Here's where the controversy comes in. It looked like Lloris was injured on that free kick that shouldn't have been given. The ball hit Eder's arm and the ref gives the free kick to Portugal. Guerreiro hits the crossbar on the ensuing free kick and replays show Lloris getting up slowly and struggling with his right leg. The very next shot on him goes in.
Interesting didn't notice that. I do remember Lloris flapping wildly at the free kick. Indeed the goal came only a minute or 2 after that free kick.
They shouldn't get heat for the finals and quite frankly, shouldn't get any heat period. The criticism should be on UEFA. One team had Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Wales, Iceland....the other Belgium, Germany, Spain and potentially France in the Semis. And the latter finished first in the group, the other third. Doesn't make any sense at all and was completely unfair.
If things went by seeding, one side would have had England, Spain and Portugal as the group winners. The other side was to have Germany, France and Belgium. The groups did not play out on paper.
but that's the problem....sometimes groups don't play out the way everyone expects on paper and this happens more often than not. especially in a tourney where there is less incentive to win for all teams as four 3rd place teams out of six groups go through.... so therefore eliminating group E and group F winners the possibility of playing a 3rd place team was a huge disservice to balancing the KO round. there had to be a better way in the format instead of just blindly saying that group E and F winners don't have to be factored.....quite frankly there is no justifiable reason why they should matter less as both groups E and F had teams from Pot 1 ( Belgium ranked number 2 ) and Portugal ranked highly too...then also accordingly they all had a team from pot 2 , pot 3 and pot 4 in both groups E and F......there was no reason why they should have done that and not account for the group E and F winners.....it screwed with the brackets and the tournament in general really. Props to Portugal and nothing can be taken from them.....but this euro sucked and many feel like the real finals happened in the round of 16 and the quarters......after that much of the strength in the Euro had been weeded out. no reason beyond money to add 8 weaker teams. also no reason to spread the tournament throughout europe for the next euro.
I was talking about the way they played, not who they played. That style is copping them a lot of criticism, and if we played it all the old and usual stereotypes would emerge. Heck, they come out even when we don't play it.
Let's go 16 for this tournament. These would have been those who made it: France (host) Czech Republic (Group A winner) Belgium (Group B) Spain (Group C) Germany (Group D) England (Group E) Northern Ireland (Group F) Austria (Group G) Italy (Group H) Portugal (Group I) The following would have had some playoff system for the remaining 6 slots. Iceland (A2) Wales (B2) Slovakia (C2) Poland (D2) Switzerland (E2) Romania (F2) Russia (G2) Croatia (H2) Albania (I2) Based on tournament form, let's assume Russia & Romania do not qualify. So missing from the final 16 are Ireland & Hungary. Albania makes it through. Of course, the groups would have been different but would we see much difference among the final 8 who qualified after group play?
So let's go the next step and create the four groups. Based on the draw that took place, it likely would have gone like this (assuming that the balls are not hot and the draw is completely random): Group A France Belgium Iceland Switzerland Group B England Portugal Wales Slovakia Group C Germany Czech Republic Austria Croatia Group D Spain Italy Poland Northern Ireland
so the defensive team has the same amount of shots has most attacking team of the euros, the only difference is that Portugal's shots did not go in and France's did congrats to Portugal http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/seas Total attempts 42 43 36121 49 39 33121 46 37 25108 38 35 2598 36 20 2783 Off targetOn target Blocked on=2016/statistics/
Falc had those been the groups you could have had QF matchups of: France vs England Portugal vs Belgium Spain v Germany Italy vs Croatia We saw matchups of similar quality in the ko phase plus England and belgium being upset early didn't help. Unfortunately it led to a drab group phase that looked more like a Euro qualifier than the actual euros.
An Iceland team that knocked out England is a warm up game? An Austria team that was labeled the Dark Horse at the start of the tournament? Not sure about all that.
Ronaldo seemed to think so, if you take into account his post game comments on Iceland. Plus, didn't you guys completely dominate that game aside from scoring? Maybe Iceland's win over England tells us more about England than Iceland, especially in light of how France demolished them. You don't have to make excuses about how your team played or even try to play up your first round opponents because ultimately you won the tournament, but I think that if any of the other seeded teams had the option, they would have happily traded their group for yours.
If England beats Iceland and Belgium beats Wales then the road to the cup for Portugal looks more impressive. It's not their fault England is complete shite and Belgium is overrated.
Agreed but that doesn't negate your comment on "warm up games" being wrong. Everyone knows England are a bit of a joke, relatively speaking, but they're still England. They still beat a Wales team that went to the semi-finals and beat Belgium. That England team was knocked out of the competition by Iceland. Again, I fail to see how that is a warmup game. France demolished them after a string of much less impressive results. How do you know France didn't just have a very good day then? Or that Iceland was genuinely overwhelmed, with all of their players playing the biggest game in their lives in front of a huge home crowd? Would you say Albania or Romania were better than Iceland? That's two of the teams France played in the group. Were they warmup games?
FYI, that wasn't my comment, but I get your point. Though the competition is still generally regarded as weaker. A Belgium, who lost to Wales, who you beat, buy previously beat Hungary 4-0 who tied you guys, and so on and so forth. Proving ultimately that each game in the knockouts can't really be judged by games previously, to an extent. You also can't deny that winning hard fought games over stronger competition can and will weather your team. Take Germany for example, they lost two key players to injury against us and another to suspension and were arguably weaker against France and still probably the team who controlled a large part of the match. Yes, that was also France's real first test before facing Portugal. Like I said, I get your point. I think most people feel that your road to the final was relatively easier on that side of the bracket, and there's really no arguing that. But the caveat is that you didn't choose that route, it just happened through no fault of your own. Well maybe a little in finishing third, but that turned out to be more of a blessing in disguise than anything else. In fact, if it weren't for playing relatively poorly in the first round, your path could have been significantly more challenging. I think second would have gotten you England, which probably wouldn't have been too much of a worry, then France, Germany before who knows in the final. And that's not a knock. We know about our teams starting slow and then getting to finals with 82 and 94 being most memorable, and getting stronger as the tournament progresses something that could have materialized again in 2010 and 2014 if we got out, who knows what could have happened. That's how the tournament works, so again not your fault. Your team demonstrated this perfectly by finishing third, which under the old format would have had you eliminated, but you progressively got stronger. The one thing that no Portuguese can tell me again, and I know as a good buddy of mine is Portuguese and used to like saying this to me all the time, is that Portugal only play nice attacking football. On Sunday for the first time he said that playing pretty doesn't matter if you get knocked out and he'd take the victory every day of the week over the 2004 approach and end result. I think you'll agree too He still couldn't bring himself to agree that Greece deserved 2004 though. But they did, just like at the end the day so did Portugal this year. I had to ask him though, you know, just in the spirit of the game
You needed 3 points to advance vs Iceland, Austria and Hungary, technically not one must win game in the group stage. Sure you had to comeback vs a surprisingly hot Hungary team that day, but it's Hungary and they defend like a pub team. Iceland and Hungary performed better than expected while Austria were disappointing. Both nice stories but they did lose 5-2 (flattering scoreline) and 4-0 against quality opposition when it mattered most. I'd say a match vs Iceland in the KO isn't a warm up game as such since it's a must win, but France made it look like one no doubt. France had 3 warm up matches in the group as well, a tricky but limited Irish side and a ripe Iceland. Their run was arguably easier than Portugal's.
If Portugal won the group as expected, they still would have been on the same side of the bracket. They would have started against Belgium. Next would have been Wales.
Yes. They are warm up games. Are you seriously contending that we should be impressed Portugal overcame Iceland and Austria?
So in your mind a team is either so bad they're a warm up team or so good that it'd be impressive to beat them? Interesting thought process that you're unable to see anything between that.