Tempting to make this an off-topic thread, but I'll stick this here for all of our international football needs. There's already been a number of games, including the USA coming from behind to beat Peru 2-1. Argentina smashed seven past Bolivia, while Scotland failed to score in Georgia, losing to a solitary goal. Ireland and other Ireland won their qualifiers against the minnows, putting 3 and 4 past Gibraltar and the Faroes. France narrowly beat Portugal and an Eriksen-less Denmark drew a blank against Albania. Where did our players manage to make an impact? Yedlin started for the US and played the whole game, despite them making six subs. Lamela was picked for Argentina, while Messi only made the bench. Classy! Lloris kept a clean sheet for France. I've probably missed others.
Hope Rooney breaks his leg....can't stand the thought of that fat tosser breaking or even equaling the England goal scoring record..fat track bully.
Hope Wales qualify...been great watching them. They could go up to 2nd in the world rankings if other results go their way as well as themselves beating Isreal.
Eriksen has been ruled out of Denmark's Monday game And neither Kane nor Mason are in the starting lineup for England's game this evening
England are on course to qualify for Euro 2016 but there's nothing here for European heavyweights Germany and Spain to fear. It's a scrappy game punctured with niggly fouls. (BBC commentary) Yep, that's England!
Anyone hve the stats on the Charlton/Rooney goals for England? Over how many games were they scored? How many of the goals were scored in friendlies and how many in competitive play? Who was the opposition? Etc. I'm willing to bet that Charlton's goals were more important for England than Rooney's.
Shelvey isn't too bad today. Looks pretty much like the only England player who will try and inject any pace into the game and has a good passing range too and the eye for a pass to match. All the other players are taking too many touches and doing everything too slowly, as ever. Barkley shows flashes but nothing too amazing, it is only San Marino after all. Its frustrating to see technically gifted players like Oxlade-Chamberlain slow the game down so much. On Rooney/Charlton, Rooney has 106 games and 49 goals I think, which according to Wiki is identical to Charlton's England record. I don't know about the breakdown of starts vs. sub appearances in those games, who they were against, and I'd hazard a guess that Charlton scored more goals at tournaments than Rooney has yet! Charlton was way before my time as a player but my perception would definitely be that he scored more important goals for England than Rooney has or will ever do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_goals_scored_by_Bobby_Charlton There is a list of Bobby Charlton's goals for England. Couldn't find a similar one for Rooney straight away but then again I have to confess that I didn't look too hard...
Iceland, Wales and Northern Ireland all top their qualifying groups. Of those three, Wales is becoming quite a good team, and the Northern Ireland group may be the ultimate group of life. But Iceland playing at the level they’re playing and doing the double over the Netherlands is just shocking. They’re more than 1,000 times better than the US at football. (< 1,000th of the population, better football team).
So boring, don't know why I'm watching it. I think I counted 3 chances England had, which against San Marino is pretty pathetic. We're only ahead because San Marino and the ref have been spoon feeding us a win. At least throw on a Spurs player and make it worth me watching.
The players look bored. Pointless fixture. You'd have thought that Rooney would take the opportunity to grab his record and motivate the others into forcing him over the line. Probably a pretty crappy way to get there, though. I should've mentioned Davies playing for Wales (and getting bad reviews and a clean sheet) and Robbie Keane doing his usual in my OP. He's up to 67 now which puts him 13th in the international list, the 4th European and only one short of Gerd Muller.
Entertainment is something that has long been missing from international football, which is why so many fans don't bother with it. I'm keep an eye on it through the BBC Sports page - I'm not bothering to either watch or listen to it.
Ukraine's 3-1 win over Belarus is the stuff that angry posts about Levy are made of: Yarmolenko and Konoplyanka both scored before half time. The most entertaining game of today seems to be the friendly between Mexico and T&T: Mexico came from 2-0 and 3-2 down to draw 3-3
Rooney has less in friendlies, more in qualifiers, but less at tournaments. The game has changed. Charlton played in Home Championships and many higher profile friendlies, but he didn't have ten qualifying games for any major tournaments. There were more teams who were pushovers in his day and more goals in games generally, but then he was a midfielder, not a striker like Greaves or Lofthouse whose goal per game ratios are far better.
I wouldn' t say there were more pushovers Luke. USSR and Yugoslavia were very strong teams but after the breakup of thos countries there there were many small countries , Estonia and Macedonia for example that are only now beginning to be anything like competitive. I think Charlton, Lineker and Greaves probably would have scored more than they did if they had been playing teams like that
Well done, Kane. Why's no one mentioning that he's only 48 goals off the record? He'd probably be halfway there if he got to start against Lithuania and San Marino
