That’s a shame. You were spouting nonsense, but you did keep the WC thread bumped.
God, I hope not.
I will briefly acknowledge the two nice finishes from the cannibal. Nice assist from Gerrard to his team-mate for the second one. Why oh why couldn’t someone have gone in a bit harder on the bastard to take him out of the game? Now for the sour grapes:
-
I can’t believe Uruguay finished the game with 11 players on the field. Many of them seemed to have been programmed to tackle the way I do on computer football games - slide in the vague direction of the ball, doesn’t matter if you get the player. In particular the player who got knocked out - if you slide around like that, you will get what you deserve.
-
The Uruguay goalkeeper was taking the piss with how long he held on to the ball. I believe the guideline is still 6 seconds - he was well over that on at least a couple of occasions, including just before the second goal. He also wasted a lot of time on goal kicks that was not allowed for by the referee.
I’m not saying England deserved to win, once again two really poor pieces of defending undid us. But the above is somewhat frustrating to the less-than-impartial observer. Oh well - I still think we can qualify, but I rather suspect Italy will set us on the right road by beating Costa Rica tomorrow, only to let us down by drawing with Uruguay while we put a few past Costa Rica in the final game, when we hit top gear just a bit too late.
Is it too early to start a thread about the 2016 Euros?
Problems for Greece now. Their captain, Katsouranis, is off after receiving a second yellow card. The second one looked pretty soft to me.
And Karma strikes back big time…
You want racepug to stick around? Ach du lieber!
That was never a yellow. It’s not a big deal except it ruins the rest of the game. Referee should be hung by his cleats and shown 200 minutes of Japan trying to batter the ball in against ten men. Then horse-whipped, of course.
Auf Wiedersehen translates as ‘until we see each other again’.
On topic: god I hope Greece lose. At the same time, ffs Japan, score already!
This.
It’s not often you see England lose a game we should have won. Far more often we are ruing one missed chance in a game we should have lost by three. Instead we are ruing five misses in a match we should have won by three. Especially since Uruguay should have been down a man for 60 minutes.
Hrm. That’s an awfully good point.
How 'bout “Lassen Sie sich nicht die Tür geschlagen, wo der gute Herr spalten Sie?”
(That’s “don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya” according to Google Translate. I see it is using the more formal “you,” which I find greatly amusing)
Tomorrow we have Italy against Costa Rica and that will be an interesting test. I like Italy’s players but I dislike their playing style, so I usually end up rooting against them. I’m guessing a draw with Costa Rica - 1-1. Costa Rica gets a goal in the first half, Italy gets an equalizer around minute 75 and everyone relaxes.
Next is Switzerland versus France. This should be a fairly boring 2-1 French victory, but whatever, I’m going for 1-0 Switzerland. Let the Swiss crash out against someone else.
Finally we have Honduras and Ecuador. Honduras will try their usual physical play, but Ecuador won’t be having it. 2-0 Ecuador.
You think? I didn’t see it that way at all.
We were ponderous and lacking ideas. We looked poor in comparison to our performance against Italy who are a far better team than Uruguay.
We were poor overall. I couldn’t understand why we didn’t play at the pace we did in the first match, speed down the flanks, getting in behind them. We didn’t do it enough and when we tried we weren’t accurate enough with the short game and movement generally was aimless. Against Italy the running off the ball made the passes, last night?..nada.
Then of course when frustration sets in we revert to type and start throwing the aimless long ball.
Now none of that would matter with a moderately decent defence. An off-night might not see you punished against such an average team but…FFS. The one single player that will punish you, the one with a dodgy leg and moving at 75% speed, the one person that you should track and keep goal-side of at all time?
No…it’s fine…let him go…let him drift through 4 defenders while they all watch the ball. Really poor.
Had they stuck with the same shape and same intensity as they had against Italy they could have beaten Uruguay by outscoring them (I was never expecting a clean sheet).
Never mind. They may learn. It was clear anyway that the defensive frailties were always going to be found out by the better teams.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when they go balls-out against Costa Rica, which they have to. They could be out already by then but anything less will be inexcusable.
I’m going 2-1 Honduras. Red cards that is, I reckon this might be a spicy clash.
Weird. I saw the exact opposite: a team that created chances all match by passing the ball inside and deep crossing and 1-on-1 runs on the outside.
In the Italy match we had trouble just advancing the ball beyond midfield except when Danny Wellbeck (who for my money was the best player on the pitch against Italy) was able to steal the ball from the Italians in their own half.
Beyond that, there was a glaring hole in front of Baines against Italy that Hodgson seemed to be leaving open on purpose, which led directly to the second goal.
Granted, we didn’t do a very good job handling Suarez but the defense looked pretty composed throughout. The second goal was basically just lucky (or unlucky), at least as far as the flick-on that got Suarez free (and it looked like he was a good three feet offside anyway).
If any England fans would like to join me in clutching at straws, there are 2 things in our favour: one is that at least we need the favoured team to win rather than needing an upset, the other is that if (and it’s a big if) all the results go our way, the goal difference will automatically work out for us, even if all the remaining results are 1-0. In other words, we don’t need to go crazy trying to put 3 or 4 past Costa Rica, we just need to try and win and then hope Italy do us a favour (assuming Italy win tonight).
Of course, what works against are the rather more important factors of our lack of imagination in attack, defensive frailty, and the likelihood that even assuming Italy beat Costa Rica tonight, they will then be all-but qualified for the final game and so under much less motivation to win than Uruguay will be. On the other hand, I suppose the 6 6 6 0 permutation is still possible in this group, which could see Italy exit on 6 points - but that just means they can play for a draw, and there is no better team at doing just that.
I suppose it depends on which Uruguay team shows up to play Italy. If it’s the one that played Costa Rica the Italians will squish them even if they’re only playing for a draw. If it’s the one that played yesterday they’ve got a good chance of winning (or at least taking a point, which would be enough.)
He was in an offside position, but unfortunately the ball came off Steven Gerrard so there was quite correctly no flag. I agree it was lucky but to roll out yet another cliche, “you make your own luck” - in other words, Suarez made his run precisely because of the 1 in 100 chance that this flick would happen and lead to an opportunity. Which is why everyone said afterwards that we should have stayed tighter to him, goalside, in that situation. Easy to say with hindsight but it didn’t take a lot of foresight.
I think we need a two-goal win over Costa Rica, either by us or by Italy. Ideally without them scoring much. 2-0 today would be ideal. But like **Bozuit **I can’t get too enthused about England scraping through on goals scored. If we were good enough we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Still, an Italian win today would make the last game exciting.
I know fans like to complain about the officiating, but I’m always impressed with the lines officials. To be able to determine offside based on the thinnest of margins from their positions, watching the ball and player(s) sometimes 50 years apart, and then looking out for touches like Gerrard’s, plus fouls, corners vs. throw-ins vs. goal kicks, etc. seems very difficult. They must have to go through extensive training. I actually think the referee’s job is easier. Are there special schools, like baseball umpires have? Anyway, I’m always surprised on how often they actually get the call right.
It’s a very young team and most of them haven’t played together at this level, so there’s a good chance they will round into better form as the tournament goes on. You get the impression that they would be awfully dangerous if Raheem Sterling’s teammates knew where he was going (as opposed to now, where neither opponents nor teammates seem to be able to work it out.)
Plus, I suspect Rooney will be pressing a bit less now that he’s finally got a World Cup goal. I don’t know if that means the floodgates will open but hopefully he won’t miss any more sitters because he’s thinking too much.