England's Glorious Failure

[Ira Gaines]

14 minutes ago, GordonS said:

England didn't win though. They didn't even get to the final.

As others have said, England aren't like Brechin, who aren't even a full-time club.

This is really like Partick Thistle making the semi-finals of the cup, without facing any premier league opposition. I don't think anyone would regard that as an achievement.

Using the Partick analogy, I'd say it's more like the Partick of a couple of seasons ago getting through bottom six opposition. Credit where it's due for getting there through potentially very tricky games, but ultimately to be expected.

It WAS an achievement to reach the semis. Just not the achievement a lot seem to be making out.

[jagfox]

[resk]

Boak.

[sparky88]

It's more difficult to think of teams that played well all the way through the tournament and reached a final. Germany 4 years ago played well for maybe 2 games.

france this year have had 15 good minutes against Argentina, played gash against australia and they've defended most of the rest of the time. I don't think that's how history will remember them though.

[Arch Stanton]

.

[Jan Vojáček]

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I hope that I never get bored of this. 

 

[nsr]

8 hours ago, MarkoRaj said:

Slaven Bilic put it best yesterday when dishing out telts to Glenn hoddle and co.

England play a unique system that Croatia haven't had experience of playing before. They took a while to settle and get on the ball. Once they did they pretty much played them off the park

At first I thought that was just Slaven's polite way of saying that England play hoofball from the Cretaceous period.

[Ned Nederlander]

Nice of the BBC to meticulously dissect England's World Cup performance ... and pretty-much conclude that they were utterly guff:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44808192

 

 

 

[vikingTON]

3 hours ago, nsr said:

At first I thought that was just Slaven's polite way of saying that England play hoofball from the Cretaceous period.

Which is what Souness has pointed out in what the English media think is an 'astonishing' attack on England's precious young roses. 

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/world-cup-2018/graeme-souness-gives-blunt-assessment-of-england-and-points-out-two-players-who-are-to-blame-for-world-cup-exit-37110133.html

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Kane wasn’t a team player last night, great chance to square it, but his selfishness cost them a chance.

Showed he isn't the world class player that the English media would have us believe - a very good finisher but not a creator and found out - again.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

There's a ludicrous amount of delusion about how amazing England are off the back of pummeling Panama, beating Tunisia with two corners, scraping by Colombia on penalties and beating a fair but unspectacular post-Zlatan and Henrik Larsson Sweden. 
I'm almost certain that Gary Neville said against Colombia at HT something like "England are a far better side", and said similar at HT against Croatia.
They lost AET to Croatia and lost in the groups to Belgium, the two best sides they've played in the tournament.
I would say, though, that England absolutely deserve a fair amount of credit for going from a shapeless, disorganised mess at prior tournaments (Southgate certainly seems competent enough to stop anything like when they got picked off 4-1 by Germany, or huffing and puffin, ha, against Iceland) to working very well with what they had available and being extremely deadly at set-pieces. They look far better after shaking off players like Rooney, and they weren't far off doing similar to Greece in 2004.

The test is which of their players would get in to the 1990 England team.

The answer is - not many.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

He’s right you know-

This.

[Gordon EF]

The defensiveness over pointing out that so many of their goals are from set pieces on here and in the media is ridiculous. It's not that anybody's saying that set piece goals don't count it's that top teams tend to have multiple different ways to hurt you and defensively, if they figure you out from set pieces, you don't have much left to hurt them with.

So when they came up against a better side, they were likely to struggle, which they did. 

[Adamski]

Queens played four games to get to the semi finals of the Scottish cup in 2008: away to  Peterhead (League 1); home to Linlithgow (Junior); away to Morton (lower end of Championship); home to Dundee (mid-table Championship, but below Queens at the time).

Like England, we got past two poor teams, then two mediocre teams. We won that semi final too, and ran Rangers close in the final. It was my best experience as a football fan.

England beat what was in front of them to get to the semi final. Over a couple of one-off games they could have got further too. And I bet the whole thing was hugely enjoyable for their supporters. But like Queens that cup run for Queens was no indication of how we'd do in the 2009 Scottish Cup, or indicated that we were anything more than our league position suggested at the time: a run-of-the-mill Championship team - somewhere around the 16th best team in Scotland. I can see parallels here.

[Scary Bear]

Showed he isn't the world class player that the English media would have us believe - a very good finisher but not a creator and found out - again.

So if that shot that hit the post had bounced in would he be the man?

[Jambomo]

I was thinking earlier that they must be the only nation that seems to have let world cup success become a negative part of their history. They talk about it in terms of how long its been since they won it, it creates expectation of them doing it again and everything they talk about seems to come back to 66. It seems a shame that its become like that and it seems more of a hindrance now than a positive for them.

[Mr. Brightside]

I was thinking earlier that they must be the only nation that seems to have let world cup success become a negative part of their history. They talk about it in terms of how long its been since they won it, it creates expectation of them doing it again and everything they talk about seems to come back to 66. It seems a shame that its become like that and it seems more of a hindrance now than a positive for them.

Precisely, Tyldesley at the end of the game said “the ghost of 66 still looms” or something similar. That must make it easier for the players, eh?
There’s other stuff too, which isn’t even related “Gareth Southgate is only 11 months older than Alf Ramsey was when England won in 66.” I mean wtf?

[Cerberus]

37 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

I was thinking earlier that they must be the only nation that seems to have let world cup success become a negative part of their history. They talk about it in terms of how long its been since they won it, it creates expectation of them doing it again and everything they talk about seems to come back to 66. It seems a shame that its become like that and it seems more of a hindrance now than a positive for them.

Great init?

[Barry Ferguson's Hat]

Just seen that The FA are releasing the Panama game on DVD. 

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, Adamski said:

Queens played four games to get to the semi finals of the Scottish cup in 2008: away to  Peterhead (League 1); home to Linlithgow (Junior); away to Morton (lower end of Championship); home to Dundee (mid-table Championship, but below Queens at the time).

Like England, we got past two poor teams, then two mediocre teams. We won that semi final too, and ran Rangers close in the final. It was my best experience as a football fan.

England beat what was in front of them to get to the semi final. Over a couple of one-off games they could have got further too. And I bet the whole thing was hugely enjoyable for their supporters. But like Queens that cup run for Queens was no indication of how we'd do in the 2009 Scottish Cup, or indicated that we were anything more than our league position suggested at the time: a run-of-the-mill Championship team - somewhere around the 16th best team in Scotland. I can see parallels here.

Yes, I've thought of that too.  

Parallels do exist, but they're imperfect.  In beating Morton and Dundee, we defeated peers.  Every side England won against was ranked below them.

Even in the semi, England played a side ranked beneath them, whereas Queens played one way above.  That's before we consider the fact that our outcome was very different from theirs.

I get your point though.  An easy run doesn't diminish the pleasure, but it does diminish what can be read into it.