Then I apologize. Racial chanting is something disgusting, despicable and should be kicked out of football stadiums. What I was just trying to say that sometimes it's inevitable for those things to happen (Real Madrid stadium, Aragones, the english media,...) and that you shouldn't believe that spanish people are racist scum just because some idiots were making monkey noises.
Some very fair comments in there. England were very disjointed and slack especially in the first half, midseason friendly mode, while Spain were out to play at 100% effort and did it well. Second half things were a bit better although Spain weakened themselves with the subs and the likes of Butt still looked well out of it. At the top international level need more pace and technique than the likes of him have. I thought Smith was impressive, should have had a penalty with an excellent turn and held the ball up well. Going by his form in the qualifiers if he avoids serious injury and keeps getting experience and polishing his game he will be a definite for the World Cup. A useful backup for Rooney. Jenas also has been promising, still raw but has a nice touch every now and then and has the pace and energy which was a good contrast to a far too slow midfield of Beckham-Butt-Lampard and a Bridge lacking sharpenes. I thought SWP looked encouraging, his pace and movement is excellent. Get him more experience at this level and better service from the rest of the team and he can be a real handful. He outpaced Joaquin tracking back when Joaquin moved to the left and tried to breakaway a couple of times. So defensively he is no liability either. I think this was a very useful friendly to Eriksson, learn a lot more from this game than beating the likes of Ukraine 3-0 at home without serious effort.
Smith played well when he came on he played his sort of rough energetic game. Jenas looked fairly good, i just wish that SWP could have scored to shut them idiots up, when the ball came to him outside the box i thought that could be it, but sadly not. The game was a farce simple as, i have lost respect for a lot of the Spanish players just falling over without being touched, the only ones i can stand are Del Horno, Salgado and Raul. Although when Raul was walking to Lampard, i think he knew he might get a kicking when Cole was walking towards him to get the ball. lol Overall though, you got to admit it the Spanish played the ball around very nicely and looked much more of a 'Team' than we did.
Strangely enough I wasn't too bothered by this game. Oh, sure, we played crap... but then it was a friendly... we always play crap. No. What pleased me, (well, amused, really), about this game was the clash of cultures in that they dive and roll around like a bunch of schoolgirls and we don't. In this country it's part of the culture that if someone starts the diving and histrionics you kick them even harder... and there were some really great ones in this match. The boy Neville got in some good shots and young Ashley was certainly doing his bit for the cause... Wayne was, well, being Wayne, really but I felt that Beckham wasn't really playing a captains part in this regard. Regarding my Chelsea lads... Bridgey didn't seem to have his mind on the task at hand but JT got in some fine work at the back particularly pushing that guy over, then kicking the ball towards his goolies and finishing up by kicking him up the arse. Give that man a gold star I say. But the best of my lot was Super-Frank, hereinafter referred to as 'The Crunch-Master General'. He did some sterling work in midfield particularly against Raul who, personally, I think should be kicked immediately he walks onto the pitch by all the opposing players, but also against Reyes who he made good 'contact' with when challenging for the ball near the centre circle. Reyes, being a big Jesse, saw fit to roll around grimacing... that's the trouble with the Spanish... no sense of humour. Anyway, here's my scoring on the players 'Bulldog', (as in biting your ankles), spirit... out of 10. Robinson - 2. Never really got going. Even the PK wasn't a really foul Neville - 8. Not quite max score 'cause he's used to kicking Reyes. Too easy for him Rio - 5. Only really got in the good one when challenging for the header JT - 8. Great work, mainly at the back but proved he can kick them all over the pitch Ashley - 8. Another excellent example for the troops, er I mean players Beckham - 3. Hmm, arguing doesn't count Becks - you gotta kick someone Butt - 2. Didn't really notice him getting a kick... in any sense of the phrase Lamps - 9. Don't let those adonis looks and fey expression fool you - the guys a killer Bridge - 2. Come on lad. Never mind the ball... get on with the game Roonaldo - 8. Let down by his manager before the ultimate accolade.. the straight red St. Michael Owen - 1. Like Becks.. being kicked yourself doesn't count either I'm afraid Overall, then a great performance. Guys like Norman Hunter, Tommy Smith and Chopper Harris would be proud of you. A fine tradition continues
Lampard did the best challenge of the night I thought .I think he took reyes out of the match .I bet reyes cant wait for the weekends premiership game.
Interesting seeing the reaction here - there is been plenty of discussion in England about the match. My mates agree that England were dreadful and played off the park but the monkey noises, whilst bringing condemnation also raised a lot of questions 1. About culture - attitudes towards black population in general - not many blacks in the country tends to equal racism at games towards them - Jesus, Eastern Europe was (and still is) very embarrassing in that aspect - there were things like the "banana action" at a Spartak Moscow reserve match a couple of seasons ago, which brought shocked the core of the support, who have since cut down any abuse quite a bit. Having said there, say, in Germany racism against black players is not widespread, I understand). 2. About how to fight it (UK in the 80s was terrible - bananas at Goodison for John Barnes, gorilla suits in the Old Firm for Mark Walters, etc). 3. About whether that is still the working class mentality - price hikes in the UK have priced many out of the top-flight games but in Spain ticket prices are still cheap. Having said that Liverpool and Everton have a lot of working-class support still going to the games and racism is a big no-no. At Liverpool, I believe, John Barnes would've been a major factor. 4. About whether England are so blameless themselves - "I would rather be a Paki than a turk" ringing out at the Stadium of Light during Englands 2-0 win was pretty disgusting. 5. About whether BBC moved its mikes closer to the monkey-noise lot in the second half. Sadly, it seems to have somewhat overshadowed the match itself. As not the biggest England fan, I thoroughly enjoyed Alonso's performance. Whilst the other Xabi did the flashy bits, our Alonso held the Spanish midfield together beautifully if he can do the same with Gerrard against Arsenal, I am very optimistic. Another thing I enjoyed is the "messing with their heads business" - the Spaniards got into England's heads just before half time and there is nothing better than seeing the opposition lose it, so you knock them further and further down - something that the ChCh GCR side (a team of graduates at my alma mater, which I still play for) did superbly last year, with most success, ironically, against a team full of Spaniards. As I was thinking that at half-time, my mate Fash texted me with exactly the same thought, Finally. Rooney - the petulance is thoroughly unacceptable.
Cloughie in his column in 4-4-2 a couple of months before his death (RIP, greta football man) did echo the sentiment of Phil Neville on 50 England caps - what has the world come to? There were passages of play in the second half, when Spain were holding the ball, that we very reminiscent of corrida.
I think this is where you've got it completely wrong. The Spaniards started rolling about when the England players started kick them just before half-time. That infuriated the England players even further and they started lashing out even more. Rooney was lucky to stay on the pitch. England rose to the bait but the Spaniards never really retaliated, prefering to play football, whilst England disintegrated. At the end of the match - Spain won the game hands down, whilst England were shambles. A large part of the game is played in the head - the psychology is never to be underestimated and it is very, very satisfying seeing your opposition lose it - whether it is in a park or on international stage. I am not sure whether it is part of English culture to kick them even harder - depends which team you play for I suppose. I played a match half a year ago against a grad side from another college that was bizarrely full of Spaniards. They tried the tricks, they tried the spitting and the diving and the nudging when they couldn't find a way through. We kept our heads, gave them verbals, took the p*ss out out of them game-wise and banter-wise. They collapsed. They were the ones who started lashing out. In the end we won 2-0 (should've been much more), they had 2 sent off, half the team booked and started a started a team brawl at the end of the match, for which they got chucked out of the league. Guess what - it felt BRILLIANT! And I bet you the for Spanish players last night it was brilliant - their opposition imploded! I do hope that Rooney et al, learn a lesson for the future not to rise to bait.
Actually, I was not too impressed with Robinson's footwork on the goal - thought he wandered to the left a bit aimlessly before being beaten to his right.
That was a quality moment. I have to admit, when Rooney got substituted for Smith there was a part of me hoping that Smith would immediately launch into a two-footer and get a straight red
Things may have changed but I remember being at a UEFA Cup match between Schalke and Inter Milan in 1997 and the entire crowd was making monkey noises at Ronaldo. I also remember commentators on German TV referring to 'the black player' on quite a few occasions during matches.
Germany is not as bad as southern and eastern Europe, but not as good as Britain, the Netherlands and possibly France. I can’t remember when I last heard monkey noises on German games. Might have to do something with every team having a black player of their own.
Whooosh! And you don't think the fact that it was a friendly(sic) had anything to do with how we reacted?
Over whose head? It doesn't matter therefore we can kill anything that moves? On the other hand, if it doesn't matter why react so much, instead of laughing at it and carrying on. I think a contributing factor was also the fact that England were being played off the park.
Well, my mate XabiAlonso here (waves) is a Dortmund fan, who used to go to Westfalenstadion for a season when he was over there and currently watches Bayern at the very tame Olympiastadion - how is it for racist abuse? I've only been to 3 footy matches in Germany but noticed nothing racist, but perhaps I didn't understand some peculiarities of the language.
Aha, stop supplying my Dortmund-supporting friend here with more ammunition (Schalke are my German team ). I would've thought things would be somewhat different now with Schalke having Asamoah and Ailton up front.
The whole defenSe stopped. I am being somewhat pedantic there but your accusations of keepers' union, levelled at me, when I was defending the Freiburg keeper on Bayern's second during the 3-1 at Olympiastadion earlier this season are, thus unfounded.
yep ,typical hysterical reaction to one dodgy friendly performance .We got another 200+ reply thread coming up .When we win we get a thread with about 30 replies tops.. Then when we lose we get all these "experts" and critics crawling out of the woodwork to analyze every little aspect of the 90 minutes and how bad england was. Bored sh1tless with this routine. now we get an armchair psychologist on the thread. We get more sh1te for losing one friendly then other teams get for elimination from the world cup or something .
My armchair is very comfortable and the office is very warm, whilst you are displaying all characteristics of a man sitting on a simple plastic chair in a very cold room. I do not think anyone was expecting such a poor performance last night, so quite naturally people wonder what the hell happened
We are nearly always rubbish at friendlies. The amount of friendlies we've played well in I could probably count on the fingers of one hand, particularly since Eriksson took over. When we've played in competitive matches, though, the players are usually very professional. For example in the game against Turkey in Turkey their players were trying to wind up our lot all the time, especially Rooney, and he didn't react at all. I also think that our lads were also taken aback by the level of racism being shown by the crowd in this instance... and don't try and say that started after we started kicking them because that's a lie - it started in some sections almost straight away. And you think Spain played that well??? You do realise that, apart from the pretty patterns they made show-boating in the middle of the park, they had about 2 shots on target the whole match, do yer? As badly as we played we could still have drawn the match in the last minute or so when Alan Smith turned his man in the box.
Who's 'anyone'? You mean you and the other half-dozen people you know, don't yer? Most England supporters are well aware of how badly we do in friendlies under Eriksson - just have a look at the record. If memory serves it's something like 18 matches with 7 wins, 6 draws and 5 losses... including against the mighty Australia. Why would anyone think we're going to play well against Spain? Well, apart from you and your fellow 'experts' that is, particularly if the players are pissed off about the racist dick-head that runs the other team and the Spanish people's reaction to him.