Me neither. There's no competition in these games at all. Nobody would defend a boxing match between a top heavyweight and a lowly-ranked flyweight; people would rightly call it a farce and even cruel. These are part-time footballers playing for their country and they're routinely humiliated because UEFA thinks it's 'fair' to draw them against professional national teams. It's a joke.
i bet roy keane's going to have a proper whinge about that. he'll say they should have had 30. the miserable twat.
Had a stupid bet for score of 10-0 for £130. Thank you England, even though you nearly ****ed it for me.
the second half looked like it was going to fade away like the one on friday, but there came a point - just after the 7th, I think - when it suddeny occurred to the england players that they could get double figures and one could see that they had, at long long last, acquired a sense of urgency, which i was pleased to see. disappointing that there were so few occasions where england players tried to dribble past the opposition (inevitably turning round and delivering a pass 40 or 50 yards backwards), and it was only san marino, a team that has the symbol for nil built into its name. i can't help thinking how different it would have been with jarrod bowen, who let's not forget, ran 50 yards with half a dozen liverpool players around him and still delivered a productive pass. liverpool are not san marino.
england's two previous 10-0 wins were against usa (1964; hunt 4, pickering 3) and portugal (1947; lawton 4, future tiger mortenson 4). there was an 11-1 against austria in 1908. (woodward 4, bradshaw 3) also: 13-2 v ireland in 1899 (smith 4, settle 3) 13-0 v ireland in 1882 (vaughton scored 5, and a.brown 4) four of these five were away. only the 13-2 was at home, in sunderland, which is virtually scotland. forgot to add this: http://www.englandfootballonline.com/TeamHist/RecsTmGFMatches.html
They've earned the right to play, why shouldn't they get to play against Germany, France and England? These players aren't going into the games thinking they're going to win, they enjoy it because they ARE part time players who are also car salesmen and coppers. It's like asking why a team like Bowers and Pitsea were allowed to play Lincoln in the FA Cup. As a semi pro you live for those moments, even if you're on the end of a hiding.
Nah, disagree. San Marino playing England or Germany for tournament qualifiers is nothing like the FA Cup. It would be like if Bowers and Pitsea drew Man City or Liverpool in the 1st round. The FA Cup is structured so that the non-league teams at the lower end of the pyramid play League 2 and League 1 teams in the earliest rounds and gradually face higher-level opponents the further they get in the cup. San Marino are just whipping boys for the sake of it. It would be fairer if San Marino, Gibraltar, Andorra, Liechtenstein etc. had their own qualifying group for tournaments and the winner of that group plays a play-off game against someone, maybe a 3rd-place team in another UEFA group. There is literally zero competition in the current setup. They’re just there for the pro national teams like England to get an easy six points.
They do, in the nations league they are grouped together. This allows them to qualify for the Euros. I get what you’re saying, but the idea is a level playing field for everybody. I suppose you could do a national league style qualifying stage, but then you’d have the same argument at the World Cup when if Gibraltar qualified they ended up playing Brazil.
In his performances wearing the England shirt I haven't seen anything that would suggest he is international quality, very poor, almost Carlton Palmer'esque !
To be fair, he put in a nice assist just after I posted that and then scored, but he does look generally poor in an England shirt. Still, what do I know, I said Reece James looks terrible for England, then he played a blinder on Friday.