ahahahah What a environmentally concerned guy. Good one 1/2 of semi lined up though. That means a lot to S/W Europe.
No early comment to report tonight. The French press are struggling to print the score. Is Torres the rich mans Priskin? He knows the offside rule in the same way that our long departed forward interpreted it.
Well we are due a competitive quater final with both teams attacking...will we get one with the right result!
Anyone like to speculate on what tonight's game will bring? Two sides defence minded, both afraid to lose, or two teams who see this as a chance to progress further and go for a win. I wouldn't be surprised to see extra time.
Can you? Which channel are you watching on, I might switch over. I'm not sure on this one - I simply haven't been impressed enough by England to imagine them beating Italy. They'll have to play one hell of a lot better than they have so far - especially with their passing and ball retention. Don't know why Carroll isn't starting either.
Think it's time for a new National Anthem - none of the players looked enthused with singing that dirge. How about Flower of England.........
Why is it that we just cannot pass the ball to our own players? It has to have something to do with the way that kids are taught to play from the beginning. Oh well, we can concentrate on important things again tomorrow.
The better team deservedly went through. At least most of the team showed a little bit of bottle though. Cole, Johnson and Terry were brilliant during the match, all three substitutes did what they could, Gerrard and Parker performed to their physical limits, and it's not as though Hodgson had any choice but to start with them both. Hart was a leader for 120 minutes and is unquestionably the next captain. Heck, even Rooney, while disappointing overall and clearly not fit enough to last for two hours, showed the occasional uncharacteristic glimpse of belief. Roy did us proud when most of us expected absolutely nothing. And technically he's still unbeaten. But now the real work begins.
Why did we play for penalties when its well known what's likely to happen in such a situation? Still we avoid being battered by Germany I guess again. Disappointing performance after a bright 25 minutes. Somebody needed to do a Eustace/Hogg type tackle on Pirlo!!!!
Or Martin Taylor. No, I shouldn't say that. Obviously I knew they were favourites for the shootout, but the nerve/bottle/class/confidence that he showed with that Panenka penalty was the moment I knew we were definitely going home.
No surprise really, We don't have players with enough basic skills to play against the likes of Italy, Spain and Germany. So easily predicted that we would go out on penalties, although Italy should have had to finished in the second half - but all praise to our defence absolute quality and very well led by JT (cannot stand the man, but credit were credit is due). My summary of the players: Hart - excellent when needed, but his defence was immense, so rarely called upon. Defence - Excellent. Parker & Gerrard - Excellent, but Gerrard's fitness let him down Milner - Awful Young - Very poor Wellback - Awful Rooney - Very poor Carrol - Gave it his all and worked hard, but had no support from Rooney Interesting to look at the passing stats on the BBC web-site. Cole was our player with the highest number of passes with 44 of which about 33 where successful. Pirlo was highest for Italy with 131 passes of which around 112 were successful - nearly 4 times as many!! Still in a couple of weeks the Prem will start again - and it is the best league in the world! Absolutely NO improvement in football quality in 2 years - well done the FA & the Prem League.
I wouldn't have started Milner in the first place. But given that he was the only starting player other than Gerrard or Parker who can play in the middle, I don't understand why he came off. I thought he was doing better than Young too.
