PBP: Croatia vs Spain: June 18 - Arena Gdansk [R]

Just as I thought, Spain overrated. No strikers, no cutting edge, no plan B.
Endless possession. They are team of midfielders.

Croatia and Italy have shown they are completely beatable with organisation.

 

we have strikers, del bosque won't use them, his tactics make no sense. Ugh, so frustrating as a spanish fan.

 

Ah that's true but this is the ''Croatia vs. Spain'' thread.

 

Sure, you have some good strikers. Yet the coach thinks you only need midfielders.
Spain are like Barcelona without Messi or Madrid without Ronaldo in terms of cutting edge.

Yes Spain are still probably the best team, but all the talk of unbeatable is nonsense.

However I'm still very worried England will have to play them next. Even if I think it will be a closer than people expect. I am hoping England can win the group tomorrow.

I was pissed off when Spain scored in the last minutes.

 

I agree with you to a certain extent. Look, Del Bosque is a very good player manager. But he is a terrible tactician. A lot of times he just puts players out there with no game plan. Cesc said after the Italy game that they had never talked about or practiced their no striker formation. It is purely due to the players talent that they are getting through. Del Bosque is putting training wheels on this team.

 

Bollocks

Varela scored the Winner against Denmark.
Welbeck scored the winner against Sweden
Walcott scored the equaliser and had a great game against sweden
Balotelli scored a great winner against Ireland and did well against Croatia in the first half.
Gebrselassie has played very well for the Czechs
Nani was the second best Portugese player against Holland.
Boeteng has been solid for Germany
Clichey for France solid

 

It looks offside to me, though all of the ESPN guys said clearly onside. Seems clear they were wrong.


Here's a pic of the moment the ball is struck:

 

Iniesta looks clearly onside there.

 

And it was the lucky 1:0 victory again. What a surprise

Spain is by far better OR has luck en masse. They can't lose. They just can't. Football became absolutely predictable What a shame

 

Code1390 posted this in the referee thread, so I'll repost here.



Iniesta is on as you can see by the grass lines.



Iniesta passes it to Navas who is behind the ball.

And enough with this "passive offside" junk, it's a new play with this new pass.

 

You can only be offside for parts of your body that you can play the ball with. So arms are not a part of the equation.

 

Very upset right now as we could have won this game..Rakitic has to bury that chance that he had..It was the best chance of the game..We fought hard and played with Croatian pride but in the end it was not enough..BTW Luka Modric what a top class performance..

 

Yes, with referee assistance also, Croatia didnt got one penalty, Greek-Roman stlye of Sergio Busquets after corner, or free kick.

Also we should got one free kick, foul of Ramos on Mandzukic. He gave them several fouls. Stupid way for losing this match, at least their goal was not offside, like I thought at that moment.

Spain also should get one penalty, elbow in the head, but if we got our penalty, we would be compact in defense and probably get a tie with 1-1, this result could took us in quarterfinals.

To bad that we didnt used our 2,3 chances maybe. Sad night, especially when referee destroys your hopes, this is happening against Croatia on every competition.

EURO 1996, Croatia - Germany, Markus Babel made a foul, he pushed our defensive player and centered, we all expected a foul and Sammer scored, 1-2 for Germany. Two years later on World Cup in France, 3-0 for Croatia, we invested everything in this match just so that we clear those referee errors from EURO 1996.

Qualifications for EURO 2000, Croatia - Yugoslavia (Serbia), Davor Suker scored one goal, but the referee said that it was not over the line, which is false, it would be 3-2 for us and we would go on EURO 2000, the match finished 2-2. In Serbia, they turned the lights on the stadium, we were better, break was at least 30,40 minutes, this match finished 0-0.

World Cup 2002, Croatia - Italy, referee helped to Croatia in several moments, dont know why, probably that we can get in the knock out stage against South Korea.

EURO 2004, Croatia - France, the match finished 2-2, but French goal of David Trezeguet, who helped himself with the hand and he scored for 2-2. Gods hand.

World Cup 2006, Croatia - Australia, in biography of Graham Poll is written his error against Croatia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Poll

"Poll's assistant also missed that the second Australian goal by Harry Kewell was scored from an offside position."

EURO 2008, Croatia - Turkey, it was additional time, 119 minute and Croatia scored for 1-0, in 122 minute Turkey scored for 1-1, the referee should finish this match at least in 121 minute, nothing happens in those additional moments, before penalties.

http://en.archive.uefa.com/competit...=2008/round=15094/match=301700/report=rp.html

Qualifications for World Cup 2010. match between England and Ukraine was fixed, England let this victory just because we won against them on Wembley, with fair approach, even though we were first in our group in qualifications for EURO 2008. 1-0 for Ukraine. Their tie or English victory would put us in additional qualifications.

Those media attacks, that Spain and Croatia will play 2-2 were just funny. Italian media started this "conspiracy theory", Buffon said this after their match against Croatia, we could also say that the match between Spain and Italy was fixed, also this match Ireland and Italy, Trapattoni will win against Italy.

And now I can add new moment of referee inspiration.

EURO 2012, Croatia - Spain, referee hasnt seen penalties on both sides, which could direct the match as much more carefull on both sides and it could finished 1-1. One free kick after fould on Mandzukic. We opened completely at the end and they scored.

One other conspiracy theory was made in Serbia. They say that the Vatican will arrange who will go further in our group, because all four teams in our group are mostly Roman Catholics and Vatican will arrange their plan, because they "like" all four teams.

So, the match between Croatia and Spain finished 2-2. We arranged everything. At least Croatia national team always played fair and with normal approach. With so many errors against us, we got some nice results. It takes much more than referee errors, so that they can destroy Croatian desire.

In other matches also many errors, Denmark should got one penalty yesterday, havent seen the match, but I read that they should have one penalty. It seems that countries with a lot of residents need to go further in every way. Those competitions are starting to look very funny, especially that World Cup 2002, than World Cup 2010 (Argentina scored from offside against Mexico, English goal against Germany, etc.). Useless to watch when we all know who must go further. John OShea played with intentional hand move, it should be one penalty for Italy. Match between Poland and Greece, host must go further, expulsion, two yellow cars. Five referees are there. Thats why they dont want to put technological achievments, because this would not help to some nations.

 

It was a quite bad game for Ramos. I was surprised at seeing him so bad with his positioning, he's usually good at it.

Otherwise, Spain seemed unsure. As if they wanted Croatia to go through rather than Italy. Once Italy scored, and it became obvious keeping it 0-0 was not safe any more, they scored right away.

 

Guys come on enough of the bull crap and talk about the game..Here i will start..Credit to Bilic..He got the tactics right and really shut Spain down..We gave away the ball a few times cheaply in the first half but we worked really hard to close them down and gave them nothing down the middle..
Second half we pushed up more and had the best chance of the game after a beautiful ball by Modric to Rakitic..Unfortunately he could not finish that glorious chance..Perisic has had a good chance which was well saved by Casillas..Croatia had a clear penalty on Pique not called as Corluka beat him and all Pique could do was wrap his arm around his neck and pull him by his jersey..We are a small country so im not surprised we didn't get the pk..Spain finally scored late as they beat our offside trap as we were pushing more players foward trying to score a goal..Croatia i think also was a bit tired in the last 10 -15 minutes..All that defending in the 1st half wore some of the players out..All in all im proud of our players but disappointed as well as we could have beat the Spaniards today and did not deserve to lose..

 

I agree, some people here represent Croats as racists, those cases are isolated cases, Croats in general dont have anything against African, Asian or any other nations, maybe we have problems with our Eastern neighbors, but this is an old historic issue, its not connected with racism, because we are the same race.

 

We should beat Turkey in Zagreb, in additional qualifications, because of this we finished in Pot 3, on this EURO, we would avoid Italy at least if we were in Pot 2. We need to play good from the start, every qualification match, so that we avoid complicated consequences.

After this EURO, I am glad that everyone will leave from Croatian Football Federations, those people that we watch 6-12 years became incompetent. I am glad that Bilic also leaves, he shaked our reputation in qualifications, we werent on the World Cup, his statistics is great, we lsot only 8 matches in 65 matches, but those 8 matches were key matches, EURO 2008 against Turkey, two times against England in qualifications, they revenged against us and helped Ukraine, bad defeats were also against Georgia and Greece, we could lose this EURO also very easy. Before Bilic we had much better approach for qualification matches, we never lost at home in qualifications, now we have one defeat at home, against England, he uses some calculations, experiments, he finally figured it out that Kranjcar, Dujmovic cant play in the first squad.

Dont have some optimistic feelings about our new headquarters, Davor Suker and Igor Stimac will probably use another populist ideas. Igor Stimac started to talk negative about Slaven Bilic tactics, like he is preparing the way for himself in our team. Thats not good, after all they were in the same squad, friends, etc.

 

As if England would beat Italy.

 

Of course England can beat Italy, they are worse than France. This is an Italian side who nobody gave a hope 2 weeks ago.

England are going to distress whoever they play in the 1/4 finals I promise you.

 

England distress everyone who has to watch them play.

Still, nothing should be taken for granted against a Hodgson team. He's a good manager for small teams.

 

England scored 3 great goals in one game against Sweden, hardly distressing.

I love the haters, makes it even better when England win.

England are not a small team. Nobody wants to play England.

 

Croatian "Hawk Eye" video..

http://euro2012.net.hr/hrvatska-na-euru/oko-sokolovo-presudilo-bila-su-dva-penala

 

You fixed the match against Ukraine 1-0 so that you revenge against Croatia, at least we played fair on Wembley, also World Cup in 1966. We cant say that England deserved that victory in finals, England can only win if they are hosts. This will follow you forever, there are no haters, only historic facts.