Andre27 wrote:What a way to go for England. Losing on penalties seems wrong somehow.
not for england it isn't. we don't use the p-word in England, our team are allergic to them, we haven't won a shootout in decades. i think it's 1 win out of the last 8 shootouts. with those stats i doubt this generation of players will ever win a shootout. the scars are just too deep. the expectation is we'll always lose, and so we find a way to do so.
Personally I think we got to the stage of the competition we deserved on merit. our team isn't fantastic and injuries left us with forced choices. up and coming younger players may do better in the future, but for now i think we got to where we deserved, and have no shame exiting at the QFs, we even topped our group. we have the basis of effective well drilled defending, which isn't too bad a starting point.
our target area to improve on is possession of the ball. we concede possession cheaply and have held less than 50% possession in all euro 12 matches so far. every team has denied us the ball. i think part of that is due to a static formation, our creative striker rooney should be told to drop back and equalise the numbers in midfield. giving us 3 central midfielders. gerrard has been our best player this tournament, but he spent that match chasing pirlo's shadow. they had 4 in the middle of the park at times, we had 2. it's to their credit that they didn't get completely overrun.
on the night I was disappointed by the lack of honour of the italian team. all throughout the competition england have always put the ball out of play when an opponent acts like they're hurt (no other team did that), and the italians were acting hurt a lot. at one point we were up in attack about to put in a cross, when one of their players goes down holding his face after his shoulder was brushed by one of our players. he whined and bitched so much that the ref had to blow his whistle and stop play, then he magically healed and got up. he'd accomplished what he wanted, stopping the attack. there should be fines for that sort of stuff.
At every set play where england could score from a header, they were holding the shirts of our men (john terry got the worst of it), but of course england never get penalties. refs think our players are all rugby players, and that we can't be fouled. it was shameful, i don't know what the goal line officials are there for, they never tell the ref about any fouls. they are ridiculous, i've never seen them make any decisions in their history, they're only there for show, so that michel platini can bury his head in the sand for a few more years.
that's my only annoyance, the terrible quality of officiating. soon we may have goal line technology, but that won't stop shirt pulling or bad offside calls or off the ball incidents, it will only tell if the ball has crossed the line. we need replays, the commentators get multi angle replays seconds after any incident, yet the ref isn't allowed this help. cricket is worth far less money than football yet they can get replays. every major competition has mistakes from the officials, and this won't change any time soon.
germany have to beat italy if italy bring the same as yesterday in the semis. germany have 2 teams full of players that could beat italy imo.
i think spain will continue their annoying winners' habit of getting 1 goal in the first half, then playing crap for 70 more minutes and winning 1-0. they won the last euros and world cup with this strategy. it's a sign of champions: playing crap but still not getting beaten. I don't think portugal will show up, they'll leave without having made a fight of it. I'd love to be proved wrong and have a 5 goal thriller, i just don't see it happening.
also lol @ holland winning robot footie.
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