EURO 2020: Reigning, Defending, Champions Of Europe General Discussion

England sold out Saka there. Yikes.

 

Our euro win was more impressive than italy's in the end. We actually won our semi and final without penalty shots

 

Not being huge racists none of us even mentioned any potential backlash about the English players making errors, although the commenters did. Right after that miss I realized, damn, worst possible ending.

 

Rashford is a bum. He tried copying bruno fernandes penalty technique what a tool

 

Southgate fraud. He subbed on 2 players for penalties and they both missed. Then the 5th deciding PK goes to a 19 yr old.

 

Rashford I can understand, Sancho has hardly played and Saka taking the 5th penalty, if it was the first even then it would be too much for him but the 5TH!

 

Is this trophy staying in southern europe forever? It really likes it here.

 

It’s nice and warm in the South. Beautiful beaches too.

 

Maybe it didn't want to quarantine in the UK

 

Both teams are banal. Yet, I still believe that the better team of the 2 took the silverware. None of the 2 were the best teams of the tournament though. Italy has decent players, but none elite players. England got there thanks a favorable draw, home ground, and home referee. So much for the British fair-play, who were fervent critics of Portugal's win in 2016, were keen on saying that England's performance was the result of incredible talent.
I really dislike france, but truth to be said they had the best team. Portugal came after. Both crashed on the early stages. The sad thing about it it that FS is not going anywhere.

 

I agree France is the best team. But us being the second best team?

I do think we are good, but our style of play can cause us to lose to many teams. If you told me that we will lose in the round of 16 next year to some comnebol trash team like Peru or Colombia I would not be suprised

 

Portuguese media is loving that Italy won. It seems like if not Portugal, it was Italy or nobody at all.

 

In terms of players' quality, I think Portugal is up there. Even many neutrals agree with that. Now in collective terms, it's trash. The logic would have been to see the 2016's team crash in the 16th, and 2021's team to be the final winner. The exact opposite happen.
I agree with you, as long as FS will be the coach, losing to Peru, COlombia, USA, Iran is a very realistic fate. It's like a boxer trying to win a fight without throwing any punches. The most likely result is to be koed.

 

unpopular opinion: our back four won in 2016, not fs. Sure eder coming in saved us but only time will tell if we're better w/o cr... But as I said before, we need to play to our strength: attacking futebol.

Italy won the same way, their d and Chiesa were phenomenal. Sometimes the best team don't win throughout the tourney, it's whoever clicks.

 

Portugal now can set their sights on Qatar now that the tournament is over

 

Haven’t seen one person discredit Italy’s win the way they discredited ours. We won our semi and final without penalties (real wins).

 

We definitely had the harder final. We had to beat the best team in Europe (on paper) in their own barn without our best player.

England did not deserve to be in the final but beating them at Wembley in a final is no easy feat. Italy had a very easy group stage but came out of the hard bracket alive. They deserve it. I am not going to knock them for winning on penalties. It's part of the game.

 

England 100% deserved to be in the final. They outplayed and beat everyone in their path. They were quite clearly the class of their group and their half of the knockout bracket.

Sure, Sterling dove in the semi, but Denmark did nothing after taking the lead. I think they produced a whopping 0.03 expected goals (not 0.3, 0.03 as in 3/100ths of a goal...) in the final 80 min.

We don't need to exaggerate here, England was very good at this tournament. They completely stifled Croatia and the Czechs and Germany and Denmark, and all those teams had a lot of success against the likes of Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, etc.

Reaching the final was literally exactly what England deserved.

 

Untill Northern Europeans solve their cultural arrogance it will remain there.

 

No we don't have the second best squad of the tournament, not even close. All Spanish midfielders would start for us. And they had Thiago Alcantara or Fabian Ruiz on the bench. We don't have a player with the quality of a Kimmich for example, our goalkeepers are crap, stop deluding yourself, at best we had a top 5 squad in this competition. At best.

 

Roberto Mancini is a much better coach than Santos. And they won 4 matches in 90 minutes on a total of 7. With Santos we won 3 on a total of 15 (excluding Nations League and Confederations Cup). Small margins.

 

Sometimes I get baffled by the total anti England NT analysis regarding football. It's quite clear for me tournament wise Italy and England were the 2 most consistent teams on the tournament, even if Italy style was more attractive.

Now if you ask me which National Team had the most impressive performance in one match, for me it was Spain against Italy. Until we in Portugal start to put in our heads that if we want to play dominant football we actually have to create midfielders based on the type of the ones Spain and Italy have we are going nowhere.

It's not about physical players, it's about technique and creativity.

 

3 were in the group stage.
Penalties = fake win. Italy had fake wins in the two most important games of the tournament, where as we had real wins

in summary
Portugal > Italy

I will give them full credit if they beat France without penalties at nations league

 

We beat Poland on penalties at Euro 2016. That was a knock-out. Was that a fake win?

How many penalties did Ronaldo have? They aren't easy to score with the pressure of a country behind you. Just ask England.

I would not have the balls to take a penalty for my country on a stage like that. They are dreaded for a reason.

Ronaldo's haters like to say his need to take penalties to score goals is what makes him a not so great player. In my opinion, they make him an even greater player because the talent to consistently score penalties is an art of its own.