Euro 2024

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Libby said:
I still find it baffling that you chose England over Germany tbh. Imagine how much better the last 30 years could have been for you <laugh>
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Sports I used to enjoy at international level were Cricket and Football. I have both Australian and Brazilian blood, guess which country I chose to support.

Probably the reason I hate international sport nowadays
 
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Libby said:
Yeah same. That Owen goal got me so excited before Beckham and penalties gave me a taste of what's to come.
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It's almost certainly due to nostalgic bias (together with a preference for solo-goals over wonder-strikes), but my two favourite ever goals continue to be that Owen goal, followed by Giggs' SF goal a few months later.
 
st_brendy said:
It's almost certainly due to nostalgic bias (together with a preference for solo-goals over wonder-strikes), but my two favourite ever goals continue to be that Owen goal, followed by Giggs' SF goal a few months later.
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Boufal v West Brom better than both those
 
Libby said:
I disagree with you on 2018. I think people seriously forget just how low expectations were before that tournament and seem to conflate the quality of the current squad with his entire tenure.

The WC 2018 squad was bang average in comparison to now. Players like Dier, Rose, Lingard, Delph etc - think how far those players would be away from the squad now let alone the team.

As for the Euros then I think you're doing Italy a bit of a disservice there. They were something ridiculous like 18 months unbeaten heading into tournament and had their Indian Summer with Bonucci and Chiellini. Gareth did bottle it in the final but I think everyone did tbh, neither coaching staff, players, nor fans dealt with the realisation at half time that we were 45 minutes to KO.

His biggest error at that tournament was ****ing the penalty selection up imo and have no idea what he was thinking. Ultimately though as much as we don't like the negative style it undoubtedly worked that summer. We were unbeaten, conceded only twice and we're only behind ten minutes in the entire tournament.

I don't disagree with you a lot on Gareth, as you'll know even when I was big backer of his I've never been blind to his tactical shortcomings but the skills he brought was what was needed at the time (which you allude to).

I do think not even done okay is extremely harsh though. We had just came off our two worst tournaments for a generation as well as probably our worst loss since USA in 1950 when he took over and you're essentially saying he needed to make back to back finals and win one of them just to make par?
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Those are fair points actually - you’re right, I’m being a bit too harsh. Recency bias at play!
 
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tomw24 said:
And I think you're desperate to make England look particularly terrible compared to everyone else. France have statistically been worse than England. Not one of their players has scored from open play. Granted, they had a tougher group but they couldn't beat an already eliminated Poland. I'm not defending England BTW, just that other teams have been just as unconvincing. The quality has been pretty poor - which is why England are still in it.
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Yeah agreed on that. France have been crap, including Mbappe.

Was thinking about which French players would get in our team. Mbappe, Kante and Saliba, definitely. Hernandez would, but more because we don’t have a left back. I don’t think Griezmann would. That’s it.
 
Le Tissier's Laces said:
He’s so **** at free kicks. Scored I think 1 from about 40 million attempts for Juve. I’d be delighted if I was a keeper and CR7 insisted on taking them over Bruno Fernandes.
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I seem to remember him scoring one Beckham v Greece style, think it was for Real though rather than Portugal. Loads of people saying that is why he is better than Messi as he is so reliable in the real pressure moments.

Can’t remember who it was for/the context it was scored
 
Saintmagic said:
I seem to remember him scoring one Beckham v Greece style, think it was for Real though rather than Portugal. Loads of people saying that is why he is better than Messi as he is so reliable in the real pressure moments.

Can’t remember who it was for/the context it was scored
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He scored a belter I think against Pompey for MU, then fooled everyone that he was good at them since.
 
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Le Tissier's Laces said:
Those are fair points actually - you’re right, I’m being a bit too harsh. Recency bias at play!
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I mean you're not wrong and I'm certainly not trying to make a defence for Southgate now! I said pre Qatar it should be his last and that definitely seems the case now.

I think it was easier to play his style in the first two tournaments when the squad was decent but not brilliant and he made the off pitch improvements to elevate us. But since he put us in contention with those two tournaments, and with the talent we now have, he simply has no idea what to do with them to progress further. The squad has outgrown him.

We've lost the structure of the team and don't control games like we did earlier on in his tenure even if we weren't free scoring.

I'll genuinely be shocked if we get past the Swiss based on what we've seen so far, but maybe we'll finally get going and yesterday can spark us into life. Not holding my breath though.
 
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Slovenia are so well organised and work so hard, you could almost make up a well-known phrase or saying about them.
 
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