England v Italy - THE FINAL - Match Thread

North Lower Neil

cafcsinger said:

Convinced Pickford would of scored a pen. Absolutely convinced of it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  I'd have tipped Rashford to score  I thought Maguire might miss.

Admittedly wasn't confident at all with Saka.

Carter

I'd pegged (not that sort @DaveMehmet) Kane, Sterling, Rashford, Shaw, Grealish all to score or at least be there or thereabouts 

As soon as Rashford started a stuttering run up I lost all confidence, same with Sancho. Poor Saka I didn't fancy to score but kudos to him, all of them in fact for taking them 

Garrymanilow

Chunes said:

ValleyGary said:

Chunes said:

Good point about the midfield. I don't think Rice and Phillips will ever be at the level of Verratti and Jorginho. We need Bellingham to grow up fast. 

I think Rice is a fantastic talent. His performance against Italy was arguably his best of the tournament and had an effect on the game of which I’ve seen him do for West Ham this season. He just ran out of steam, took a knock and had to come off. I believe Pep is a very big fan.

I think a lot of people do, and I might be wrong, I just don't see him as ever being world class. Players like Jorginho and Verratti are exceptional going both ways. I think Rice is very good at some things and decent at others. Not really exceptional at anything. Not in Bellingham's realm who also looks like he can do it all. 

Not to say I don't think Rice is a very good player, because he is, and he had a good tournament. 

I don't think Jorginho is world class defensively. He's intelligent with his positioning but he's very slow and is essentially worthless against a counter attack. He's improved that side of his game in the last couple of seasons but he's still one to target if you have the option of breaking at pace

Croydon

Dazzler21 said:

I love this rhetoric that we apparently sat back to defend as soon as we scored... 

We took the game to Italy for the full first 20 minutes that's at least 17 minutes after the goal, or at lease long enough for Italy to adjust to our game plan.

Once they had us sussed we were limited to sporadic half chances. We came out second half without change to our game plan, that is my only criticism. 

First 20 mins was the best I've ever seen England play. The stark contrast between how we started and how we finished the game is one of the reasons the end result stings so much for me. 

dickad1

Croydon said:

Dazzler21 said:

I love this rhetoric that we apparently sat back to defend as soon as we scored... 

We took the game to Italy for the full first 20 minutes that's at least 17 minutes after the goal, or at lease long enough for Italy to adjust to our game plan.

Once they had us sussed we were limited to sporadic half chances. We came out second half without change to our game plan, that is my only criticism. 

First 20 mins was the best I've ever seen England play. The stark contrast between how we started and how we finished the game is one of the reasons the end result stings so much for me. 

This totally sums up how I feel about it. I'm not bothered so much about the pens, that happens and clearly there was a plan for them - it just didn't come off. What really hurts is that we didn't find a way to put them under any pressure from after half time, with maybe a bit of an uptick in ET, even on the break.  It's easy in hindsight, but our best chance of winning was at least to threaten a second.  The lack of any threat made it too easy for them to continue to push with little risk. 

Italy are a good side but not a great one. Somewhat like England. Defences, pretty much evenly matched. Our advantage over them was in attacking threat, and pace in attack especially from the bench. Theirs over us was grabbing control in midfield. We let them show theirs and never gave ours a proper chance to flourish. 

killerandflash

Garrymanilow said:

Chunes said:

ValleyGary said:

Chunes said:

Good point about the midfield. I don't think Rice and Phillips will ever be at the level of Verratti and Jorginho. We need Bellingham to grow up fast. 

I think Rice is a fantastic talent. His performance against Italy was arguably his best of the tournament and had an effect on the game of which I’ve seen him do for West Ham this season. He just ran out of steam, took a knock and had to come off. I believe Pep is a very big fan.

I think a lot of people do, and I might be wrong, I just don't see him as ever being world class. Players like Jorginho and Verratti are exceptional going both ways. I think Rice is very good at some things and decent at others. Not really exceptional at anything. Not in Bellingham's realm who also looks like he can do it all. 

Not to say I don't think Rice is a very good player, because he is, and he had a good tournament. 

I don't think Jorginho is world class defensively. He's intelligent with his positioning but he's very slow and is essentially worthless against a counter attack. He's improved that side of his game in the last couple of seasons but he's still one to target if you have the option of breaking at pace

Agreed. The Jorginho at Chelsea never struck me as world class.  A very good player yes, but he hardly stands out in the way Kante does

killerandflash

It's all the fault of Tottenham, and the curse of them never winning anything, even with excellent players, infecting the England team.

Southgate tried to mitigate this by leaving out the likes of Dele and Dier, but captain Kane is still the main driver of the curse. Once he leaves Spurs, it will be broken.

jacob_CAFC

ValleyGary said:

North Lower Neil said:

ValleyGary said:

Chunes said:

Good point about the midfield. I don't think Rice and Phillips will ever be at the level of Verratti and Jorginho. We need Bellingham to grow up fast. 

I think Rice is a fantastic talent. His performance against Italy was arguably his best of the tournament and had an effect on the game of which I’ve seen him do for West Ham this season. He just ran out of steam, took a knock and had to come off. I believe Pep is a very big fan.

Rice is a good player and will get better.

Would like us to play a more forward thinking midfielder alongside him than Phillips (or Henderson) in the qualifiers to hopefully play that way in the World Cup, but can almost.guarantee it'll be Henderson.

Personally would like to see him play in a midfield two with Mount, who played there and was Motm (against Brazil in a friendly?). That would allow someone like Grealish or Foden to play in the 10 and have two wingers plus Kane. Our defence has proven it doesn’t need that two man protection.

Disagree with that - they are part of our defense and removing the shield of the two in midfield would leave our defense exposed. 

Mr. Happy

North Lower Neil said:

cafcsinger said:

Convinced Pickford would of scored a pen. Absolutely convinced of it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  I'd have tipped Rashford to score  I thought Maguire might miss.

Admittedly wasn't confident at all with Saka.

Same with all the above. I would have backed Pickford to score over Saka, but who knows. Also if Pickford takes that last penalty and misses Southgate would get absolutely hammered for letting a keeper take one before a willing forward.

Mendonca In Asdas

An interesting take on the day.

https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/my-personal-experience-from-sunday.1555267/

shine166

Upto 5000 'jibbed' in, security taking bribes as little as £20


https://www.givemesport.com/1721291-england-alarming-account-of-how-ticketless-fans-broke-into-euro-2020-final-at-wembley

Dazzler21

shine166 said:

Upto 5000 'jibbed' in, security taking bribes as little as £20


https://www.givemesport.com/1721291-england-alarming-account-of-how-ticketless-fans-broke-into-euro-2020-final-at-wembley

C***s all of them 

shine166

Dazzler21 said:

shine166 said:

Upto 5000 'jibbed' in, security taking bribes as little as £20


https://www.givemesport.com/1721291-england-alarming-account-of-how-ticketless-fans-broke-into-euro-2020-final-at-wembley

C***s all of them 

Puts us back a decade too on a WC bid surely.

jimmymelrose

MuttleyCAFC said:

MrOneLung said:

Rothko said:

I think Qatar will be survival of the fittest, weird time of the year, conditions will be horrible for some games, and you'll see some weird results, so oddly I don't expect much, Germany 2024 has to be a target to win, Belgium will be gone as a force, Italy in a rebuild, Germany will have lot of home advantage but I don't think they've got a squad and France will be France. 

Funnily enough @Rothko I think the cup being played at that time of year will have the players fresher rather than at the end of a long European season which will hopefully negate some of  the heat issue. 

I can see why that may be. Not sure there will be a heat issue. It should be on a par with holding the tournament in Europe in June/July.

In Doha, Qatar, in December, the average high-temperature is 24.1°C (75.4°F), and the average low-temperature is 15°C (59°F).

The average relative humidity in December is 71%.

jimmymelrose

sam3110 said:

Looking back through the stats, I didn't realise how one sided the game ended up being, on paper at least.



Really only one team should have won it looking at this, and that team isn't England, so we did well to force it to penalties

Or you could say that they had to make more tackles and gave away more fouls because our play was more penetrating.

Possession is a modern football misnomer of effective play.