Return of Reckoning

peterthepan3 wrote:Ireland and England <3

Done !



Allez les bleus !

zak68 wrote:

Waaghaa wrote: ...
This on a population of aprox 330.000 people, they have aprox 600 football trainers, which is quite staggering if you think about it, I mean, how many football players does that island have?
...

here in Italy seems that we've around 60 milions of football trainers over a population of around 60 milions.

Ah yes, but they only show themselves IF Italy exits a tournament prematurely, we had aprox the same 100% rate when Sweden exited.

Actually happy that England lost to Iceland: if nothing else, it serves as an indication of how poor our native players are and how heavily reliant we are on foreign talent in our EPL.

Portugal vs Poland - 1:1 atm !

Ikr, have you seen that goal (rhetorical question) at the beggining? HUGE.

peterthepan3 wrote:Actually happy that England lost to Iceland: if nothing else, it serves as an indication of how poor our native players are and how heavily reliant we are on foreign talent in our EPL.

I think English people are completely misattributing in that regard. The English teams have always had great individual talent, but they always failed massively in the teamplay aspect of the game, and in how much they wanted to win (motivation) during the last decade. If teams were ranked on the basis of the individual talent on their roster, England would easily be in the top 4. Unfortunately, football is about teamplay, and as can be seen on teams like Germany and their successes, that's what matters the most in the end. What the English team needs is better and more preparation, a coach who handles nominations better and who also has a good vision of what strategies the players can perform. That the discussion should revolve around foreign talent, immigration and incapability of home players, is funny if not sad, just like the rest of the political talk in the UK at the moment.

Good points! ^

Iceland (and England )

I think Germany will win the title now, after winning the de facto final on last saturday.
Gomez and Hummels will be missed, but the team should still be strong enough to beat France.

I think it is hard to say where France is standing at the moment. The team has not faced a top opponent for a long time. If you want to evaluate the French by their players club performances last season, it is just an mediocre team with two freaks of nature, Griezmann and Pogba. On the other hand I think Deschamps is doing a heck of a job as a coach and he will push his players to the limit.
Hopefully it is going to be a great game on Thursday!

I think in addition to England's woes they need to re-consider who they start, just because you get paid a huge transfer fee to a top 4 club should not guarantee a starting spot. There are many better players out there who would gladly hold down a spot.