That's some dogshit defending by Rice and Stones. But not sure how you can have a Portuguese VAR for a Brazil match
The reality is England have the same age old issues. Back in the day, be it 1996, 1998, 2004, 2006,whenever you like there's never really been an outstanding 1 to 11 and certainly not a squad to support it. The current England team Pickford. Don't need to say much more. Awful with his feet, poor enough in general Walker. Fast, that's it. Fast. Bit of an idiot, not great positioning. Stones. Half decent Maguire. Stand and head. Very slow, very awkward Chilwell. And they say trent is a bad defender? Shaw no better. Injury prone. Rice. Half decent but over rated Gallagher. My god so far out of his depth. Clogger Bellingham. Best English player Foden. Southgate has no clue how to use him. Lw? Rw? 10? Gordon not good enough for this level Watkins. Ditto. If you add trent, kane, saka to that team then you've still that back 5 to worry about. Guehi might add to that team. Konsa and colwill are out there. One must compliment stones surely? But James is ****ed. And that lives young players or the same old. Rico Henry, tyrick Mitchell might be left full options but not sure any are really up to it. None of the goalkeepers are imo up to it. It's a real weakness. Really the question has to be if not for Southgate then what formation gets the best out of kane, saka, foden and Bellingham? Those 4 imo have to be what England build round. 433, 4231? 343?
I can see the Euros going 1 or 2 ways. England ****house the group and come out on top. They get a far easier side of the draw and may well progress to the qf where they ose to Italy but more likely get to sf whey they get demolished by france England lose to Denmark or Serbia and finish 2nd at best. They enter a horrid side of the draw and potentially lose in last 16 to Germany but certain lose qf to maybe Spain. England scrape a best 3rd place and then play Portugal or Belgium, which are not that good now either
Despite my indifference to internationals I watched this one as I had nothing better to do. I quite enjoyed it up to the point where a cartload of subs destroyed the rhythm. I think what ruins so many internationals for me is the ridiculous pairings of teams like England with Andorra or Malta or something. At least tonight's game was competitive. A little too much so in places - I'm not sure how Paqueta stayed on the pitch.
Think you already answered you're own question. Other countries don't share the same relationships with former colonies as the UK, they're much friendlier
it's obscene how the social.media era bigs up utter ****e. that man flopped in pro football management. he didn't want a job but took one after 3 or 4 years to replace someone in technical development in the fa. was begged to go England u21, didn't want to. absolutely flipped with them. gets promoted to seniors after the disgusting fat sham appointment and debacle of a sacking. is there since stinking up the place with wlite players hammering no marks and then he just goes to defend and defend at tournaments and loses when a decent side finally turns up. please please please appoint him man utd.
everton fans still bleating about ffp it seems. despite the a quality evidence (charges brought) I'm reading that some believe at least a half dozen other clubs should be charged first and why is it taking so long to deal with thier case? they then whinge about their appeal and what's the point if they are only going to see the same added back on etc
Re. The England game. It was a friendly. Both teams have lots of players missing. It was meaningless. I wouldn't judge anything with regards tournament performance based on this game.
There's always way too much expectation on the England team. I feel a lot more content in life just accepting they'll never win anything in my lifetime. (The men anyway).
New offside rule to be tested - no indication of when exactly - where a player is only offside if his whole body is ahead of the final defender. Now give us our goals back
They will never have an offside rule that they don't constantly fiddle with. I still like how ice hockey handles offside. So simple to understand, little controversy. Feel like offside in football is always being tweaked or messed with.
I think they should just extend the lines of the 18 yard box out and have a free for all up to that point. park the lino and cameras there and let them be optimised. thst might be an interesting experiment to try and it'd be radical without allowing a total square hanging game. if defenders had to stand thst far back it'd open up massive gaps and encourage a different style of play. who knows if it'd be terrible or not.
You're right. They could have just made it simpler by drawing the VAR lines from feet so it doesn't matter whether the attacker is leaning forward or his shoulder is 1cm ahead, look at the feet, if the defenders feet are furthest forward then you're onside. VAR will still find a way to give offside if this new rule comes in.
It will be terrible, it just moves the goalpost to where a line will be drawn. You'll still have a forensic analysis as to whether a goal is off or not, with a goal being given because the players fingertip is overlapping a defenders toe. Just get rid of VAR. It's ****.
maybe, maybe not. if the lino just has a much shorter distance to travel wher offside is called then maybe we can deleted vsr from it. I'd be interested to see what opening the game up by making the gaps between lines increase. I have no idea of the outcome.
It makes more sense. If part of you is level with the defender then you’re not gaining an unfair advantage - this is what offside was brought in for. To stop goal hanging. Being ‘level’ is good attacking. Catching someone offside because 1% of their body is ahead of you is not good defending. at least this way there’s no difference to being 5 yards offside to 5 inches offside. You’re both 100% ahead of the defender and is way it should be.