Southgate is there one reason only, for National team success.
He failed miserably. Sod the nice culture and young and promising team.
He failed. Full stop.
Next.
Southgate and the team have done really well and hopefully he sticks with it. Quarter final, final, semi final, you just have to keep that consistency up and eventually you'll get the luck and it will be your turn.
City are in the same boat with the Champions League, and they'll get there too.
Seen the same with the Lionesses and they did it in the end.
Sent from my M2101K6G using Tapatalk
With no outstanding teams in this years WC and many of the superstars aging and past their best you have to feel that this was a real chance for England to go all the way.
Wonder if Southgate will bail as I read he is considering his future. I personally think he is a good man/squad touchy feely manager and doing PR fluff but I think he is lacking in actual game management. We've thrown away the chance to win the two previous tournaments due to his poor tactics (imho). He's also got stuck in the playing favourites too much though tbf Maguire has done well. The old "we have lots of potential argument" is a shit one to pull as you just need to win when you can period.
Don't think there was much between the teams last night, the difference being Griezmann and the ref.
The refereeing overall has been pretty good but last night's and the Argentina Holland games were appalling they should both be struck off
It was all in the plan!
https://twitter.com/jtov10/status/16...LlSs1hKnDolwvw
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
IMO we were not good enough soft group stage a decent win against a good team Senegal then a different class in France ( ref was awful btw) as to Southgate never been impressed but no obvious replacement should he go other than Howe or Potter.
Feel for Kane a great servant to both club and country who will most probably when his career finishes end up trophyless.
As an aside i would love to see Morocco win it they have beaten some decent opposition to get where they are.
Last edited by mart broad; 11th December 2022 at 14:05.
I FEEL LIKE I'M DIAGONALLY PARKED IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
On French media, the Sun's taunt is backfiring spectacularly
There. It needed to be said. I don't follow football, haven't watched a single game (and won't), and do not support any team. But I do enjoy a little Schadenfreude when I get a chance.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
France lose Karim Benzema before the finals and aren’t particularly missing him. Olivier Giroud is 36 now but still a damn nightmare to defend against and still a goal scoring machine. Plus he has magnificent hair😉
2 penalties that were absolutely nailed on and the ref only gave one of them, Var had to intervene for the 2nd (which was so obvious).
The referee was terrible and although it wasn't all one sided the key mistakes went against England.
France were also dirty and cynical and didn't get punished enough for that.
The referee was one factor in France's victory, but I can also accept that France were just better in the key decisive moments.
Last edited by watchcollector1; 11th December 2022 at 16:23.
France's man of the match ;]
Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk
Sorry, can’t agree.
That England squad was the best in the tournament but it was obvious that the manager only had a plan for maybe 17 or 18 of them .
A good manager would’ve utilized Maddison, Wilson etc. Instead, he resorted to type by throwing on Sterling , who, in the circumstances might not have been the better option. He will point to his substitutions , Saka and Foden ,and probably say they were tired after their exertions. What he will miss though, is that the two of them should’ve been used in different roles . Foden is not a left winger and to keep him there was a really bad choice, nullifying Englands best option for breaking the French down. Saka was bullied all game and Southgate did very little to protect him.
Kane dropping into his own half for the ball is an insult.
Henderson and Rice should only ever be on the same pitch when West Ham play Liverpool.
Again, the issue will be ignored because England ‘ nearly’ did well . This team/squad should be ripping it up .
I thought England played as well as they could which includes large parts of the first half of pointless side and back passing …. Especially Shaw to Maguire. Maguire may be ok, but he has either the skill or vision to play any pass other than the easiest available, which often puts the receiver under pressure
I also thought that France didn’t need to get out of second gear. So IF Harry had scored the penalty I could not see anything other than a France win
I am undecided about Southgate. An honest and politically astute fellow. And maybe you need that steadiness. But then he makes decisions such as bringing Sterling on last night that just do make you wonder.
A general observation of the WC - the standard of football is well below what we are now used to in the Premiership. We are saturated with quality footy on TV if I recall 1978 - when I was 10 - it was exciting as you saw world class players you never normally saw. For me, the WC is no longer elite football and winning it is not about the best quality but about the best tactics. Hence Southgate played a percentage game and we always had a chance as opposed to failing in group stages due to some adrenalin fuelled mistakes
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
The real football is here.
Back to business
Whether they were the best squad in the tournament is 100% subjective. Nations league form was utterly woeful and club form is not international form. Other than the opening game I saw no world class performances from any of them. Don’t get me wrong they looked decent but you can’t lay it all on the manager - sometimes players on the pitch need to micro manage things themselves and they failed to do so. It’s been mentioned before but at times they looked short of ideas. We will never know if a different manager would have got a different level of performance/result out of this crop of talent but I see no way you can say with certainty that they would definitely have won the cup. Nothing is certain in football except Scotland not being there
It's an interesting observation and likely due to the financial abilities of the top clubs to attract the best players from anywhere in the world whilst national teams have a much more limited pool of players to choose from. National teams also only have a limited time with their squads too.
In terms of excitement and staus though the World Cup is unparalleled in sport as demonstrated by the events of the last few weeks.
And to me a World Cup match between 2 top nations will always be exponentially more important than Saudi Blank Cheque Book United vs UAE Sports Washing IX
I see riot police deployed in Paris as the Moroccans took to the streets in their thousands to celebrate their win over Portugal. I hope the semi final between Morocco and France sees calm return but I fear the worst for Paris that night.
The Euro final was the first major tournament final for England since 1966. And the second overall.
Brazil, Germany, Argentina have been in God knows how many finals since 1966 (Euro & Copa America). Italy won two Cups. Argentina has won many U21 and Olympic golds...
As an outsider (because my country only made it to its first major tournament recently) I feel like Brits somehow visualize that England is up there among these other big football nations.
They're not. And I don't want to sound like an asshole when I'm saying this.
To be fair most of us Brit’s don’t think England deserve to win everything, we know there are better teams (team being the word) it’s the media that does that.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This was the best English team I've seen. They played great in all of their games and could have won the Cup.
Kane's penalty in, McGuire's header in or Rashford's free kick in and everything could have been different yesterday.
You also need some luck to win the Cup. England didn't have it yesterday.
But this team had the potential to win it (for the first time since 1990), imho.
On that note in our mind we imagine a great footballing rivalry with Germany. It is very one sided - the Germans don't view said rivalry in anything like the same way. Funnily enough the USA do - they imagine the football rivalry between them and England in the same way England imagines it between England and Germany!