Brits has had a shocker too, looks like he’s been singled out as a weak link, they’ve let him have the ball and the pressure builds as he tries to play it out. McFarlene looks very poor generally, just way off the level. Interesting that the manager was the assistant when we won the 2022 u19 Euros. Following patterns with this formation but it isn’t working.
I think 4-1 is harsh, it’s been a closer game than that except their keeper has pulled off some cracking saves and they have generally defended better and hit us on the break through their wingers. I think we’ve actually had more chances.
Frustrating that we’ve gifted them into this position. We knew the threat was their wingers but we have given them the space required to kill us in this half. It doesn’t help the situation that we are quite strange in our approach with the ball. We can offer control and be patient but randomly go very direct for little reason.
France winning 1-0 against Spain. The 2nd tiebreaker is points in H2H matches amongst tied teams so we would likely have to match France's result in our last game against Spain, aka draw if they draw and win if they win (with no gd swing) to go through.
He looks like too many English midfielders coming though, he isn’t a specialist. His skillset doesn’t really match up to any role in the modern game. He stands out at ball winning and dribbling! Reminds me a bit of Alex Scott, what is his role exactly?
Thats U17’s football for you, even good teams can be very inconsistent. We had more shots on target and in general and some were good chances we didn’t take. Like I said earlier, their keeper was good and made some crucial saves. Anyone have the possession stats for the game?
Has to be said Portugal's talent production is really impressive. For a nation of only 10m people they churn out a really high volume of top talent; they're basically what the Netherlands used to be. I might've said this before but I've seen quite a lot of the country and the quality of their grassroots facilities always stands out massively when I'm there. Even really remote towns have plenty of public, free-to-use pitches (both grass and all-weather) that are well looked after, many also with changing rooms and showers. It always makes me wonder what we could do if we had infrastructure like that. Portugal is the poorest country in Western Europe so there's no excuse for our facilities being so far behind. Our grassroots infrastructure is embarrassing. I remember Lacazette commenting that there was nowhere for kids to play football in London when joined Arsenal. If he thinks it's that bad in London I wonder what he'd think of the rest of the country!
Unfortunately that was very poor. Left side has been a real problem in both games. In and out of possession. Tonight was really disheartening because they didn't adjust at all or recognise problems despite getting away with it multiple times early. Portugal missed some real opportunities to counter down that side in the first half. McFarlane was flying forward to overlap, if we turned it over, no one had shuffled across behind him and Moore to fill the space on the left side. Quenda just had free reign. In more settled possessions, McFarlane and Amissah both step in and then just leave space for runners to hit them in behind. I thought McFarlane would develop into a CB who could play LB in a hybrid system, but it seems like he's a bit of a tweener and solely a LB if anything which is a bit limiting. A little hard to see how he gets consistent minutes with City. Always do have to acknowledge that sides like Portugal have a big advantage with talent ID and coherent sides - that group has played a lot together and it's a much higher % of their best 2007s than ours, especially projecting forward. They don't always have such an explicit 10, but they can all play this 4-3-3 variation in their sleep from the 3 clubs they come from. Certainly a much better team than ours though. Everybody knows there role and fits. Otorbi is Spain's only real wide threat, but i'd be baffled if we don't play our game with a FB who latches onto the CBs and doesn't really push up, to give us a solid foundation. Mfuni is the obvious one but I guess there's an argument to get Amass in to start and be more conservative with Shahar.
Win against Spain and we're through regardless of the other game, in fact we could technically still top the group if we won and France won by either 3 or 4 goals, otherwise we're through in 2nd. If we draw, we would need France to not win and we would be through in 2nd If we lose to Spain by 1 or 2 goals, we would need Portugal to beat France to go through in 2nd. If we lose to Spain by more than 2 goals, we're out regardless.
Unlike Holland they’re very poor at other sports. They’ve participated in 25 Olympics and have only 5 golds and 28 medals overall! The Kenny’s have 12 Olympic gold in their household alone. They don’t do rugby, cricket or any of the American sports to any decent level. They’ve only had 4 tennis players in the singles top 100 in history. Despite being known as a country for golf holidays they’ve never had a golfer of note. There’s not great Portuguese cyclist. There’s no Portuguese darts or snooker player of note. They’ve never had a boxing world champion or a UFC champion. They won their single swimming world title in 2024. I thought they might be good at handball, a sport we don’t really know much about, but they’re ranked 16/26 in the all time men’s European ranking and 26/26 in the women’s (we don’t rank at all unsurprisingly). It certainly seems from the outside that all eggs go into the football basket, although it’s worth pointing out that their women’s team is far off their men’s team standard.
Watched the game, was a pretty disappointing result. Despite the result i didnt think there was much between the 2 sides. Portugal just seemed to play more as a team and were better drilled where as we relied too much on individuals. We would rely on an individual producing a bit of skill or magic where as they seemed to probe and be more patient. Lile others have said we used too many long balls too.
Makes France’s achievements even more impressive, ok they have a large population ( about 12 million more than us fwiw ) which helps but they are top of the tree in football, Rugby Union and handball and good at Olympic sports and regularly see French athletes all over the place.
The UK does alright as well really, third in the all time Olympic medal table. Only the USA and China have won more medals than us at recent Olympics. We came second in the Olympic medal table in 2016 which was a really big achievement finishing ahead of China. If you're talking on a per-captia basis then Holland are really impressive as a sporting nation. The point here though is that Portugal are unusually poor across other sports for a European nation, they've averaged 1 Olympic medal per games they've competed in!
Apologies from moving away from the under 17s I just had to reply to this post will be the only reply to the post, thanks European Athletics gold 16 Silver 14 Bronze 8 Total 38 World championships Athletics Gold 7 Silver 7 Bronze 8 Olympics Gold 5 Silver 9 Bronze 14 Cost country world and European championships Various Golds silvers and bronze medalists Roller Hockey World Cup 1st held in 1936 and 1st 2 was won by England Gold 16 Silver 11 Bronze 15 Total 42 European roller hockey championships first held in 1926 And was won by England 12 times in a roll Gold 21 Silver 15 Bronze 9 Total 45 Then you have Champions League UEFA cups cup winners cups for Roller Hockey that has been won by various Portuguese clubs futsal world and European winners Also club level Champions League UEFA cup and so on Various winners Beach soccer World Cup and European championship winners plus club Champions League cups and other cups various winners rugby tier 2 6 Nations Champions once 2nd second few times Can only improve with regular matches against the top tier nations and maybe have relegation in the six Nations I think they even have a cricket team
Very good point. Most definitely helps greatly. I think we've been a genuinely top sporting nation over the years tbh. Yeah the football has been disappointing but the lack of grassroots funding combined with awful weather has given us a big disadvantage compared to our European counterparts. British politicians couldn't care less about sport and the arts, or anything community related, and only care about something if private companies can use it to drain profit out of people. I think in so many sports we've really rallied in spite of that. Take cricket for example, we still managed to win World Cups in a period where cricket has been removed from state schools, has been taken off terrestrial TV and facilities have dwindled. There are more pertinent examples than cricket in some Olympic sports but there's so many instances of athletes in this country succeeding despite working in crap conditions.
Olympians get more public linked money in the UK than in many countries as seen by the medal table’s. In some sporfs where money can buy success we have become good at - cycling or Gymnastics for example (Nobody would have believed 30 years ago that would have happened). All comes from 1996 - a good footballing year but a bad Olympics year in Atlanta kickstarted the Olympic and Paralympic funding revolution
Through France might well have a relatively poor home Olympics in some of the core sports. Their Athletics team looks pretty poor (One silver medal at last years world championships and one gold the year before.). They will do well in Swimming through. Their aim is to dominate the team events like they did in Tokyo.