The Official "Unofficial" Euro 2012 Thread

[Keitanz]

I may be a little biased here but saying Gerrard was just "Ok" this tournament is a bit silly.. easily our best player and he showed why he should have been given captain years ago. The same with Johnson.. he exceeded all of my expectations this tournament and really showed that he can defend quite well whilst still attacking nicely.

Welbeck had a good tournament for it being his first etc..

Germany v Spain final... zzzzzzzz

 

[- English -]

Welbeck will be the new Heskey if he's not careful

 

[ileks]

Gutted to lose on penalties again but the better side won. As others have said at least we won't get completely bummed by the Germans.

 

[Litmus]

Everyone's going for a germany v spain final.. but i can really see Portugal getting there instead

 

[Embattle]

I may be a little biased here but saying Gerrard was just "Ok" this tournament is a bit silly.. easily our best player and he showed why he should have been given captain years ago. The same with Johnson.. he exceeded all of my expectations this tournament and really showed that he can defend quite well whilst still attacking nicely.

Welbeck had a good tournament for it being his first etc..

Germany v Spain final... zzzzzzzz

The rating was for this game, although I still wouldn't give him the status of best player this tournament at all and the others would see some minor revisions if it was for the whole tournament. England still got further than probably most expected and to me this is an exercise for Roy to see what he has to do before the WC.

 

[soze]

I may be a little biased here but saying Gerrard was just "Ok" this tournament is a bit silly.. easily our best player and he showed why he should have been given captain years ago. The same with Johnson.. he exceeded all of my expectations this tournament and really showed that he can defend quite well whilst still attacking nicely.

Welbeck had a good tournament for it being his first etc..

Germany v Spain final... zzzzzzzz

Gerrard had one great game. 3 ok games. Both Parker and Cole had better tournaments both had 4 faultless games. I do not count the penalty he had 3 attacking players who did not step up so again he gets credit. Parker would get my player of the tournament lets hope what he has shown here will stop Gerrard + Lampard every playing together again.

 

[Marc]

Gerrard was clearly Englands player of the tournament by a long distance, but he was merely the best of a bad bunch. Watching England play is like watching some random under 8s team who struggle to string more than 2 passes together. Its embarassing

 

[CorNokZ]

33 years old, looks 66, and still Andrea Pirlo dominated the game! When he was to shoot his penalty he could have put Italy down by two yet he still shows massive confidence in himself and his own skills.

What a beast!

 

[Turamber]

Getting to the quarter finals is nothing to be sniffed at, particularly given the number of injuries we had to key players, Rooneys suspension and those big time Charlie's with bigger egos than England who wouldn't be on the reserve list. We also suffer because of the silly number of foreigners in our national league and the length of the competition.

I'd much rather lose the England way than bore to victory ala Zzzzzpain.

 

[Keitanz]

Gerrard had one great game. 3 ok games. Both Parker and Cole had better tournaments both had 4 faultless games. I do not count the penalty he had 3 attacking players who did not step up so again he gets credit. Parker would get my player of the tournament lets hope what he has shown here will stop Gerrard + Lampard every playing together again.

The thing is.. it's kinda stupid to play any of the 3 from now on.. we should be playing young players .. by the next World Cup all 3 of them will be really old and will be no where near as good as they are now..

Gerrard gave a captain's performance in all of the games he played in..

 

[cHodAX]

33 years old, looks 66, and still Andrea Pirlo dominated the game! When he was to shoot his penalty he could have put Italy down by two yet he still shows massive confidence in himself and his own skills.

What a beast!

He was fucking brilliant, range and vision of passing was as good as you will ever see.

70 mins in and the only way I could see the game changing was to bring Ox on for Young, sadly he saved the last sub to take Parker off which was an extremely negative thing to do. As good as Parker was he never once looked like getting to grips with Pirlo and Roy just didn't seem to have a plan for dealing with it.

Ahh well, we can't complain about lack of fight this time, there is much to be said for effort. Just wish we could hold the ball better in the middle of the park, we are fine moving it forward but when it comes to holding the ball, moving it around and creating space for runs though the middle we were yet again fucking awful.

 

[cHodAX]

The thing is.. it's kinda stupid to play any of the 3 from now on.. we should be playing young players .. by the next World Cup all 3 of them will be really old and will be no where near as good as they are now..

Gerrard gave a captain's performance in all of the games he played in..

You know what, Gerrard was far from excellent with what he did when in possession. HOWEVER I do think that he worked fucking hard and was positive with the things he did or tried to do, kudos to him for that. For me yet again Ashley Cole was our best player, in 4 games I think he was positionally poor on one occasion but recovered well against Abate who was Italy's second best player on the night. JT was incredibly brave, he might be a scumbag but I cannot fault him for effort in all 4 games.

Ashley Young had a horrible end to the season and it carried on into the tournament, fucking shame as his form earlier in the season was sensational and he was beating people for fun instead of running into dead ends 99% of the time as happened last night. Felt sorry for Rooney, clearly not 100% fit but he has no one else to blame but himself for the silly ban, yet again he has failed to show the class that he usually delivers for United.

Milner worked hard, never going to be a star but he put a real shift in, Lescott was ok and tried bloody hard to recover the mistakes he did make. Hart was fucking poor, he flapped at a few shots and corners, if not for JT it would have been a disaster for Hart on a handful of occasions. Parker played his part but he clearly isn't 100% and might not ever be again, the injuries have taken what pace he had and for a defensive midfielder that can be fatal. Welbeck tried hard but just doesn't hold the ball up well enough and with consistency. Carroll just didn't get the supply but he worked hard. Glen Johnson was so lightweight in that match, he works for the side but positionally he isn't the best and his passing was dirt yesterday.

Still, we did ok with what we had and they showed heart, if nothing else they worked for each other and that is a good start.

 

[Deebs]

That's probably the last tournament Gerrard, Terry, Cole, Parker and a few others.. it's a bit sad

Thank fuck for that, get rid of the old shite.

 

[Deebs]

Oh and get rid of that clown Rooney, I wish managers would stop playing players due to their name, play them for their talent ffs.

All in all, the better team won.

 

[Raven]

Er... all 4 of them played pretty well actually.

Gerrard played some excellent passes and lead from the front.
Terry stopped a few goals, clearing one off the line (even though it did actually cross the line)
Parker won possession and broke up plays very well.
Cole was his usual reliable self (except for the missed penalty obviously)

When we did get it forward it was Rooney and Young that fucked it up.

 

[cHodAX]

Just watching the second half again, thought popped into my head. Why wasn't Phil Jones brought on when it was clear that Parker was burned out and not able to get close to Pirlo? Jones has an incredible engine, brave as fuck and is fantastic at closing the space. If we were replacing Parker then surely you replace like for like?

 

[soze]

The thing is.. it's kinda stupid to play any of the 3 from now on.. we should be playing young players .. by the next World Cup all 3 of them will be really old and will be no where near as good as they are now..

Gerrard gave a captain's performance in all of the games he played in..

I agree that the 3 are finished, and I agree that Gerrard had his best tournament in a England shirt. But he was not faultless, it was his job to control the midfield and to instigate attacks. Bar one game he did neither. He failed to impose himself on our team let alone the opponents. Parkers job was to sit back to absorb break up play and be he anchor. He did this well and therefore had a better tournament.

 

[cHodAX]

Oh and get rid of that clown Rooney, I wish managers would stop playing players due to their name, play them for their talent ffs.

All in all, the better team won.

Yeah, we wouldn't want to play the highest scoring English striker this season would we? You know, the one with the highest goal ratio of any of the strikers available for selection. You can say he had a bad night, he did, Roy picked him though and he is in the squad on merit. What did Carroll or Defoe do this season? Sturridge was left out, that was Roy's mistake not Rooneys but to say that Rooney isn't in the first eleven on talent. LOL.

 

[cHodAX]

I agree that the 3 are finished, and I agree that Gerrard had his best tournament in a England shirt. But he was not faultless, it was his job to control the midfield and to instigate attacks. Bar one game he did neither. He failed to impose himself on our team let alone the opponents. Parkers job was to sit back to absorb break up play and be he anchor. He did this well and therefore had a better tournament.

Gerrard moved the ball forward very well, what he didn't do was hold onto the ball on the occasions where we needed to build the attack rather than rush the opposition. Parker did his job? Not last night he didn't, Pirlo was passing through us all night totally uncontested. That is where the game was lost, we didn't set up or change to stop Pirlo, if we had then it would have been a very different game.

 

[Deebs]

Yeah, we wouldn't want to play the highest scoring English striker this season would we? You know, the one with the highest goal ratio of any of the strikers available for selection. You can say he had a bad night, he did, Roy picked him though and he is in the squad on merit. What did Carroll or Defoe do this season? Sturridge was left out, that was Roy's mistake not Rooneys but to say that Rooney isn't in the first eleven on talent. LOL.

He has been consistently shit. The team played better when he was in suspension.

 

[cHodAX]

He has been consistently shit. The team played better when he was in suspension.

Oh dear. So, he is top English scorer for a club competing for the league and yet he is consistently shit? Big flaw in your arguement right there. He has 29 goals in an England shirt, playing in sides that have repeatedly failed to achieve anything beyond the mediocre and yet he has scored those goals. Have you not considered that he has to play with the 10 around him and if even half of those don't perform (pretty much every game for the last 10 years) then Rooney has to consistently come deep for the ball making it much much harder to do what he is supposed to be doing.

You completely overlook the lack of nous when it comes to Englands tactical setup, we have one plan and one plan only, we pick our entire squad based upon the plan and when we come up against opposition who can hold the ball all day our entire gameplan falls apart. Is Rooney to blame for that? Is he to blame for managers putting square pegs in round holes?

The numbers don't lie Deebs, Rooney is still our best striker but needs to be 100% matchfit and given proper service. None of the other strikers would have had any more joy last night, Italy dominated the midfield and denied us the ball. Not Rooneys fault.

 

[Deebs]

Oh dear. So, he is top English scorer for a club competing for the league and yet he is consistently shit? Big flaw in your arguement right there. He has 29 goals in an England shirt, playing in sides that have repeatedly failed to achieve anything beyond the mediocre and yet he has scored those goals. Have you not considered that he has to play with the 10 around him and if even half of those don't perform (pretty much every game for the last 10 years) then Rooney has to consistently come deep for the ball making it much much harder to do what he is supposed to be doing.

You completely overlook the lack of nous when it comes to Englands tactical setup, we have one plan and one plan only, we pick our entire squad based upon the plan and when we come up against opposition who can hold the ball all day our entire gameplan falls apart. Is Rooney to blame for that? Is he to blame for managers putting square pegs in round holes?

The numbers don't lie Deebs, Rooney is still our best striker but needs to be 100% matchfit and given proper service. None of the other strikers would have had any more joy last night, Italy dominated the midfield and denied us the ball. Not Rooneys fault.

I am talking about the Euro 2012 tournament. During this he WAS consistently SHIT and the team DID play better when he was in suspension. Get over it. Rooney is a fucking clown. He reminds me Barnes, great for the domestic team, shit in an England shirt. Rooney is acting the same way.

 

[cHodAX]

I am talking about the Euro 2012 tournament. During this he WAS consistently SHIT and the team DID play better when he was in suspension. Get over it. Rooney is a fucking clown. He reminds me Barnes, great for the domestic team, shit in an England shirt. Rooney is acting the same way.

He played twice in four games, he was not 100% fit and up to pace because we didn't get to play him in the warm up friendlies. The service to him yesterday was appalling, yes when the ball did reach him he made a number of fuckups but let us go back to your original post. You said we need to pick on talent, Rooney has it and the stats back that up. As for England playing better when he was suspended, what like the two warmup wins where we were fucking useless against mediocre opposition? It boils down to this, if you can't hold onto the ball then you can't feed it to the frontmen, without that supply they are going to look shit. Welbeck nor Carroll came out looking any better, both had to drop deep for the ball or try pull down longballs.

If you can't see that it was as much a tactical failure as it was of players underperforming then I don't know what else to say. We were dominated by what is a very average Italian side apart from a pensioner in the middle who paints pictures with the ball that Da Vinci would be proud of.

 

[Raven]

He did play pretty shit though, yeah he scored one but he missed a couple of sitters and consistently lost the ball when he could have passed it. That's not to say he shouldn't have been in the squad or starting though, he had the form. Due to his suspension I would have had a long hard think on whether to include him...but who else would you use in his place? It's not like England have many international quality players...

We weren't good enough. We don't have the players to be good enough and until the FA sort their act out we wont have good enough players for a long time.

Most countries that face disaster, as we have done for the past 15 years, take a long hard look at their football structure. Spain, Germany, France have all sorted their act out and now are very strong teams, France in a couple of years will be awesome. We will still be shit.

 

[DaGaffer]

To be fair. The ones who let us down were the United contingent. It was like playing with 8 players at times, they were shambolic.

One game. Not ten years. Its ironic that Terry and Gerard, two of the worst culprits of "Golden Generation" hubris, have both had their best international games at this tournament, but its time show them the door. I'm kind of dubious about Hodgson as well; I can't decide whether he was making the best of the tools he had available, or was just being determinedly old school playing 4-4-2; it never seems to work in international football against latin teams (for club or country).

 

[gunner440]

Rooney is maybe the only bright spark in an otherwise over-the-hill / mediocre team (over the last couple of tournaments and qualifiers, this one included). Please bear in mind that I'm not fully considering the likes of Jones, Ox, Hart, Welbeck (not too sure of Carroll just yet, still too early) just yet as I feel they're the beginning rather than the end of a cycle. Gerrard and Lampard, on their day, were amazing but for whatever reason never really found their partnership at international level. I think it'd have been interesting to find out what effect it would have had on the national side had Mourinho succeeded in signing Gerrard back in the day. Lampard was on fire for Chelsea at the time so it was never really going to be a replacement thing.

As much as I like Parker (since his burst of form during his Charlton days) I think it's too late for someone like him to try enter either of the cycles. Walcott has been a major disappointment for me for both club and country. He's been playing at (or at least heavily exposed to) pretty much top level football since the age of 17 but while he has improved vastly, he hasn't quite made the transition from a 'big maybe' to a 'here and now' player in terms of performance and ability. Take Oxlade-Chamberlaine for instance who has had almost an identical trajectory to Walcott except he seems to be a bit more match savvy to Theo at that age. I may be a bit risque in saying he has some of the same traits Rooney had when he was a 16/17 but I'm pretty sure it's clear that the Ox and Rooney were the streetwise hustlers to Theo's new kid lost on the first day of school. Saying that though, Ox's burst may be short-lived (hope not though!) and he might be peaking early before hitting a low ceiling (a bit like Aaron Ramsey who started off great but then sort of slumped after coming back from injury).

You guys also have Wilshere and Cahill to return, so together with the above-mentioned names that brings you to 7 players covering the core positions I guess - Goalkeeper (Hart), central defence (Jones, Cahill), central midfield (Wilshere), attacking midfield/forward (Welbeck, Rooney, Ox). Add to that Cleverley (a player I like but maybe needs a couple more seasons), Smalling (may need a bit more time to develop compared to Jones), Sturridge and, if he sorts himself out, Carroll. I don't think your future is as bleak as some may say. Let's hope that you don't end up having the shadow of the old guard coming back to haunt the new guys in the form of coaching setup additions or some weird advisor role. Closest example I think we had was the dropping of Raul who was too much of a personality (not necessarily a negative) that he hampered some of the other players that looked up to him having watched him as they themselves came through the ranks.

Failing all that, surely you can just bring back Crouch? Doesn't he always seem to score at international level?!

 

[Embattle]

I generally agree with Deebs on this one, although I accept he didn't exactly have the ideal run up to these games but then that was his fault. Personally I tend to think the stats for last year at Man U also flatter him a bit, to me he looked rather lacklustre at times for Man U.

In general the only golden thing about the golden generation of footballers has been their pay packets. In reality for all the talk too many of them were never good enough when it came to putting on an England shirt, Roy really needs the time to bring through a new generation although I get the feeling those above might consistently try and interfere and push certain players.

 

[DaGaffer]

Most countries that face disaster, as we have done for the past 15 years, take a long hard look at their football structure. Spain, Germany, France have all sorted their act out and now are very strong teams, France in a couple of years will be awesome. We will still be shit.

This. I've said it time and again, the problem with English football is cultural. It is no coincidence that the English don't just fail to pull their weight at the player level, its the same through management and governing levels as well, mediocre (at best) intellects because of a culture that's suspicious of intelligence. So you end up with meathead players (from school level onwards), meathead managers (the fact that people found it endearing that Harry Redknapp is functionally illiterate says it all really), and stick-in-the-mud, unimaginative dolts at the FA, who usually find themselves tied in knots by money men at every turn. In the rest of Europe, smart people play, manage and run football, in the UK (and Ireland), smart people avoid football because of the people who play it or they go to schools where its not played at all, smart people generally only come back to football later on, when its too late.

(And I know I'm making some sweeping generalisations here, but in general terms, English football is played and run by idiots).

 

[Vae]

This. I've said it time and again, the problem with English football is cultural. It is no coincidence that the English don't just fail to pull their weight at the player level, its the same through management and governing levels as well, mediocre (at best) intellects because of a culture that's suspicious of intelligence. So you end up with meathead players (from school level onwards), meathead managers (the fact that people found it endearing that Harry Redknapp is functionally illiterate says it all really), and stick-in-the-mud, unimaginative dolts at the FA, who usually find themselves tied in knots by money men at every turn. In the rest of Europe, smart people play, manage and run football, in the UK (and Ireland), smart people avoid football because of the people who play it or they go to schools where its not played at all, smart people generally only come back to football later on, when its too late.

(And I know I'm making some sweeping generalisations here, but in general terms, English football is played and run by idiots).

I think DaGaffer definitely has a point! http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/05/british-football-scared-of-brains

The same doesn't seem to apply to foreign footballers and managers plying their trade in England though - e.g. Wenger, AVB

 

[DaGaffer]

I think DaGaffer definitely has a point! http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/05/british-football-scared-of-brains

The same doesn't seem to apply to foreign footballers and managers plying their trade in England though - e.g. Wenger, AVB

Actually AVB is the perfect example of what I'm on about. There is no way on Earth someone like him could have started a football career in England. Chances are he'd have gone to a public school, played rugby or nothing at all, and would have "got into" football aged 30 while pursuing a career in banking.

The article is right that "being foreign" is a pass to having an intellectual side in the English game, but it doesn't address why an intelligent foreigner is more likely to be involved in football in the first place.