Interesting post mortem on yesterday's game and England's Euro campaign in general. Personal takeaways: just as he does with Ole, Rio clearly backs Southgate and believes he's the man to take this team forward. As stated, I think he's been pretty good but to take the next step, someone else (if they can find him) would probably be needed. Found myself a bit by puzzled by Howson's analysis. Not saying it's not correct (agree with a lot of what he says) but this is the guy also who will defend Ole like his life depends on it. Yet, he just stopped short of saying that Southgate needs to go. And as stated before, I think it's been pretty clear (and kind of ironic in a sense) that a lot of Southgate's shortcomings (and strengths, if we're being honest), very much mirror Ole's in many ways. Can both managers learn from their recent experiences and mistakes? Time will tell...
Rafael van der Vaart 🗣️: "This England side... they spend the whole game with their ass in their own box while having so much quality in the squad. It's sad."Van der Vaart is needed in British TV football analysis to diversify opinion pic.twitter.com/qBhLMTIcsP— #TouchlineFracas (@touchlinefracas) July 12, 2021 Van der Vaart may have his detractors, but he's spot on here. And that's why, as things stand, it's a disservice to the England team keeping Southgate on the job, given some of the things he's shown during the tournament (and especially in the final). Nothing against the man himself but if England want to win something in the coming years with this superb group they have right now, they need a better quality manager.
Would be an interesting game … 𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 𝘃𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗽𝗮 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮Which team of the tournament are you backing in a match? 👀 pic.twitter.com/zYGA3enbUO— Squawka Bet (@SquawkaBet) July 13, 2021
UEFA and CONMEBOL are in advanced talks for a match between the new European and South American champions.Italy vs. Argentina would be played in Naples in honor of Diego Maradona, per @tariqpanja pic.twitter.com/tgMhLojnVK— B/R Football (@brfootball) July 13, 2021 Sure why not? Would love to see this game being played. And in Maradona's 'honor'? All the better.
I think that's a fun idea. I think it could also be fun to have a mini-tournament of all-stars from each continent play against each other over two weeks or something like that in off tournament years. I haven't thought about the logistics or anything, and it would probably be greeted with a huge shrug of the shoulders, but theoretically would be fun to see Europe's best vs. South America's best or South America's best vs. Africa's best. Antarctica's team would be dark horses for sure.
What does the Club World Cup has to do with this when it's a club football tournament as opposed to an international one? The Confed Cup (which won't happen this time around with the WC coming next year) is the closest version, internationally, of the Club World Cup. Besides, this proposed game between Italy and Argentina appear to be a one off, a prestigious exhibition game (with the added caveat of honoring Maradona given his ties with both countries). Imagine that both continental feds (along with the Italian and Argie ones) will be set for a nice payday as well.
Yeah, my mistake. Misunderstood. Just surprises me how much people were complaining about the new CL format and how it was adding games to an already stuffed schedule, players never get a rest, etc. Now you're talking about another tournament to throw on the schedule? We should be looking to take games off the schedule between June 1st and August 1st so these guys can recover, not add another pointless friendly/tournament to the schedule.
Once every four years or so, and would only impact up to 25 players per continent. Wouldn't be that intense. Don't worry though, it's never going to happen.
David Squires on … England’s Euro 2020 final defeat against Italy | England | The Guardian The guy always delivers!