Round of 16: England vs Germany

[john]

Hard to talk shit about Southgate now. Clean sheets, impact sub, guys he sticks with the only ones who can score. Bit of luck from that Muller miss but otherwise deserved win.

[BigFatCoward]

Do the players know its just a last 16 game? Calm the fuck down.

[Soylent Brown]

I still hard disagree with a Rice-Phillips midfield. Neither is very good.

[mormont]

2 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Do the players know its just a last 16 game? Calm the fuck down.

You think that's bad, wait till you see the papers tomorrow. 

[ljkeane]

11 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Obviously it's not the only thing here but opponents have to go to Grealish, his gravity is incredible. He makes space. That was a factor in both goals.

I think the other thing is England have tendency to slowly pass the ball around the back as if they're building attack, which is fine, but there's never any acceleration because nobody is willing to play a risky pass. The thing with Grealish is he demands the ball so people pass it to him while he's under pressure which naturally accelerates the attack. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to come off but there's the potential there.

[BigFatCoward]

4 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I think the other thing is England have tendency to slowly pass the ball around the back as if they're building attack, which is fine, but there's never any acceleration because nobody is willing to play a risky pass. The thing with Grealish is he demands the ball so people pass it to him while he's under pressure which naturally accelerates the attack. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to come off but there's the potential there.

This, a 1/10 chance of something happening is worth the trade off of losing the ball in the areas he operates. 

[mormont]

Yeah, Germany looked good to start with - fluid, quick - but got worse as the game went on. England performed in fits and starts but finished their chances better: for all the complaints, that's what made the difference.

[Werthead]

31 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Do the players know its just a last 16 game? Calm the fuck down.

Yes, but OTOH it's also the first time in 55 years that England have beaten Germany in a major tournament knock-out match, which is a quite remarkable statistic.

Also the general feeling that if England get knocked out in a quarter final, that's kind of the minimum they can get away with without people calling for heads to roll. And England have to fancy themselves against Ukraine or Sweden.

[BigFatCoward]

They do now have a rather favourable route which increases the pressure. 

[ljkeane]

10 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yes, but OTOH it's also the first time in 55 years that England have beaten Germany in a major tournament knock-out match, which is a quite remarkable statistic.

I mean, depending on what you're counting as a knockout game, it's four or six matches. It's not that remarkable.

[Hereward]

Oh cheer up, FFS. Obviously, we’ll still go out to Sweden, but have some joy in your life! I watched it in Wales, very satisfying.

[Consigliere]

I'm seeing some reports saying that Kroos is expected to announce his international retirement.

[Davrum]

That Shaw/Grealish chemistry though **bites knuckle**.

The sooner young Jack is playing his home games at Old Trafford the better ...

[ljkeane]

4 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Oh cheer up, FFS. Obviously, we’ll still go out to Sweden, but have some joy in your life! I watched it in Wales, very satisfying.

 I’m not enough of an England football supporter to particularly enjoy them grinding out results. I’m sure I’d be quite happy with an equivalent result for the England rugby or cricket sides or Liverpool. I’d like them to win but a bit more watchable football would be nice.

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

This was his last game

Farwell to the video montages of him rummaging around in his pants and then sniffing his hands. 

[Denvek]

1 minute ago, ljkeane said:

 I’m not enough of an England football supporter to particularly enjoy them grinding out results. I’m sure I’d be quite happy with an equivalent result for the England rugby or cricket sides or Liverpool. I’d like them to win but a bit more watchable football would be nice.

Hopefully a quarter-final against Sweden will be as fun to watch as the quarter-final against Sweden 3 years ago.

[Consigliere]

9 minutes ago, Davrum said:

The sooner young Jack is playing his home games at Old Trafford the better ...

He'll be in Manchester by the look of things ....just in blue.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

27 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

I'm seeing some reports saying that Kroos is expected to announce his international retirement.

Not really news. That has been widely reported for a while. He considered international retirement after that embarassing 2018 World Cup, and with being widely quoted that after the Euros would be a good time to retire. You can assume that Kroos has left the building. Gündogan is rumoredly considering international retirement, too. But that's more up in the air than with Kroos.

I would've thought that Neuer would also call it quits after the Euros, but since corona has pushed back the Euros by a full year, and the Qatar world cup is just 1.5 years off, I am now more inclined to believe he'll want to play that, too. Making ter Stegen a not so happy camper.

[Heartofice]

That was lovely, the result, not the performance obviously. Watching the crowd go mental after both goals brought a tear to my eye. It’s was glorious, it meant so much.

The performance was still pretty wank though, but exactly what I expected when I saw that we were lining up in a 5-2-0-3 formation. Clearly our game plan was simply to sit back and hit long balls. The criticism of England over the years is that they are a boring route one team that plays the ball in the air more than on the ground. It’s hard to kind of argue we aren’t that. 
 

Look,  if to win major tournaments you need to be ugly and cautious then I’ll accept Southgates tactics. But if our play style can’t adapt to more compact sides then I’ll start complaining. 

[Consigliere]

Portugal and France won recent tournaments playing ugly. Southgate looks to be taking more the Deschamps 2018 approach by setting up conservatively and relying on the abundance of individual attacking talent to improvise and fashion goals.