Yes, France is pushing hard.
WTF is with England? They are getting forced to defend most of the time.
England are not any good, don’t have enough players skilled enough to simply keep the ball and probe for an opening and, as a result, all our attacks fizzle out into crosses too high for our smurf like front line to get a head to - whereupon France pick the ball up and get to play with it a bit more. This is why we’re defending a lot.
In fairness, we’ve had a better last 5 mins for keeping the ball.
Good save by mighty Joe Hart.
Followed by a genuinely good spell of possession football by us, just to confound me.
This isn’t a bad performance, but I think we’ll be fortunate if we escape with a draw.
Pretty standard for us, are players are not great technically. We’re at our best attacking on the break.
Edit - A stat has just popped up on the ITV coverage. France have made about 50% more passes at an 80% completion rate to our 70%. That says it all really.
Oxlade Chamberlain for Defoe. I dare say, in the words of Mike Bassett, England will be playing 4-4-fucking-2 from now on with Welbeck and Defoe up front.
Theo Walcott coming in, it looks like.
1-1.
England needs to attack if they are to win this cup.
A draw. Well done England - but parking the bus and getting one on the break or from a set piece is not going to be enough against better sides than the French.
I’m getting sick and tired of Alexi Lalas on ESPN.
Sprouting inane opinions with absolute conviction. Michael Ballack is just too polite to remind him that he played all of 1 season with a 2nd rate Serie A team and to tell him to please shut up now.
I’ll take that result. England actually played fairly well for about 25 minutes until they scored, but then reverted to the old pattern of sitting deeper and deeper, soaking up attacks and then giving the ball straight back to them for another go.
Second half must have been pretty tedious for neutrals, sorry about that!
Pretty happy with that. Not great, but respectable, and something we can perhaps build on. No one let us down, and the players and manager can feel pleased with themselves. Apart from a rocky 15 minutes before half time we competed with France, and it’s not easy playing in that heat. The two later starts will suit us a bit better, and we get Rooney back for the last group game. The big question is, can we beat Sweden or Ukraine?
Watching Mike Basset - England Manager again after our inglorious exit from the World Cup was the highlight of the tournament for me. 
Realistically, a good tournament for us would be to get through the group and lose a quarter final on penalties. It’s not impossible that we could grow into the tournament and go further, but the odds are against it.
England did better than I expected, while France disappointed. Just like the Dutch and (to some extend) the Spanish, there always seemed to be a lack of presence in the box. They didn’t get much further than shooting from range (partly due to England playing two lines of 4 defenders).
The second half was probably the worst we’ve seen this tournament (from a neutral’s perspective), but I think the heat might have had something to do with that. The whole game seemed to be played at a stroll; quite the opposite from yesterdays rain drenched game between Ireland and Croatia.
I’d think so. There are reasons to be hopeful from what happened today.
Unspectacular from England but given the rocky road into the tournament I think the best we could have hoped for was to see a team that was organised. I think that is what we got.
We are never going to set the tournament on fire but defending deeper and attacking on the break is a legitimate strategy providing you can a) defend with shape and discipline, b) be quick and incisive on the break. We managed a) pretty well but b) is still lacking.
We did defend too deep for that goal but the really encouraging thing was that they seemed able to rectify that in the second half and held a much better line. Cause for hope (I’ll take whatever I can)
(Personally I’d prefer c) actually keeping the ball and crafting openings in the final third but until we undo 60 years of football mental conditioning I hold out little hope.)
So… a point. No shame in that and for once there appeared to be a clear plan, even if the execution of it lacked quality. I’m watching the Sweden - Ukraine game now and to be honest, I reckon France could utterly dick them both and we can stand toe to toe with either and have a decent chance.
Fairytale stuff from Shevchenko. This game has certainly picked up after a dull first 30 minutes.
I thought the whole game was fantastic, very high energy the whole time. I picked Sweden (my first bad pick! Argh!), but it was a great game to watch.
Going to be lots of happy Ukranians tonight.
I couldn’t believe it yesterday when Bob Ley started asking Lalas to predict how Italy would set their lineup with Giuseppe Rossi sitting right there. Maybe ask the Italian player what the Italian team will do, rather than the guy who last played for a Serie A team in 1996?
The American commentators are annoying in general. Kasey Keller’s asinine ramblings are nearly intolerable after listening to the British commentators. I’m already shuddering in anticipation of him continuing to mangle Bastian Schweinsteiger’s name all Wednesday afternoon.
Agreed. Most drama I’ve seen in an international since Turkey came back to win at the death in… the 2006 World Cup, maybe? Shevchenko looked like his old self today: deadly with a single touch, kind of underwhelming when moving with the ball at his feet.
I, well, can’t imagine how bad the US commentators must be if you find the British ones to be superior.
Still, on the plus side, I managed to watch England vs France while remaining totally neutral and not indulging in any “Scottishism”. I’m proud of that.