Starts in less than a fortnight in France.
The friendlies are on. England beat Turkey and Australia by 2-1.
Germany are currently losing to Slovakia.
These friendly aren’t the same rosters, right?
Germany have to be pretty large favorites.
Squads been named today. Marcus Rashford is going to the Euros. What a rise for that lad.
Danny Drinkwater is not, what a farcical decision. The best Center Half in the Prem, and he goes with Jack Wheelchair.
Conte leaves out Pirlo…
No Marco Reus for Germany.
Germany ended up losing to Slovakia. Defeats for the Germans in the pre-tournament build-up usually mean one thing; Germany, 2016 European Champions. We may as well award them the trophy now!
I would love to see Vardy take this tournament by storm.
I would be surprised if Vardy gets playtime. Roy seems to go for names rather than actual form.
Sterling, Henderson, Wiltshire, Barkley should not be in the team on current form.
I think the least Vardy will get is a super-sub who will feature n every game, though I think more likely him and Kane will be our starters.
Drinkwater is a midfielder, not a Centre Half, so he’s not the best Centre Half in the Premiership. He’s also not even the best midfielder on his own team (Kante) never mind in the Premiership.
On balance, i’d still rather he went than one of Wilshire or Henderson though - Sturridge is a perpetual injury concern and carrying those two additionally with their injury history (Henderson’s over the short term, Wilshire’s over the long), strikes me as needlessly risky. Drinkwater would be the presumptive cover for Dier - who Hodgson appears to have fallen in love with as the defensive midfielder.
All this is probably inconsequential anyway - as in every tournament, the minute England play one of the historically established big nations, we’ll get knocked out.
Germany’s wobbles are interesting - beaten by us, Ireland and by Slovakia this season alone. Think France might well be the ones to win this.
Belgium is my dark horse favs to win. Germany is really going to miss Klose and Lahm.
This is a result of Center-Half not being apparently obvious to people not from England ;). At one point in the 2-3-5, the Center-Half was a midfielder, but as it dropped back, it became a Central Defender.
You read Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting The Pyramid? If not, and you’re so minded, would recommend. He goes into all of this swapping and changing and renaming of positions - and starts chucking around some proper analysis of how Eastern European coaches (an area of specialty for him) drove some of this in the 50-70s. It’s a decent book.
Yep… that’s where I realized why Brits call the Central defense “Centre-Half”.
With the team they have, I don’t think you can call Belgium a “dark horse”. In any case, I think they won’t get too far, because they will be happy when they get out of the group. It is the problem of many teams that don’t regularly get far in tournaments: they are satisfied easily. They acted the same in Brazil two years ago. You won’t find any Germans that think getting to the quarter finals is an achievement.
PS I’m saying this as a very annoyed Dutchman that regularly interacts with out neighbors to the south. If Belgium won, I wouldn’t hear the end of it
It would be cool to have a nation win their first title. Would love for Wales to be the next Greece.
Belgium are currently second in the FIFA world rankings, behind only Argentina. Current world champions Germany are fifth, so that probably says more about FIFA’s ranking system.
Some interesting smaller countries participating this time:
Iceland: first ever major tournament, population of a medium-sized city
Albania: first ever major tournament
Wales: first Euros, first major tournament since 1958
Northern Ireland: first Euros, first major tournament since 1986
Austria: never qualified for Euros before, did co-host in 2008
Now, this could in part be due to the somewhat ludicrous increase in participating teams from 16 to 24 (since there are only 55 associations in UEFA in the first place), but Austria completely stormed their qualifying group, Northern Ireland won theirs too, Iceland have been knocking on the door for a while having nearly made it to the last World Cup, and Wales also qualified fairly comfortably.
The only one that scraped through is Albania, in part thanks to a bizzare game against Serbia being abandoned and eventually awarded to them (a typically bad-tempered Balkan derby against Serbia in which trouble ensued when a drone flew over the stadium bearing an Albanian flag.)
The 24-team format is never ideal. Fully two thirds of the teams will advance to the knockout phase, with complicated criteria to decide the four best third-placed teams. Surely even England, who don’t have a great record at the Euros, can manage third place? 
This could also be the last Euros that has the traditional country-based format. The next one will be played all over Europe (presumably with group games near each other) with the semi-finals and final in London.
The difference between Germany, Spain and England is revealing.
Unfit iike Rues? Dropped. Bad form like Mata? Cut.
In case of England, if you are wheelchair bound like Wiltshire, Sturridge or Henderson you are picked, Do sweet fuck all with your talent, picked like Sterling (I mean the guy who is being kept out of the Man City squad by Jesus Navas).
Win premier league, not called up (Albrighton) or cut (Drinkwater). Listening to Hodgson’s press conference, his excuse were down right cringeworthy, “we aren’t taking Drinkwater cause well we have had been working as a team for two years and he was last man in”. Yeah, like you are taking Rashford, the long serving veteren. :rolleyes:
Then again, this is the country which rarely and never played people like Matt Le Tisser and Steve Bruce.
I don’t think the difference between the likes of Germany and Spain, and England, is down to wisdom of squad choices. Anyone can play pick-your-squad (me, I don’t think Sturridge is all that, even when fit), but the England squad as selected is not massively far from optimal. Danny Drinkwater, great as his season may have been, is not a make-or-break player, come on.
No, the reason England will not win this tournament is the same as it has always been – we don’t produce technically proficient players. It doesn’t matter much who the manager is. In fact, “England manager” has to be the best paid job in the world, relative to how much difference you can make.
It must be international footie season when you can hear the gnashing of English teeth across the Atlantic.
This is my thinking as well. Hosts and all. And I haven’t seen convincing signs of the other usual major players pulling themselves together properly, not even Germany, yet. So either France or a “dark horse”* like Belgium. We shall see.
*I guess they a dark horse because they haven’t won it before. Powerful side, though.
That phrase implies a certain degree of anger and discord, but I’m not sure it applies to England fans of my, um… experience. We know that we’re very much in that second tier of international teams who could beat an elite team on a good day, but who you wouldn’t expect to actually win a tournament. That said, second- or third-tier teams like Denmark and Greece have done it, so it’s possible.