Yeah, player for player Belgium look far more impressive. But this is a team game and Italy are the better team - so far!....
I cannot believe Belgium do not have least one decent uninjured specialist LB. And with Kompany out, surely Toby + Jan would have been the sensible pairing based on league form.
I did wonder when Wilmots made Hazard captain. The guy's a little selfish prick. I am sure our boys don't have any respect for him. Shades of Dutch squads of yesteryear?
Bizarre. Hardly captain material is he, on his manner or on consistently putting on team-inspiring performances.
That's one poor set up and as a result a wasted pool of talent. Looks like that's another 'golden generation' of footballers gone to waste. The Belgium manager would never get a big club team to manage because he just is not good enough to manage a brilliant group of individuals, the Belgian FA need to get rid. Anyway I can't stand Hazard and Moussa didn't play so **** em. As for Verts, if he played for any other team I'd think he's a twat, there's something about him I've never liked. Toby needs a rest, hope they get knocked out and he comes back fresh for us.
Seems as if Marc Wilmots is the Belgian Roy Hodgson. Utterly bizarre selection and tactics. For starters, Hazard as captain? How on earth is that little runt an inspirational figure?! He may be a brilliant player on his day but he's had an appalling season, he's not the greatest of professionals and I've never known him to be the vocal man to rally his side. Then you break up one of the best central defensive partnerships in Europe, Jan and Toby are an incredible pairing and to split that after the season they've had is truly shocking. Then you start essentially 3 DM's (one at CAM) against a side who's been known over the years to be defensively astute, despite the fact you have a selection of immense attacking talent in the likes of Batshuayi, Carrasco, Mertens and Mousa! What Fellaini has done to merit his place in that starting XI over Dembele only Wilmot knows, and albeit not much but whenever I've seen Witsel play I'm yet to see this "superb midfielder" that gets branded with a £30m price tag whenever Spurs or anyone else are supposedly interested. As RDBD quite frankly put it, it was a team with a plan vs 11 individuals tonight. Now compare this to our very own dinosaur, Woy. Puts the league's top scorer on corner duty. Takes Rooney off after the goal, despite having a good game, for a player who's played about 250-300 minutes of football all season (having selected him over a Premier League winning midfielder). Keeps Sterling on for 87 minutes despite needing to have been drafted off at half time, possibly earlier and replaces him with James Milner, now I know I'm not a football manager paid thousands to do wonders (though if Woy can, I have hope that one day I'll have a chance) but since when is James Milner the sort of player you want to bring on to either chase a goal or even hold a lead? Leaves the second top scorer in the league on the bench for the whole game when I think most would agree he should've started. ****ing infuriates me that we finally have a good squad of players and yet we're stuck with an absolute ****ing idiot in charge of them. Anyways I'm in the south west coast enjoying some of it's finest beverages, if what I've wrote doesn't make sense, forgive me
It was obvious two years ago and it was obvious tonight, Wilmots can't see past trying to bundle as many "names" onto the pitch rather than build a coherent team. Take the lineup for tonight's game: Vertonghen and Ciman are centre backs yet were both deployed at full back - and what makes this stupid is that Thomas Munier is a dedicated right back yet he was rooted to the bench, while the likes of Jordan Lukaku, Luis Pedro Cavanda and Laurens De Bock were all called up during qualifying or pre-tournament friendlies and are all full-backs yet not one of them made the final squad. Similar can be said for the midfield: Fellaini playing as a number ten was utter madness, and it showed throughout the game as he was too ponderous getting forward which allowed the Italians to get back and defend, and since he wasn't getting forward enough the added congestion heaped pressure on Witsel and Nainggolan - bad enough at 0-0, far worse when you're 1-0 down. What made this more baffling was how many better choices they had available, either on the pitch (Hazard and De Bruyne) or on the bench (Carrasco, Dembele, Mertens) - pretty much any combination of those three would've been better balanced and more dynamic going forward. It just seems like Wilmots wants to go the full Bielsa and play 3331 to get everyone in the team, and the thing is that would probably be a better balanced team than the one he put out tonight. In contrast, look at Croatia. Just like Belgium they have a plethora of attacking talent (short list: Modric, Rakitic, Perisic, Kovacic, Badelj, Brozovic, Halilovic, Coric) but there's clearly been some thought put into the team, which means Kovacic and Coric stay on the bench, Halilovic missed the squad entirely, but the team they put out yesterday did far more than Belgium managed between them at the last World Cup. As for the Italians, two things stood out about their tactics: firstly picking an all-Juve back line certainly showed that it's possible and rewarding to transplant clubmates into a national side and reap the rewards as long as you don't dick around by playing them out of position to accommodate other players elsewhere, and secondly there was a certain Moronhoesque quality to how they played, especially the tactic where various players would take it in turns to scythe down the opponents at regular intervals until the ref booked one of them - but by that time they'd gotten away with it two or three times already.
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/R'lyehian Incase anyone else doesn't know what HBIC is talking about either
You beat me to it. I was going to say Belgium played like a team captained by Eden Hazard. MacManaman had it right, for once. "Who’s the leader in that team? How is it Eden? He has had a ghastly season in the EPL and he’s made the team AND the armband..."
That's sort of where I was for the Russia game - in Helston, Cornwall. There was even another Spurs supporter there - it wasn't SoS was it? NB I've been away a few days and just got back. I haven't noticed any posts regarding the hooliganism, or are they somewhere else?
I couldn't comment at the time, but I'm wondering if I've seen a worse England international performance than Sterling against Russia? It was embarrassing for a while, but in the pub where I was watching after that people just started laughing. Any bets he starts against Wales? Lallana did some bad things too, but he really tried and at the end of the day that's a major part of what I want from the team. I see that the BBC rated Sterling the same as Kane. I know Harry didn't have the best of matches but that is beyond ridiculous.
Lallana does some good things. I do wish he wouldn't keep fancying himself as a striker though. Cow's arse & banjo spring to mind!...
