Euro 2008 qualifiers

[Hildegard]

LINK

 

Well the end of 2008 qualifying matches are here, who do you think it's gonna be at the end, who are your favorites ? And with a lot of English here, what's your take on your national team and its position, it doesn't look pretty does it

[Atreides]

Lol, I hope England don't qualify. It'd give Chelsea players a rest. I also feel bad for Newcastle and LA Galaxy - Owen and Beckham get injured at England, are hardly fit and rush back from injury to play for England again.

[Pidesco]

I hope England goes down and Scotland qualifies.

[Guest The Architect]

Well, Italy can get ****ed. May they, along with England, Croatia, Greece and France, fail. I just don

[Pidesco]

Portugal would have to lose at home against Armenia today, for Finland to have a chance of qualifying. I believe that's usually called a fat chance.

[Guest The Architect]

I'd so laugh if it happened though.

 

But then of course obviously it won't.

 

Well damn it then. I was hoping both Portugal and Finland could qualify together in the same group. **** you Poland. ****, you.

[Tigranes]

Well, Italy get a dodgy decision their way and profit, again. Who's surprised?

 

I feel sorry for Scotland, they did damn well to beat France twice and I'd love to have seen Italy cop out for once.

 

It's strongly looking like England will scrape through after Israel beat Russia 2-1 though, which is a real pity. The English press talks about its national team like its the best in the world and even the English themselves are wiser to that load of bollocks.

[Guest The Architect]

Well, Italy get a dodgy decision their way and profit, again. Who's surprised?

 

What happened? I couldn't find a match report on it, but then again I didn't look too hard, because I'm lazy.

[Hildegard]

No matter that we lost, we're going to the Euro2008

[Tigranes]

The controversial 'free kick':

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sZO1ysiicro

 

The Italian fellow falls over pretty well doesn't he?

 

Edit: There's also talk of Italy having a goal wrongly ruled out before, so maybe karma comes round for the game itself. Who knows.

Edited November 18, 2007 by Tigranes

[Hildegard]

The controversial 'free kick':

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sZO1ysiicro

 

Now I'm not Scottish, couldn't care less about Scotland, and refs can make mistakes, but I really don't like players that try to exploit the game. Maybe it was a foul against Italy. Maybe not, that would be a soft call. But if you win the shoulder barge, and you weren't even coming over very quickly, and he didn't push you that hard, why the hell do you fall over 0.5 seconds afterwards and roll on the ground?

 

 

[Tigranes]

rofl, I see my unedited version survives. Comment still applies I think for the incident, if not for the game.

Edited November 19, 2007 by Tigranes

[Hildegard]

rofl, I see my unedited version survives. Comment still applies I think for the incident, if not for the game.

 

Those nasty greasy Italians always get away

[Gorgon]

I'm so depressed, we usually always qualify. Now were just as bushleague as our country's size would suggest.

[Walsingham]

I still say that the best thing for English football would be if we had a really REALLY bad couple of years.

[Atreides]

I'll copy pasta what I said in another forum. Still relevant, as it was a few months ago.

 

I think the problem's England's soft. More specifically, the manager's soft. McClaren may be a good coach, but he gets bullied by the press and probably doesn't have the charisma or the credibility (backed up by a record of success - it's more about the respect) to tell the big players to buck up or be dropped. McClaren may know what needs to be done, but he just may not have the power to do it.

 

Just someone who has the respect of the players and courage to ignore or tell the overeactionary press and fans to screw off would be a start. If needed, dropping the big names that aren't pulling their weight.

[Tigranes]

That's fair enough, but I remember the same being said against Sven, and Sven is actually a very good manager, as he showed with Lazio and is showing with Man. City (though it hasn't been long). Sven is, also, a man who isn't 'soft' like McClaren is. Many speculated that Sven was afraid to drop the big names, but the truth is that if England drops the big names, it doesn't have a lot to fall back on. Sure, Gerrard-Lampard isn't working. Sure, Robinson is an idiot and needs to be dropped. But other than that? There's not a whole lot wrong with the selection. Uh, except for picking Jenas. Haha.

 

I think the problem is that the English fans want a manager who can overcome the ridiculous level of pressure and the positively disgusting English press, AND impose his will on English players who are notorious for loving the party life and having a big head, and then manage a team. Hey, the actual solution would be for the country to create an environment where the manager is NOT the most stressful job in the entire world. There are some managers who say they would never ever manage England, and there's a very good reason for that. Why would you, under all those circumstances?

 

The English press needs to shut up a little bit (about everything), the fans need to calm down a little bit and the players need to learn to respect the manager even if the things don't go well. If that happens, even a manager out of his depth like McClaren can help them achieve. If not, Guus Hiddink (uh, well, maybe not Hiddink) would find it difficult to get anything out of them.

[Guest The Architect]

Well England's going to be in the **** football wise for many more years to come then, since the crumpet eating alcoholic buttheads are notorious for their loud and over opinionated behaviour. Asking their press to shut their trap and asking their fans to cool down and go sit in a corner is like asking Paris Hilton to stop having sex.

 

Oh, and poor bloody Scotland. I didn't see Italy's disallowed goal, so it'd be wrong of me to say justice was done, since perhaps the ref made the right choice on that occasion, but **** me, clearly the Scottish guy should've been given the free kick.

[Walsingham]

Interesting analysis, Tigger. You mind if I ask if it's your own?

[Tigranes]

It's straight out my noggin', but I wouldn't be surprised to see quite a few others hold the same view.

 

In comparison with other places, I think it's a lot worse than in, say, France or Italy. I hear the Spanish press can be quite devilish as well (obviously, I can't read them), but look at how their Football Association has kept hold of Aragones even after a disappointingly early exit. In England, the FA bow to pressure, and the fact that they sacked Sven without a decent manager marked up and agreed is farcical.

 

It's quite similar to South Korea, actually. Some of you might remember how, memorably, former great player and 'national hero' Cha Bum-Keun (who was in his time quite well known and valued in the Bundesliga) was sacked from the manager seat during the 5-0 drubbing by Holland in WC'98, even before the game had ended - you can imagine, the players go into the game with one manager and he's not their boss anymore when they're back in the dressing room. Hiddink is the only one to leave with grace (but then, that's the only time Korea ever did very well in a major competition) and since then the team has seen one Dutch manager replace another. The thing is, there is so much press and public speculation about every little thing, they are followed so closely, every squad selection is scrutinised and every result picked apart. The Koreans dont' seem to realise - or want to admit - that the Korean national team actually is pretty crap and that won't really change until the national output of players and quality of the league improves, which can only come with infrastructural changes regarding youth players and academies.

 

Similarly in England, the zonal rule, which prohibits clubs from recruiting young players that live too far away, means promising youngsters can't be plucked out into well-built academies but may ply their trade for lower clubs, receiving lower standards of training. More fundamentally, the emphasis in the English game is so strongly on 'passion and committment': in other words, a blind eye is turned to fouling and cheating, horrendous tackles and pushing and shoving, as long as you get the ball (or stop them from getting it): whereas a French academy might focus on technical play more, and the Brazilians in their streets fire up individual tricks, English training much more consists simply of throwing people together in a 5-a-side and letting them run with 'passion and committment'. Meanwhile, Aaron Lennon, one of England's most promising youngsters, may not have much of a future in the game if Tottenham continue to play him when unfit with all kinds of workarounds and injections, doing irreparable damage to his body: though the first team players in England at the moment do have a level of technical skill in and of themselves (i.e. Joe Cole), the second-string is not so promising (D. Bent, Jenas, Reo-Coker, Gareth Barry).

 

So yeah, on one hand, if the English want to get the most out of what players they have, then my first post talks about that: if they are not satisfied with the players they do have, well, theres a good reason, and it's not 'foreign players' or 'too much money in the game'.

[Hildegard]

I'm reading comments of English football players and the media...and once more they prove how arrogant they are...it makes we sick!!!! When we lost against England at the last Euro the English players wouldn't even shake the hands of our players at the end of the game because I guess they weren't worthy of the diving English players...and now they're all talking about the last match like we are some kind of Banana country who just recently started to play football....the English base their arrogance on what? The fact that you have the most expensive football league in the world? That all of your players playing for the national team cost like 50 times more then others do? Well you may have incredible individuals but as a team and a collective you suck and suck and suck...what did you even win after you cheated in the finals against Germany back in the 70s? NOTHING.

 

The game the English displayed during these qualifications is just pathetic as are manners of their players and as such, I would like nothing more then England looses tonight, much rather then we win the Euro 2008, because quite frankly they don't deserve to play at the Euro...

[Guest The Architect]

Spot on Tigranes. But hey, if the Pom

[Guest Accept]

Bwahah, England is out after losing 2-3 to Croatia.

 

 

But YES, WE'RE IN! :D

 

2-1 against Latvia.

[Pidesco]

Portugal is starting to look like Scolari's Brazil: plays like crap, barely qualifies, but still wins the competition (I hope).

[Walsingham]

I'm reading comments of English football players and the media...and once more they prove how arrogant they are...it makes we sick!!!! When we lost against England at the last Euro the English players wouldn't even shake the hands of our players at the end of the game because I guess they weren't worthy of the diving English players...and now they're all talking about the last match like we are some kind of Banana country who just recently started to play football....the English base their arrogance on what? The fact that you have the most expensive football league in the world? That all of your players playing for the national team cost like 50 times more then others do? Well you may have incredible individuals but as a team and a collective you suck and suck and suck...what did you even win after you cheated in the finals against Germany back in the 70s? NOTHING.

 

The game the English displayed during these qualifications is just pathetic as are manners of their players and as such, I would like nothing more then England looses tonight, much rather then we win the Euro 2008, because quite frankly they don't deserve to play at the Euro...

 

Woah! Jeebus! Willya calm down? I don't think I've seen such an impassioned rant. Did we really refuse to shake hands? That sounds rather odd to say the least.

 

Anyway, I guess we lost tonight, so I got my 'wish'.