Any team that scores in the first three minutes then stops attacking for 80 minutes gets what they deserve. England could have won this game if they had kept playing after scoring one of the nicest goals I've seen in a long time. If this was the coaches game plan, I think that England better start looking for a new coach.
England scored a perfectly legitimate goal that was disallowed to. Swings and roundabouts. Portugal had 35 shots, of which ... what ... three were on target and dangerous? It was a midfield game.
True - and that was where we lost it - Beckham was anonymous, Lampard and Gerrard kept giving the ball back to them and Scholes couldn't control a wet sponge! MO proved us right though !
Hmm. I thought Gerrard had a tired game and Lampard is turning into David Platt Junior, the way he totally disappears in games, only to pop up and score all of a sudden. A capricous twist of fate, having the only decent Portugese cross of the night converted by that laughable carthorse Postiga. Cole and Neville won hands-down on the wings against Figo and My Little Pony and I thought we did a pretty decent job on Deco as well, but ultimately the midfield balance was swung by individual error. Hargreaves came on and gave the ball away that led to their equaliser within seconds of doing so. A shame, because he played well above and beyond that one aberration.
I'm not sure we deserved to lose the game but we certainly didn't deserve to win based on that performance.
Well no. We missed a sudden-death penalty kick and they did not. Ergo, we did not deserve to win. "Deserving" things in football is such a facile concept, I find. Certainly, in games such as this, it's usually just a sop to make losers feel better or winners less "lucky".
Having only 2 days break cost us. The players didnt do much training in between the croatia game and the Portugal game.Gerrard and scholes were tired from the croatia game and didnt have the energy to last the game. Then rooney gets injured after 30 minutes and we couldnt muster an attack for a large chunk of the game...Rooney is the link between the midfield and attack . If we hadnt f'cked up in injury time versus France we would have won the group ,had an extra days rest and faced greece instead of portugal.
All true. All true. However, as the saying goes ... "If If's and But's were china cups, we'd be having tea!" Or something ...
If we hadn't lost we'd still be in it! By all means carry out a post mortum but for Christ's sake, let's not start the old if only range of excuses. It's gone, done and dusted, history, time to move on - let's look at the positives and plan for the future, because sure as fcuk, you can do nothing about the past. Doesn't stop me feeling like sh!t though
I thought Gerrard and Lampard were the only thing holding the show together. You'e right in saying they both looked tired. I think they both WERE tired, to be honest. IIRC Franks played something like 70 games this season. I doubt StevieG's far behind as well and they all only had 2 days rest. If memory serves they were both booked for perfectly good tackles in pretty short order as well so that's bound to cramp the style somewhat. I think the problem was our 'so-called' big players did almost nothing. Beckham, Scholes and Owen, (apart from the goal), didn't do much of any note and haven't for most of the thournament. It was the ones we have all disparaged at one time or another that kept us in it. Ashley Cole had an absolute stormer against, what is it? 'My little Pony, love it.... and even the boy Neville G. played very well and more than held up his end of the bargain with Becks on the right. We were simply unlucky in young Rooney getting his foot trod on within 20 minutes or whatever it was. I think we needed to change things around earlier in the second half and bring on somebody who could carry the fight to the opposition and, who does Sven bring on? Neville P. His only contribution that I noticed was to fall over whilst trying to foul the guy that scored the goal. I mean, he can't even foul properly. Owen Hargreaves did OK I thought but my fella JT wasn't exactly solid at the back. To be fair I think he suffered in comparison with his colleague, big Sol, who was an absolute rock. I felt most sorry for him, to be frank, because he'd played a blinder and had a goal disallowed... AGAIN. Strangely enough, though, I think we suffered most from the managers lack of experimentation in a left sided midfield player and a holding player. We should have been trying people out there instead of wasting time with experiments in a diamond midfield. I know the 2 are sort of related but I'd still like to have seen us persevere with Ashley and Wayne Bridge. I know we tried it once and it wasn't too successful but the whole team didn't play well that game so I don't think it told us anything. The problem we've had all through the tournament is that we haven't had any width when attacking. That's why passes have been intercepted. Beckham keeps coming inside and so does Scholes so the midfield keeps getting congested. We manage to get the ball back an there's no-one available. At least, no-one without an opponent standing right next to him. Still, it's only a game, I suppose. God, I'm depressed.
True. Appalling refereeing was a bit of a feature. To be fair, it affected Portugal too, just not in vital areas, at vital times. The truth of the matter remains though, that we got a fair share of dubious "smaller" calls. I partially disagree with this. Sure, they were all subdued in comparison to their normal profile as part of an England team and could have contributed more in some ways. But in two crucial ways, that was not the problem it's being made out to be. For one, we played some good stuff at times, we also played with a composure and diligence that has often been missing from an England side in the past. And for two, that's partly why Owen, Beckham and Scholes were not the talismatic performers they would once have been. Or, to put it another way, they were not required to be talismatic to the extent that would once have been the difference between measured success and abject failure. To me, that's a good thing. Plus both Owen and Beckham subsumed their normal contribution to wider roles. Beckham stuck to the right of midfield far more than he has ever done under Sven and Owen's positioning, runs and overall workrate were significant factors in the impact Rooney was consequently allowed to have. As anyone who has seen "My Little Pony" play in the flesh would have anticipated. Television flatters the vaccuous, showboating irrelevancies of the game and hides more comprehensive flaws. Like, for instance, Ronaldo has the positional sense of a chest of drawers and the no sense of timing whatsoever. He's just a kid with a ball waiting to flick another stepover at an increasingly indifferent opponent. I know he's only young and things will improve (especially under Sir Alex Ferguson) but he's tactically worse than useless and physically very easy to counter. As I said in a previous post somewhere, getting zipped up like a fat lass in a leotard by Ashley Cole, England's most suspect defender, is NOT an endorsement. Disagree. All of us watching down at my cruiser were commenting on how we suddenly appeared to be regaining a foothold in midfield after Gimp the Lesser came on. I'm no fan of his, he's more carthorse than thoroughbred, but I don't think he did too much wrong last night. If anything, I think he should have been brought on far earlier, for Rooney. That way, Scholes could have pushed up into a split striker role and provided a link to midfield which, with Owen and Vassell pushed right up, went missing as the game progressed. Hence predictable sight of long balls to nowhere. Lessons for the summer. Bring on Austria!
I'm not worried. This is a young team with no-one retiring in the next couple of years or even heading past their best, even the oldest outfield player in Sol Campbell is only 29, and all of the others will be better come the World Cup 2006, which is the big one. I thought at times some of the key players playing in their first tournament, for instance Gerrard, Lampard and Terry looked nervous. Hence some of the many misplaced passes which they usually complete in their sleep, this is understandable, and will be better next time. As will the magnificent Rooney. The one area that really needs to improve is the depth of the squad outside the first choice players (apart from central defence and central midfield), and I think with the youngsters that are out there and will push into the squad, like Smith, Defoe, Glen Johnson, Parker and so on, they are a lot better than the likes of Heskey, Phil Neville, Butt, Carragher etc.. The new mid-season winter break will hopefully also help us. Sven seems to thinks so.
The other quesion is whether England deserved to win? That answer to that is no. They were not the better team. The better team won. Before the game I had predicted a 3-2 Portugal victory which I posted on another thread. I was so confident of a victory that I backed it up with a 30thousand Euro wager. Imagine my dissapointment when Owen scored early and imagine my excitement when Portugal tied it. Needless to say, I chewed off a few fingernails and my heart was working overtime! It's silly to play the IF game and it's also silly to play the we are unlucky game or the ref made a bad call game. These are apologist games. There is only one game and that is the game on the pitch. It's a game where you keep score and the team with more goals wins the game.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You are such a fantasist. Still, it is good of you to put little gems like that into every post. It means the rest of the drivel is instantly forgotten.
All to often England seem to suffer from a crucially poor referreeing decision. Unfortunately, Sol Campbell seems to be the poor guy who loses game winning goals because of it. Beside the point, England still have problems with spot kicks. Becks seems to have lost confidence in his spotkick ability...two misses and a save in his last three tries. Did Portugal deserve to win? Maybe, on a purely shot and possesion point of view, but disrupting an offense and scoring from the few chances you have or create is the make of a good side, and in that England were deserving(and should have won).
I'm just glad it's all over to be honest. We were never gonna win this competition anyway, and Sven can't torture me with his sh1te tactics and poor selections any more.
What are you on about? John Terry was not "hooking" anyone's arm. He had jumped and had moved his arms in the natural way while looking entirely at the ball. At no point did he ever even look at the goalkeeper, let alone notice him. It was Ricardo's poor positioning and rush to push towards the ball that lead to him even touching Terry. It was not the other way around. Campbell was always going to win the header and bury it even if there had been a clean path between goalkeeper and ball.
Half a dozen of one, six of the other. You can make as clear a case for the idea that Ricardo fouled Terry by impeding him by looking at the pictures that are around on the net today. The key being, of course that Urs Meier had no way of knowing what was going on from his position at the time of the incident. And neither did his nearest linesman. Which means he gave the benefit of the doubt to the goalkeeper, unsighted. Where are all the weeners who clog up "The Beautiful game" threads whingeing about how offside calls and (gulp) people tackling each other stop there being more <wanky_southamerican>boootiful golazos</wanky_southamerican> now, eh?
You can't camp out in your own half fro 90mins and expect to get away with it, I said it all through the group stage that England were giving the ball away too easily in their own half and allowing teams to play around in front of their box. Thats precisely what happened last night only this time the opposition capitalised on it(If only just).
beckhams sick penalty kick didnt help england cause either props to the portugal goalkeeper though....amazing.....just amazing.....
Look, this isn't rocket science. Terry got himself directly under the ball and keeper tried to push him out the way. Terry didn't let him although, frankly, he didn't even know he was there. Like I said, there's no law that says you have to let the other guy through and get out of his way. To try and say he had his arm up is nonsense because everyone does who jumps for the ball. No-one jumps with their arms by their sides. People are trying to reinvent the laws of the game here and it's complete bullsh!t.
Thank you! There we are, you see? Proof positive that there was nothing wrong with the move. Should have been a goal. But wasn't. C'est la vie.
On another thread, a poster who claims to be a referee stated that the goal should have been disallowed because Terry was clearly offside. But this picture shows another Port. defender between Terry and the goal - the differing opinions and definitive pronouncements on this issue on BigSoccer are amazing. Matt, have you read this (or maybe you wrote it), http://football.guardian.co.uk/euro2004/story/0,14577,1247345,00.html says pretty much the same thing you did about subbing for Rooney, assuming that "Gimp the Lesser" is Hargreaves? ;^)