EPTEngland vs Italy - Quarterfinal 4 - Page 38
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Pantagruel
United States1427 Posts
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Aeroplaneoverthesea
United Kingdom1977 Posts
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9704 Posts
The fact is the England team is awful. The players aren't very good. There are 3 players good enough to be in the quarter finals of this tournament: Hart, Gerrard and Rooney (on his day). The rest of the team is, frankly, terrible. The players are either old and slow, never had any pace to begin with, or those with pace have no end product or ball control. How were they meant to play, like Barcelona?? England played the only way they could with their team, they tried desperately not to let the better team win. I would compare it to an NPower Championship club playing Manchester United. | ||
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Aeroplaneoverthesea
United Kingdom1977 Posts
On June 25 2012 09:59 Jockmcplop wrote: I'm fed up of people saying that England were awful or embarrasing somehow. The fact is the England team is awful. The players aren't very good. There are 3 players good enough to be in the quarter finals of this tournament: Hart, Gerrard and Rooney (on his day). The rest of the team is, frankly, terrible. The players are either old and slow, never had any pace to begin with, or those with pace have no end product or ball control. How were they meant to play, like Barcelona?? England played the only way they could with their team, they tried desperately not to let the better team win. I would compare it to an NPower Championship club playing Manchester United. Ashley Cole, Terry and Lescott are more than good enough. There's no reason we can't play better football than the shower of shite we showed all tournament. When Greece are the closest team to you in terms of play style you're doing something wrong. Our formations, tactics and team selection were very poor. | ||
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gasmeter
United Kingdom249 Posts
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ecstatica
United States542 Posts
On June 25 2012 09:59 Jockmcplop wrote: I'm fed up of people saying that England were awful or embarrasing somehow. The fact is the England team is awful. The players aren't very good. There are 3 players good enough to be in the quarter finals of this tournament: Hart, Gerrard and Rooney (on his day). The rest of the team is, frankly, terrible. The players are either old and slow, never had any pace to begin with, or those with pace have no end product or ball control. How were they meant to play, like Barcelona?? England played the only way they could with their team, they tried desperately not to let the better team win. I would compare it to an NPower Championship club playing Manchester United. Being from UK you should know that soccer is a team sport. Individual skill of specific players often has very little impact on the outcome of the game. Otherwise Brazil and Argentina would have won every WC. You can argue against veteran players but dont only blame your loss on a shitty roster. They got outplayed by a better coached, physically and tactically sound squad that wanted it more. | ||
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don_kyuhote
3006 Posts
2006 WC semi = went to OT (won) 2006 WC final = went to penalties (won) 2008 Euro quarter = went to penalties (lost) 2012 Euro quarter = went to penalties (won) | ||
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ecstatica
United States542 Posts
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Sphaero
Germany1697 Posts
On June 25 2012 09:30 Pantagruel wrote: Balotelli played well today even though he didn't put his chances away. He constantly made himself available for the midfield and he tracked back to recover the ball on a number of occasions. He was threatening almost the entire match until the end of the game when I suspect he got fatigued. People just like to rag on him because he is a lunatic off the field. Playing well is more then just scoring goals, there are many other important factors to look at, even for a striker. The bold is in theory true. The problem with Balotelli is, that he is essentially a finisher of chances and not someone, who also creates them like Striker like Germany´s Klose or France´s Benzema for example. Italy also doesn´t play a style that requires for Balotelli to play strong defensively. Balotellis job in the team is easily explained. To score goals! Ca. 80 % of Italy´s chances had Balotelli as last man on the ball. Several of these chances were huge and Balotelli managed to waste them all. I can assure you that such failures would be deadly against stronger teams like the three remaining Semifinalists. Exactly for that reason I also can´t agree on Italy playing brilliantly today. Call me conservative, but for me part of playing good football involves scoring. The setup of chances was strong at times, but the execution was weak. This inability brought them on the edge of elimination today. If they don´t work on their efficiency (aside of the game vs. Spain a general problem of them in this competition), they will rightfully not win anything this year. | ||
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ecstatica
United States542 Posts
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Aeroplaneoverthesea
United Kingdom1977 Posts
Di Natale is also 34 and if Balotelli ever gets his mental game straight he'll be a great player so it's better to invest in him now in the hope he pays off long term. I think Balotelli with Di Natale from the bench is their best option. | ||
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Sanctimonius
United Kingdom861 Posts
Johnson - cannot defend, and apparently cannot score either. Micah Richards should have been here, and he may have to move from City for the sake of his club and country career. That said Johnson had a decent enough game putting in some last ditch tackles, but playing him means we had to play: Milner - offers little but enthusiasm, he had to play just to support Johnson. Between the two of them you end up with one decent defender, I guess, but we offer little going forward. Walcott can at least scare defenders with pace, while Lennon has a bit of the jiggery-pokery about him. Neither can cross for beans, though, so hopefully Adam Johnson comes good. Speaking of offering little going forward: Young - simply terrible at this tournament, and playing out of position isn't an excuse. If you don't like being on the left wing then bloody cut inside where you prefer to be. I would have much rather seen Baines here offering support to Cole, since Young didn't bother for much of the tournament. Cole and Baines, both of whom can defend and both of whom can attack, would have worked quite nicely, but instead Cole was left to do all of the defending and some of the attacking himself. For as much as people here are slating Lescott, I thought him and Terry played well together, it's just a shame that neither can move faster than Hart. Same with Gerrard and Parker - he allowed Gerrard to finally play like he does for Liverpool and we saw it in action for England, him ranging about the middle creating chances. Shame it took til the end of his career to be played this way. Sadly England just weren't good enough to get further, and like I said they outdid their potential. Rooney was very short of match fitness so he couldn't do much, it's a shame Welbeck and Carroll didn't get more time together. But we have some decent youth coming through, so hopefully we'll get a team organised and used to playing the way Hodgson wants them to - let's not forget he took over the team for less than two months. Can any of you remember any manager going so far with a poor team in sich a short time? But changes cannot come soon enough - we have a lot of the Old Guard...getting old, I guess. Terry, Ferdinand, Cole, Gerrard, Parker, Lampard - all over thirty. Do they have another tournament in them? Do we really want to find out...? Grats to Italy btw. They struggled to break us down and they'll have to step it up, but the better team won in the end and they deserved it more, for all that we fought. They were just better. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On June 25 2012 10:47 Sphaero wrote: The bold is in theory true. The problem with Balotelli is, that he is essentially a finisher of chances and not someone, who also creates them like Striker like Germany´s Klose or France´s Benzema for example. Italy also doesn´t play a style that requires for Balotelli to play strong defensively. Balotellis job in the team is easily explained. To score goals! Ca. 80 % of Italy´s chances had Balotelli as last man on the ball. Several of these chances were huge and Balotelli managed to waste them all. I can assure you that such failures would be deadly against stronger teams like the three remaining Semifinalists. Exactly for that reason I also can´t agree on Italy playing brilliantly today. Call me conservative, but for me part of playing good football involves scoring. The setup of chances was strong at times, but the execution was weak. This inability brought them on the edge of elimination today. If they don´t work on their efficiency (aside of the game vs. Spain a general problem of them in this competition), they will rightfully not win anything this year. Balotelli didn't waste chances. This is such a media impression and it's starting to annoy me. He did what he had to do. You can't score on anything but crosses or luck if the opposing team is playing 10 men behind the ball all game. Yes, Balo for sure missed chances against Spain; I agree with you there. Today, though? I can think of one chance on which he waited too long. The rest of the misses were a combination of extremely passionate England defense and bad luck. In order to finish you need to be in a winnable position. You can't have 3 defenders still between you and the net (and in some cases, between you and the ball). It's just unrealistic. It had less to do with Balotelli and more to do with people like Montolivo wanting to carry the ball up the middle. Di Natale is a good player, but only against teams who play a passing style and who don't have a tall defense that restricts service. He'd be useless against Germany, but useful against Spain/Portugal. He would have been worthless against England. Italy should have opted for wide plays into crosses from the start, rather than from 80 minutes onward. Italy played far from perfectly, but scoring against a super-defensive play-for-penalties style isn't something that you just do. It's something that takes a fair amount of luck. Trapp era Italy was the same way. We'd lose 1-0, win 1-0, or go to extra time/PKs. It wasn't that the other team sucked or something; it's just that when there's 11 people between you and the back of the net, the numbers are against you. | ||
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skrzmark
United States1528 Posts
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On June 25 2012 11:54 skrzmark wrote: Bench Cassano for Di Natale. That would be an auto-loss. Di Natale is a goal-scorer, not a creative player. If anything, do 4-3-3 with Gio/Cassano/Balotelli and then sub Cassano for Di Natale late. THAT would score goals. | ||
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skrzmark
United States1528 Posts
On June 25 2012 11:58 Shiori wrote: That would be an auto-loss. Di Natale is a goal-scorer, not a creative player. If anything, do 4-3-3 with Gio/Cassano/Balotelli and then sub Cassano for Di Natale late. THAT would score goals. seems like what Italy needs are goal scorers : ) | ||
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alderamin
80 Posts
I still have to be convinced that this guy is something special football-wise. So far I don't see the skill or see the results. Surely he is something special. I remember the CL game where he refused to run after a ball after he came in. That was funny as hell. Back then I had no idea who he was. But for some reason he was pissed off about something. People act like he would be much better if he weren't crazy and that he is wasting his talent. That may be the case. But that's just speculation. Put Messi's brain in Ronaldo's body and we have the perfect player. But is either one of those two wasting something by not being that perfect player? The guy only scores 26 points out of a 100 for golden ball top scorer award. And he even gets bonus points for playing in the premier league. And it's a bit easier scoring goals for the champion than it is for a mid table finisher. There are mid table midfielders ahead of Balotelli, scoring-wise. http://eurorivals.net/top-scorers.html It's not a complete picture, but when he starts to score really a lot of important goals or carries his team through games, then come back and tell me he has Messi/Ronaldo talent. Right now he is doing crazy stuff, telling people he is a genius and just brainfarting. People like Messi can think 3 steps ahead. He couldn't think about the next step. The guy has obvious athletic ability and very good ball control and an excellent shot. The guy has a lot of things going for him to make him a top player. But right now he is way overrated. | ||
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EchoZ
Japan5041 Posts
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NarutO
Germany18839 Posts
Also, like a Buffon. | ||
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NarutO
Germany18839 Posts
On June 25 2012 13:14 alderamin wrote: Put Messi's brain in Ronaldo's body and we have the perfect player. But is either one of those two wasting something by not being that perfect player? Cristiano Ronaldo is good, but Messi still is on another level. Also even if you put Messi's brain in Ronaldo's body, he would still fall like a fly with every touch of his opponents...~~ | ||
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