams put in front of you, which they did.

I think the German-haters are succumbing to the English media and believing everything they tell you. I''m not accusing anyone of racism, just of blinkered hypocrisy. And don''t tell me, we were "robbed" last night were we??

No - we were just sh*t and we deserved to lose.

[First Wizard 0]

Now add alleged cheating Euro refs to the list, ie. the idiot who proberly enjoys toblerone!. Apart from Collina, the standard of referees has been farcical, and at times supect, any candidates spring to mind?.

[Tumbleweed 106]

I am afraid to say that I agree with Wiz that the refereeing has been generally too fussy.

What about last night? Gronkjaer blatantly cheating but Nedved gets booked!! Gronkjaer looked a couple of yards away and yet the ref thought he saw it well enough to book a player who made no contact whatsoever. Disgraceful.

Another one which springs to mind is our own Mike Riley who didn''t give what looked like two blatant penalties for Latvia against Germany in the group stages. Latvia had that speedy forward who raced into the box a couple of times and was obviously brought down three time- once (the third) he appeared to exaggerate, presuambly because he realised that when he went down properly the ref wasn''t interested.

This view from FIFA/UEFA that you cannot tackle from behind or make the slightest bodily contact has made refereeing standards worse in my mind. At least in years gone by when it was recognised that football has elements of contact refs could make up their own mind and the good ones realised the difference between a challenge for the ball and an attempt on the player. Now they blow for fear of letting anything go.

It will be interesting to see whether we think the refs in the Prem are any better than those in Div 1.