I agree the second half and extra time was awful. But they were not playing a minnow either and nobody was expecting England to do much. Algeria for me is the worst England game I've ever seen! That was shocking. But I will defend the first half and the result to the hilt. And at the end of the day England did not concede a goal and came close to winning on penalties. Germany were beaten after 45 minutes.
Considering the players and expectation England had compared to Germany going into the tournament, Germany should be more ashamed. 2/3 of Germans expected to win the whole thing. 2/3 of England fans probably expected England to lose in the 1/4 at best pre tournament, if not more. I truly wish England had played Spain instead as the expectation would still be tempered.
The problem was Italy had not been playing brilliantly in the group stage and once again more was expected of England. It was seen as around 50/50 pre game. The Spanish game would have kept expectations down and kept the pressure off.
you are utterly clueless about football, who the hell told you this was meant to be the most talanted german side ever for you to actually believe it? maybe you have only been following football for a few years? the scores confirm nothing, england camped in their box, it wasnt even good defending, germany never looked like scoring despite scoring and forcing saves from buffon? go figure! any of the small teams in serie a could have done what england did and im not joking, since when has 2-0, 0-0 or any other combination of digits been a performance and not a result? italy had more clear cut chances against germany because there were not 11 players of the same team in the box, also, italy drew 1-1 with new zealand in 2010 wc, whilst they lost to slovakia, they were pathetic againts new zealand but going by your theory the performance against new zealand was better because it was 1-1, yes you are right, and those people are you and thepremiereleague , england decided to park the bus, they did it poorly, it was to italy's demerit that the score stayed 0-0 rather than a great performance, many of my english friends said they would rather have played like germany and lost 3-0 than go out by the crap that england served up, and i would feel the same, italy had loads of chances against a very defensive (pretty much all defence) england, the reason we had so many chances againts germany was because they were losing 2-0 and had to to take a chance rather than sit in they're box, you should take your own advice and stop watching football of course they would see a 0-0 result superior to a 2-1 loss, its simple math isnt it, you are confusing yourself with result and perfomance, englands result was better than the 1 germany got, but the performance was not better than germany, italys defence was great against germany, they didnt have the oppurtunity to be great against england, to put things into perspective, italians were not completley happy with italys performance against england, this isnt true though is it, italy were very good against spain and very good against croatia, and not very good against ireland, it was only a 50/50 game by people who have very short memories or didnt really watch any of the games, the italy-england game palyed out exactly as i expected apart from being so wastefull
i know for many of you english is not your first language but can you at least use the basics correctly. england drew 0-0 with italy. this is called a draw, not a loss as some of you keep referring to it. also, of all the nations to offer up oprobrium for cautious football, i think its a bit rich coming from italians, who at times have almost single handedly destroyed football. i will take abuse from spanish, french, eastern european and south american fans for being defensive and boring, but not from italians.
Take or don't take whatever you like but there is a huge difference between defensive football that brings results and what you're championing for the England national team. True results. As in wins, championships, world cups. 0-0 in a game where they never looked like they could win after johnsons miss early on is not a result that anyone should be proud of and it's definitely not something to be seen as a jumping off point for good things to come. All that game showed is that England is a second/third tier team at best and one that has to resort to hanging on for dear life when playing one of the first tier nations. Despite FIFA rankings. Don't believe the hype when it comes to England.
A 0-0 draw is NOT getting destroyed. I'll say it again: possession and missed shots are nothing to celebrate.
great , the 2 year internationals are almost over. now, would all of you please spread your butt cheecks and lube up, your about to get fked in your collective a..ses by a bunch of ENGLISH teams for the next 104 weeks. i know it will be painfull but try and enjoy it
You are deluding yourself my friend. You're allowed to look like shit if you win. It justifies your ugliness and incompetence. Not to lose, draw, or be eliminated. England did not win or advance. They are back at home, just like the Germans, who played much better soccer against the Italians than they did. Germany is better. Your argument might hold water if England actually, you know, kept winning like Chelsea did.
Bayern Munich lost on penalties. That didn't stop them bitching for weeks. England didn't concede a goal. Germany lost the game after 45 minutes. Is that your definition of better?
Chelsea were champions playing negative football. They get to say they're better because any contest is measured first in victory and defeat. England did not win. They went home, just like Germany, and they gave away three times as many shots and shots on goal. At least the Germans looked like they could play with Italians. If you win ugly it's better than losing pretty. But when you're out of the tournament, you're out, and you get to make no claims about being better than a team that a) advanced farther than you and b) at least matched the skill of the opponent that knocked you out.
But still, it's disingenuous to say that Germany is better than England. You don't know that. Eng got the better result than Germ. The 2 teams didn't go heads-up. So we don't know who is better.
By that rationale, we don't know if any team is better than any other team unless they play. Spain now needs to beat every team in the tournament to prove they're the best.
No, because Spain has beaten everybody in a chain/pyramid system to prove they are the best. Who did Germ eliminate that eliminated Eng? NO ONE. so we don't know who is better between them. Whereas Spain eliminated everyone that eliminated everyone else.
Since when does "who looked better while getting eliminated by Italy" determine the best result? Germany got to the semis, via a 3-0-0 record in a tough group then thrashed Greece. Yes, its only Greece but they earned that fixture by breezing through the group of death. They both lost, but if I had to choose who had the better performance in the tournament it was Germany. They won 4 games and went further, while England scratched out 2 wins against less than stellar opposition.
germany did do better on performance, not the score board. Anyone in the right mind clearly knows england got smashed and were so lucky to even go to penalties. Both got flogged really Italy wasted several easy chances against germany with Marchisio being the worst offender and Di Natale.
Germany went further you troll and have 3 world cups and euro trophies england have one world cup germany eliminated england last world cup 4-1. Case closed.
Germany was considerably better in this tournament, no doubt about it, they played some amazing matches and could claim the title. I still don't know how they could get defeated by Italy (still, Italy played really well apart from the game against Spain).