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Round of 16 (Day 3) Spain/Italy, England/Iceland


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3 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Harry Kane with possibly the worst performance I've ever seen in an England shirt. Holy fucking shitballs.

Crazy how bad the whole team was really. Rashford was on for like 7 minutes and looked more dangerous than anyone bar Sturridge. 

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I could not resist checking th England result before I can watch it on DVR.  S'obvious that dropping the Liverpool players would be the end of what little chance they had.  The Spurs and City players have been poor, bar Walker in one game (and then he was outplayed by Clyne in the one chance he got).  Sturridge did all he could out of position, but he cannot carry Kane, Alli, Sterling and Rooney all playing shit.  Rooney as a CM has all the weaknesses of an aged Gerrard but without the upside of hitting crossfield passes at any useful velocity. 

Pochettino must be a fucking genius to get all those goals out of Kane and Alli. Hodgson surely isn't. 

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Iceland deserves congratulations. If you look at the distribution of their population, there are a grand total of maybe 40000 men who are of the right age to compete and many of them live in places where the climate and/or terrain is not amenable to football. Apparently, they had to build enclosed stadiums to have a place where they can consistently practice and play.

That said, a large part of this victory was that England was simply awful. Nearly all of the players were bad and so was the manager. The only exception was the Rashford guy brought on 5 minutes before the end -- if he had come in 20 minutes earlier, they might have scored. It almost felt like England was trying to lose on purpose.

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14 minutes ago, Mexal said:

This is literally the best thing I've seen all day. Iceland team's selection process.

That is awesome. The ''Imprisoned bankers'' bit is just gold. Props to their team, it was a good match they played.

Who do you folks see in the round of 4? I see Portugal beating Poland, and France should by all rights chew up Iceland, but after seeing their performance Germany vs Italy doesn't seem like an easy win for the former at all. I also assume Wales will lose to Belgium, but that's also not quite a done deal.

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I'm simultaneously delighted for Iceland and thoroughly pised off with England. That's by far the worst I've ever seen them play. They seemed to mentally collapse in the second half, particularly Rooney, Kane and Alli. That's twice in a week now we've been the laughing stock of the world.

Oh well, can't wait for the Iceland v Wales final (there's a whaling joke in there somewhere).

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44 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Crazy how bad the whole team was really. Rashford was on for like 7 minutes and looked more dangerous than anyone bar Sturridge. 

No kidding. Rashford was better in what little time he had than Kane was the entire tournament.

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Expected. Iceland have fighting spirit, something that is extremly lacking in this England side. 

The way they've been playing, I expect Poland to knock Portugal out, but I said the same thing about Croatia. The vikings will repeat the invasion of Paris and conquer the French. I hope Wales can beat Belgium whom I find very overrated, but Belgium are probably favorites

Germany-Italy is the blockbuster. I really hope that Germany wins, but I'm currently at 55-45 for Italy. Italy played wonderful football today. Germany too yesterday, so it should be a good match

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Ultimately, this could be the best thing for England in the long-term. If Hodgson had blundered his way to the semis he would have been given a contract extension. This way, there's a small chance the FA might appoint a half-decent manager who might be able to get the best out of what is undoubtedly a decent crop of young players.

 

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Just got done watching the matches.

Considering the team that Conte has had to bring to this tournament, I think it's fair to say he is the best coach, at least so far. And the highlight of that match was him kicking that ball away in anger. The man is like an orchestra conductor; constantly waving his arms, just inches away from stepping on the pitch himself. And points for me for having Chiellini in my fantasy team.

But Germany has looked better than Spain. It will be a much tougher match for Italy.

On the other hand, England smh. The Icelandinc fairy tale continues. But England, so poor on all fronts. Out of all the nations of the British Isles present here, how come England has had the worst goalkeeper? 

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Conte definitely manager of the tournament so far.  Wales and Iceland are performing the most above expectations (although not the most above form in qualification, where they were both quite good), but they mostly stick to their established game plan and do it with a lot of heart and hunger.  Italy have tailored tactics and beaten two very good opponents in Belgium and Spain, plus rested players at good times and made some very effective subs.

Germany look better than Spain, but still lacking incision in attack.  I don't see where their goal against Italy would come from.  They're capable of getting one somehow, but that game could easily be a stalemate settled by penalties.

I'm really stuck at the moment on where Kane and Alli really lie on the huge spectrum between their performances for Spurs and England.  I can understand that they are both tired, unused to England team-mates (despite half the outfield coming from Spurs) and maybe a bit overawed by the situation, but it's possible too that they both benefit from a very tailored system at Spurs that opposition have only just figured out (remember how Rodger's 3-5-2 looked great for a few months), plus their midfield and defence feeds them a ton of counter-attacking opportunities very high up the pitch.  It's hard to figure where their long-term level will be.

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Having Vardy on the bench is one thing, but having Sturridge and Sterling (who was mostly crap throughout the tournament, too) up front and insisting on a positional attack with all 10 Icelanders in front of their goal is quite another.

Rooney played as defensively as Dier (or even more) most of the game, to the point of acting like a third central defender quite a few times.

Hart has had such a bad tournament that next England manager, whoever that turns out to be, must consider other options for the next World Cup qualifiers.

England's game has just been shambles all over the pitch, and Iceland made the most of it. It was nice seeing a team giving their all on the pitch. Haven't seen that since Champions League finals in Istanbul back in 2005. ;) Wish my national team played like that.

P. S. Iceland ruined my perfect prediction record for round of 16. :D 

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I'm really happy for Iceland, I would've been rooting for them if England hadn't been selected for me. I think England has two big disadvantages: For one, they just don't play smart from a tactical point of view, it's like watching 11 drunk children stumbling around in the dark sometimes. Compare that to Italy who are usually very savy and thus perform better than they should if you look at each player individually. Second, English players all play in the Premier League, so they're only used to one (very ineffective) way of playing football and often seem to be overwhelmed with other teams's tactics. So they're neither flexible nor smart enough to do well against well-organized teams.

In the quarter finals Portugal will beat Poland quite easily, they've been pretty good so far and Poland looked very tired in the second half against Switzerland. I think Belgium vs Wales will go to penalties with Belgium ultimately coming out on top. Italy will beat Germany 1-0, Germany hasn't played against a decent team yet and won't be used to any serious opposition. France should be able to beat Iceland if they play better than against Ireland, but who knows, Iceland has been awesome so far.

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Already  a few years ago I read that many players were burned out from their respective leagues even before the international championship started. Probably the Premier League is more tiring (and less inspiring tactically) than the ones in Italy, Spain, Germany...

Italy - Germany is going to be the decisive match. Italy is a dreaded opponent and they spoiled both the last European championship as well as the "home" Worldcup in 2006 for the Germans (semifinals each time). Whoever wins this (and it will probably be very close) has a very good chance to win the championship. I don't see France stopping either of them unless les bleus improve.

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The complaint about the English leagues being more tiring is nonsense. Even if it were true, loads of teams have players from the English leagues, including 3 of last night's starting 11 for Iceland. Strangely, they didn't look tired.

I will say that comparing Iceland to Greece is tempting, but I think Greece were actually better. Iceland have had some luck so far, and they have distinct vulnerabilities: you saw Halldorsson give away a penalty last night with a dreadful challenge, for example. He has decent reflexes but his technique is poor and he's been lucky not to give up goals on more than one occasion. But they are incredibly well coached and that counts for a lot.

As for England, yeah, I couldn't figure out why Kane was starting last night either, or why Sturridge was playing wide: a fit Sturridge is surely always your starting central striker. But none of that would have mattered if the team hadn't given up two soft goals.

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Because Kane was taking free kicks again. It's a shame for England... Why Vardy on the bench, when Sturridge wasn't able to doo anything on the field? Why was Rashford playing for only 5 minutes?? Good bye Hodgson, don't want to listen about you forever...

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The Iceland style of play reminds me of that of Norway during our run of limited success in the 90's. Lots of long balls toward a man on an invisible step ladder up top, with decisive runs toward goal, sprinkled with occasional chances from set pieces. Many would find that boring, but with some good/lucky finishes you can scrape wins against better-on-paper opponents, at least until you meet teams that are rock solid defensively. So even if Iceland manage to beat France in the QF (weirder things have happened), they'll probably lose to Germany/Italy in the semis.

Either way, I'll be rooting for them. It's amazing what they've achieved given their resources. According to FIFA stats from 2006, the Iceland FA had 21 000 registered players over 18, not sure if that includes men and women. In comparison, Luxembourg had 32 000 registered players, and Wales had 67 000.

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