How many English players would have without the help of their foreign colleagues? Zero? It’s only because Liverpool, Chelsea, Man C have mega rich billionaires who own them that our players got to take part. England did as well as could be expected and many had cracking tournaments. Playing well above their natural level. Regardless of CL Sweden, Croatia and Colombia all have superior recent international tournament history than we do. We were the underdogs. We got past two and ran another very close. Yep English arrogance is well intact reading these boards
That's a stupid argument. If the likes of Kane weren't exceptional in their positions, they wouldn't start instead of foreign colleagues, they would have a Swede or Tunisian instead. Panama got into the World Cup via a fluke/blatant cheating, in piss poor qualifying, and if you think it's great finishing 4th in a qualifying section containing the worst Argentinian squad in a decade and teams that can only compete because you have to overtake sherpas in oxygen masks to play them, you need to learn a bit more about football.
Funny old game is football, barely twelve months ago Croatia lost to Iceland and Turkey in World Cup qualifiers and finished second in their group. They got through to the finals by beating Greece in the play-offs. Back to last night, when Kane hit the post my missus was screaming like a chimpanzee
And yet these teams compete with the likes of France/Brazil etc suggesting the margins are small. Perhaps you need to be less arrogant and understand that the margins in Football are that small. Or you can just ignore international results and make up your own make believe ranking system which exists in your head like a lot of England fans. I mean what’s 50 years of failure between friends eh? We’ve been past the QF how many times in major comps? You do realise these clubs HAVE to have some English players. I think there are rules or something.
I'm genuinely confused by your arguments. I was half joshing to wind you up because you have been trying to agitate people ya little tinker, but this is just nonsense The art of a good wum is making someone believe you could be of that opinion. You are obviously just too stupid.
Are France in the final as favourites? What were their overall scores with Sweden in qualifying? 2-1 to each side. Seems they were closely matched eh. It’s almost as if good teams and coaches with a smattering of national pride can overcome good groups of individual players. Who’d have thought eh? I bet we never get beat off or drop points to tiny nations like say, Iceland or Costa Rica... I bet that Germany side with all those world class players didn’t finish below Sweden in their group. That couldn’t happen the gulf is too big. I could go on and on ridiculing your English arrogance but there doesn’t appear to be any need. Magnificent achievement to teach the semi finals beating the sides we did. That’s a Rafa fact.
That is not an indication of talent. We beat Man Utd 1-0, therefore we have similar quality in our team... Lukaku = Joselu... fact . They are a defensively well organised side, who have ground out wins, but we were favourites to win because we have better players. We didn't go into Tunisia, Panama or Sweden as underdogs... Is that interntional bookies being delusional nationalists? It's not taking anything away from anyone to note this is the easiest route a team could have had to reach a WC final, because they still needed to do it, and that takes quality. It's patently unrealistic to blow it out of proportion as an achievement though.
Blatantly is a magnificent achievement for us. Otherwise we’d do it every time. Instead of 5 times in the 27 we’ve taken part in, winning only once (there were only 4 in one of the ones we took part in too ) I’m aftaid history is not only rubbishing your assertions, it’s squeezed out a massive Cleveland steamer and smeared it all over them.
History... Record vs Tunisia - 3 games, 2 wins, 1 draw. Record vs Sweden - 9 wins, 9 draws, 7 losses... but our last loss in actual competition was 1998! Record vs Columbia - 6 games, 4 wins, 2 draws. Panama have only played us once, but in 2017-18 They played 19 games and lost 10, including a 6-0 defeat against Switzerland and 4-0 vs the US... They did beat the mighty Nicaragua 2-1 and Martinique (????????) 3-0 though. Howay, I have this one.
I think my history lesson above is still leading the race. By quite some distant. For ****s and giggles though, we’d played Sweden 4 times in tournament football before our QF. Care to hazard a guess at the head to head results?
I know the last 4 including the QF... 2 X wins 2 X draws. So at worst it's an even record... and Sweden have nobody like Zlatan anymore. Do you know our records vs Brazil or vs France? Cause that was the other side of the draw...
We don’t have Beckham, Gerrard, Gascoigne etc etc - or any one of that quality. Ah but how can we have an even record given we are so much better and our league has always been so much stronger? Oh hang on history tells us we are mediocre at best. Like er, Sweden.
