Trump, really cares about you Clinton was a total c$&/ ...heads you lose, tails you lose, welcome to democracy, mind exporting it?????????
Eh? What in the world are you talking about? Edit: Oh, my avatar? I like that picture because you have Trump and Greta Thunberg in the same room together, when they were both at the UN. Talk about polar opposites!
So it will be Italy against Denmark in the final. Interesting - could go any way. I do believe that most danes prefer Italy to Spain - we have bad memories with Spain....
[QUOTE="BGADK, post: 39720396, member: 150171"]So it will be Italy against Denmark in the final. Interesting - could go any way. I do believe that most danes prefer Italy to Spain - we have bad memories with Spain....[/QUOTE] Ha Ha. The oddsmakers give Denmark about a 30% chance of making the Final, and that sounds about right to me. A neutral site match and I would feel differently.
[QUOTE="Ha Ha. The oddsmakers give Denmark about a 30% chance of making the Final, and that sounds about right to me. A neutral site match and I would feel differently.[/QUOTE] No wonder that the oddsmakers give England an edge. Most oddmakers are based in the UK, and most people making the bets are from England. No really a usefull predictor. Granted England may me a small favorite, but on the other hand England fits really well into the danish playing style and Denmark has a long list of good results against England.
Whew! I was so freaking nervous; I was traveling back home so I missed the live game and DVR'd it. I couldn't watch overtime, so nervous I was. I fast forwarded to the PKs and I'm ecstatic that we won. Sure, Spain did play better, but champions need a bit of luck too, so, there we go, we're in the final. -------- Now, for those who are dismissing us because of this game, we did have our moments (some very dangerous counter attacks), and a defense is also part of a team, so give us some credit. --------- And I'm so glad that the boring tiki-taka did not prevail! It is harder when the tiki-taka people face a team that has a functioning defense. So, yeah, I'll take the win! ---------- Only one more game, Italy! We can do it!
You know you're kind of a sick guy when you hear about Italy beating Spain on PKs and your main interest is in finding out which side kicked first, Italy or Spain. Kicking first is an advantage. Soccer should adopt the tennis tie-breaking method of alternating serves (sometimes called ABBA), where one team goes first, but then the teams take turns taking 2 PKs in a row. It reduces the advantage of going first.
You know, for all the dominance (65% possession), Spain only shot 4 times on target. Do you know how many times did Italy shoot on target? 4, too. Like I said, we also had our opportunities. Possession doesn't win games.
Europe actually tried that in youth competitions. Did not really make much of a difference so they ditched it for the Senior Sides.
Spain's midfielder Sergio Busquets said, "we demonstrated we were superior to them.” Usually classy gentlemen praise the competitors (which Mancini did). Idiotic arrogant Busquets did the opposite. Here is what I have to say to him: No, Busquets, you didn't demonstrate that you were superior to us. You demonstrated that you had more possession (which doesn't win games), and just as many shots on target (4 for each team) and just as many goals (1 for each team) but only 2 PKs scored versus our 4. You demonstrated that you are going back home and we are staying in London. You demonstrated that you lost and we won. You demonstrated that you are not in the final, and we are. By the way, judging by your criteria, Switzerland played better than you, despite having 10 men and having Embolo lost to injury. And we handled Switzerland 3-0, with Embolo, and with 11 men. So, no, you haven't demonstrated any superiority. You lost. L. O. S. T. Lost. Get it? There. It's been corrected for you, Busquets. You're welcome.
They didn't test it long enough to see how much of a difference it would make. Instead, from what I know, they mainly ditched it because people found it too confusing. Are tennis fans smarter and more sophisticated than soccer fans? There are some who think it's the case. Intuitively, almost all players know it's an advantage to go first. When the statisticians were gathering data for their study, they found ONE instance in a couple decades of high level competitions where the winner of the coin toss chose to go second. I believe it was Spain. I believe they lost. A large majority of the time, the team going 2nd is playing catch-up. Look at today. Italy went first... and missed. Spain could've gone ahead... and missed also! With the tennis method, at least Spain gets a chance to go again and if they convert their 2nd chance, as they did today, it would put them ahead and put pressure on Italy to catch up. As it is, after both Italy and Spain miss in the first round, Italy simply gets to regain the advantage of going first in the 2nd round of kicks and going ahead.
I see what your saying, but using Italy vs Spain as an example makes no sense. Spain had the chance to make Italy play catch-up and blew it.
You are the one who brought the past in. Do you still live in the past? If you do, maybe you should also look at this date: 27 June 2016. Del Bosque's last game... and he gets eliminated by Italy. LOL.
True Spain did. But both teams boo-booed; and advantage automatically went back to the coin-toss winner. there's a reason why tennis uses the tiebreak method for alternating service. They've been doing it now for around 3 decades. it works.
I only brought it up because you sounded so bitter despite your team advancing. Best of luck in the final, my friend. I'll be rooting for Italy only if you're playing England. Tough to root against Denmark at present.
Bitter? I'm not bitter at all. I'm ecstatic. You are reading into what doesn't exist and making assumptions, or I'd say, likely, projections. Why in the hell would I be bitter??? We won! But unlike Busquets, we have class. Both Mancini and Bonucci praised Spain in their declarations to the Italian press. Obviously the one who sounds bitter is Busquets. --------- Thanks for the well wishes. I'll be rooting for Denmark tomorrow but not for reasons of finding them easier for us, but for the obvious reasons that it is tough to root against them, at present. But then, of course, if they play against us the final, then I'll have to root against them... It would be an interesting final - a "favola" as we say, versus another "favola." We are the fable of resurrection after not qualifying for the WC. Denmark is the fable of resurrection, quite literally. England will be intriguing too, with the "bringing it back home" since 1966. Anyway, great tournament, and we are worthy finalists.
Well, in that case, do remember that we are WC champions x 4, so I have no reason to feel bitter about the past. But anyway, you accused me of living in the past when I did no such thing and you were the one bringing it up. In any Psychology treaty, that's called projection.
I remember 82 and 2006. I wasn't alive in 34 and 38 so I don't remember those. I also remember Spain Euro champions 3X although I wasn't alive in '64. Only team to successfully defend Euro title. Before the 4-0 final there was the 1-1 in group stage. Good match.
Yes. The most recent Euro match between our countries (before today) was in 2016, round of 16, when we eliminated you 2-0. In a group phase game in 1988 we beat you 1-0. Here are the all-time Euro games involving Italy and Spain 1980 - 0-0 1988 - Italy 1-0 2008 - 0-0, Spain won PK series 2012 - 1-1, 0-4 2016 - 2-0 2021 - 1-1, Italy won PK series It's pretty even.
The first international I remember ever watching was 1978 friendly, 0-0 in Madrid before the '78 World Cup.
I know it's early but I announce officially that Spain will be one of the three major contenders to win the World Cup next year. For most of the tournament they didn't even bother. They did bother yesterday and guess what they were slightly better than Italy on the night. Let's be real. Penalties are lottery. Imagine a fit Ansu Fati regaining his place on the wings. Pedri will continue to grow. Who knows ? Perhaps Ramos will be in the squad. I think he has still one tournament in him for something to add to this team. This tournament was very valuable for all the younger guys. Enrique's tenure was interrupted by the death of his daughter. Let him work with this Spain for a full cycle and you will all see Spain's greatness. It's not the sterile possession game of 14-18. Spain are findind a way out of it to something that is more evolved and more up to the way how modern successfull football is played.
So are Italy. We are finding a way out of exclusively playing catenaccio and we are more evolved and more up to the way how modern successful football is played. And we can also imagine how arguably our most important player this tournament, Spinazzola, could have turned that game around, for example freeing Insigne to score one of his curling signature shots from outside the box. I actually do dispute the idea that the Belgians were slightly better than Italy. I see the stats of the game as 4 shots on target for each team, and some of ours were golden opportunities, too. Spain's game was shinier, but our defense was pure gold as well. People forget that defenses are also part of a team. If an attacking team produces more attacking volume but doesn't score thanks to a great defense, people tend to think more of the attacking team than of the defending team, but both have merit. If we had just bunked the whole game I'd agree but we also had very dangerous counter attacks. For me, the game was more even than most people realize, in terms of quality. If two teams do all that they did but BOTH fire 4 shots on target each and BOTH score one goal each, I don't see where all this superiority is. You know, a LOT of Spain's superior possession IS sterile, because when faced with a good defense, they've been unable to score at will, which was seen in other tournament games as well. You can't tiki-taka your way to a title if you don't score. Anyway, I'm not blaming you; you are talking about a "slight" advantage so I can relate to that. But I want to underline that this advantage was only slight at best. I heard from another poster elsewhere (not BigSoccer) that Italy didn't do anything in OT when actually the best OT chance was for Italy. No, Spain's advantage wasn't as big as people want to believe. They had a lot of futile possession and a lot of inaccurate attempts. That doesn't really win games. We actually were statistically more consequential when we got the ball rapidly from defense to offense. Sure, we only had 7 attempts, 4 on target, but most were pretty dangerous attempts, while a lot of Spain's larger number of attempts were pretty futile. Yep, we did reverse to a bit of catenaccio for long stretches of the game, but hey, reversing to something we do very well in order to grind out a result is not bad. When I blamed Belgium in a previous game for parking the bus and still winning, someone here appropriately countered me by saying "it sounds like high stakes soccer isn't for you." He was right and I was wrong in that occasion. Now, the people dismissing Italy for how we played yesterday's game are making the same mistake that I made when I berated Belgium. Yes, not all wins are flashy and beautiful. Sometimes, to be the champs (or in our case, at least to be the finalists because I don't want to take anything for granted) you need to grind out a victory. Sure, PKs are a lottery but there is also something to be said about Morata's known emotional ups-and-downs versus Jorginho's clinical calm and accuracy. I think those last two PKs showed a talented young player who cracked under pressure versus an accomplish veteran who got it done, and there *is* merit in that. No, I'm not apologetic at all for the way we made the final. You can't win them all with shining glitter. Sometimes you need a bit of luck, a bit of stamina, resilience, grit, emotional stability, etc., and we showed all of it yesterday. I do agree with you that Spain will be a force in WC2022. So will Italy, though. We have a very good team that will also continue to evolve and improve. We showed this tournament that yes, we can still do good catenaccio, but we can also have attacking brilliance, and we can win games against very different adversaries in very different scenarios. Maybe we'll lose the final, but we have demonstrated that we are back. Opponents, beware. Italy is fully back at being a title contender, and we will be contenders next year, too.