England really have a great chance of winning it. Ye won't fear any team left tbh and have a great draw. Can't see Ukraine being any trouble. Denmark potentially a banana skin however. In the final Italy or Belgium maybe slight favourites, can't see Spain or Swiss making it. England's defence has been immense so far
What's all this ****ing ALLEZ ALLEZ nonsense. We're not ****ing French. What's wrong with Let's go, Let's go, Let's go etc. etc.
Until Sterling got his goal, I was wondering how the press would have reacted to an England performance which had been pragmatic at best. I thought we were decent in the first half yet the second half was pretty dour until the goal. Watching England often makes me think how other countries perceive us because it is so rare that we rout opponents with a dazzling display. Prior to the goal, I was wondering how French supporters would have felt with either Germany or England progressing whereas their more talent squad went out to the Swiss. The issue I have with the Germans is that the often come in to competitions underperforming in the early rounds and then still manage to progress further than they deserve. Even with ageing squads, they seem to over-achieve. It England progress to the semis, you wonder if foreign football fans might now think the same about England. I have to say that the performance stepped up considerably once we took the lead. If Muller had taken his chance, I wonder if we could have regained the lead but Kane's goal seemed to me to transform our play and we had a swagger about us that made Germany's play ineffectual. They were not going to get through. As for England's chances, I think we will beat Ukraine yet the two teams I fear would be Spain and Belgium. Luckily we have a potentially easier route to the finals and you just sense from the last 15 mins of this match that we have something about us that was not at all evident in the earlier rounds
Watching the highlights pretty much on repeat today while I nurse myself through this lovely hangover.
Wow Fantastic Southgate is winning me over with the pragmatism As much as I want more creativity on the pitch ... He has to play Sterling as a goal scorer to reduce our reliance on Kane Keeping clean sheets is a much easier way to win than trying to put score opponents If that means only one creative at a time then as long as we score once we win Shaka did well and bringing Grealish on later creates a new problem for a tired defence. It worked Looks like having Maguire and Henderson in the squad was a good decision Room for improvement, but this is a squad capable of improving
Easy. Get two tickets for the final, book a hotel in London for the night, have a great meal in a restaurant, night of mad passion and job done.
I just had a message from my friend’s son who has been at all the England games including last night’s. I asked him if he was going to Rome and he said that because of the travel restrictions any travelling England fans will have to isolate for 5 days on arrival in Italy. That means they would have had to leave England on Monday to be able to get to the game!
Round of 16: 1-0. Quarters: 1-0. Semis: 1-0. Final: 1-0 (aet). The mighty Spanish, on the way to their first World Cup.
I'm in the Netherlands and would have borrowed or hired a car to drive down to Rome but we're already busy. Flights also available but being in a high risk group and seeing the lack of discipline of many we're not using air travel.
Loads of media outrage today about booing Germany’s national anthem. I’m not saying it’s right, but isn’t this pretty commonplace in international football (especially in rival matches) and not particularly unique to England or a new concept either. Don’t recall this sort of outrage at Scotland booing GSTQ (not something that would particularly bother me either because I know it is mutual). I don’t get why this is suddenly big news?
It's worth criticising it’s disrespectful and unnecessary also not suddenly big news it's been going on for a while. The booing and criticism that is. I was at an Aberdeen vs Rangers game and surprised to hear the visiting fans singing GSTQ throughout. Granite city was a battleground that day.
I hate the booing of the opposing national anthem. It's utterly classless, and is largely an English thing. The Scots might boo ours, but other than that they don't. We boo everybody's.