Welcome to Concacaf, lol. Mexico fans have been shining lasers into US players faces for years without sanction.
Those are also four countries. In English, either term is correct.
Wait, but England is in the Euro, right? Why doesn’t Wales, Scotland, and N. Ireland play?
They do. Wales and Scotland qualified, but NI didn’t. Europe has 55 countries that play soccer, but only 24 make the Euro tournament.
Oh, thanks. I seemed to have misunderstood based on my (rather quick) reading of this thread.
Scotland actually played England and managed a 0-0 draw.
I feel like we may get a high scoring match in this Final. Only 1 of the last 9 Euro finals produced more than 2 goals in normal time. And the one exception was due to 2 late goals from Spain in 2012 when Italy was desperate at the end.
I don’t know how it’ll pan out to be honest. If both play at their best it looks like goals are guaranteed but any team can misfire on the day.
I’d like England to win of course but Italy were my pick on form and I still think it is 60/40 in their favour but…a one-off final at Wembley may even that up a bit.
Heck, after multiple dissappointments over decades I’m just happy that England are getting to the pointy end of tournaments and playing in a mostly entertaining way with purpose and a plan, we certainly have the tools to win but If Italy win they’ll be worthy champions as well and I’ll raise a glass of primitivo to them.
There are already a lot of “It’s coming Rome” memes from Italians online.
Italy hasn’t won the Euro since 1968 and England never, so I don’t understand the “home” (or Rome) reference.
England is the home of football since it was invented here. In 1996 there was a popular song called Three Lions that popularised the phrase “Football’s coming home” as the Euro 1996 was held here.
Since then the phrase has come to mean a major trophy is coming back to England, Rome is obviously just a play on home.
For the pedantics in the audience, the game we now recognise as Association Football was formally established here in the mid 19th century, with rules and teams and leagues. There are, no doubt, many countries that can claim to have played a game that involves kicking around a round object for many centuries.
As you were.
The BBC delves into how Sweet Caroline became an English football anthem:
Summary: It did start with the Boston Red Sox in the 1990s, and has spread to lots of other sports around the world. It has a simple melody and rousing lyrics which makes it easy for a crowd singalong.
Thanks for the link!
The Italians will be out with their excellent signs on Sunday
This does touch a nerve in Scotland though that is a bit more than pedantry. The current game stems from rules that were written down in England in 1863. But that game was very different from the one we that has been played since the 1870s. For example, any player could catch the ball, and you could not pass to any player who was in front of you (ie the offside rule was the same as that of rugby). Players ran around in a huddle and the game looked more like rugby than our idea of football.
It was Queen’s Park FC in Glasgow that invented the modern passing game, with players spread out from each other, out of those rules in the late 1860s. There appears to be no doubt that QP’s approach was revolutionary, that without them we would not have the popular game we watch today. Leagues came 20 years later. But will you hear any of this on UK TV in the next few days? I hae ma douts.
This sounds a bit like the claim that John Logie Baird invented television when he did nothing of the sort. He did contribute to it though and it was an important contribution.
Football in various forms has been played across Europe with both Scots and English contributions through the last few centuries, but difficult to pick one out and say “that was the moment”. The first football association, professional clubs and organised leagues were all in England, hence the claim to be the origin of the modern era of the game. It seems fair to me, though getting organised first is maybe not the same as “invented the game”.
The John Logie Baird claim is bullshit. This isn’t. The fact that you cite professional clubs and organised leagues as being relevant, when in fact they didn’t appear until more than 20 years after the period in question, suggests you are not quite the expert on football history.
I’m unclear how a 20 year period between those things has any relevance whatsoever to my point - which is that there were tons of innovations and varieties of football over the many years (centuries!) preceding the organisation of leagues and associations. And I’ve not tried to claim I’m an expert on football history, I’m just interpreting what I’ve read differently from you. If you are a football historian however please let us know - what a terrific person to have on the Dope!
If you want to reply feel free but after that let’s get back to the Euros as this thread is derailing.
I’m sorry for the snarky reply but I’m talking about a very specific period of the game’s development which I now find was slightly later than I thought but still well before the development of professional football. I’m not a football historian either but this wikipedia article sums it up:
“In the south east of England as the coordinated system of ‘backing up’ began to decline, the systematic passing game of Queen’s Park would eventually win through. It was England’s 5–1 defeat in 1882 to a Scotland team featuring seven Queen’s Park players which led to Nicholas Lane Jackson, a prominent member of the FA, creating the famous Corinthians team.”
The article does explain that Cambridge Uni AFC developed more modern formations in the 1880s. However my point is about the assumption is that everything to do with association football was pioneered in England.
In fact Scotland had a unignorable influence starting at the time when outfield players were still catching the ball, when in reality the game the professionals played later didn’t even exist. So in Scotland we will never regard England as the “home” of football, no matter how many times that chorus is repeated.