Spain v England - Sun 14th July, 20:00 | Euro 2024 Final

[alexmcity]

Johnny Boulders was immense in CD.

Imagine what attacking outlet he could have been had he used him in the DM role that Pep uses him for.

Stones would look ordinary in midfield without Rodri and Gundogan next to him. Like Villa away ordinary, where a Pep team got dominated like never before.

Stones's role in midfield is to help Rodri but he can't be effective without Rodri. Generally, what Rodri does is extremely difficult, but a bit too subtle to be appreciated at times. He makes it look easy.

 

[meltonblue]

I'm pretty sure I said "on paper". On paper, man-for-man England should have a squad playing as well as Spain, but they aren't obviously. You can't possibly tell me a squad with PL's PotS, Bundesliga top scorer, La Liga's PotS isn't meant to be a good team? I've held the one holding them back is Southgate. England haven't been playing well all tournament, I think I said as much before.

Maybe you see an overrated team, I see a team with very good players wasted by a poor coach.

Again, I reiterate I don't support England. I have no dog in this Euro fight. I was hoping for the more attractive side to win, thus Spain.

Ultimately though, those individuals don’t suit playing with each other. The right answer is one of those players needs to be dropped.

 

[Akira]

Ultimately though, those individuals don’t suit playing with each other. The right answer is one of those players needs to be dropped.

Possibly. I think that's the obvious, probably easiest, way out.

I still believe however, a better mind can fit it all together. Pep made David Silva and KdB, 2 natural #10s, play as #8s together.

 

[shevtheblue]

Stones would look ordinary in midfield without Rodri and Gundogan next to him. Like Villa away ordinary, where a Pep team got dominated like never before.

Stones's role in midfield is to help Rodri but he can't be effective without Rodri. Generally, what Rodri does is extremely difficult, but a bit too subtle to be appreciated at times. He makes it look easy.

Stones is not a 6, the quicker people get this the better. This is the beauty of Rodri, he lifts guys around them so that they can play roles they've never played before. Akanji, Stones, Gvardiol, Zinchenko all off the top of my head. Wharton should have been blooded into the role of 6, there were at least 3 fucking left backs who could have been called up. But Southgate is a creature of comfort and his comfort zone is all out protection with as little risk as possible. Coaches nowadays balance that risk with control, giving the players the responsibility to keep the ball - this is alien to Southgate and the reason England will never progress to that next phase with him.

 

[alexmcity]

I'm pretty sure I said "on paper". On paper, man-for-man England should have a squad playing as well as Spain, but they aren't obviously. You can't possibly tell me a squad with PL's PotS, Bundesliga top scorer, La Liga's PotS isn't meant to be a good team? I've held the one holding them back is Southgate. England haven't been playing well all tournament, I think I said as much before.

Maybe you see an overrated team, I see a team with very good players wasted by a poor coach.

Again, I reiterate I don't support England. I have no dog in this Euro fight. I was hoping for the more attractive side to win, thus Spain.

Pep can help England perform at their best. Klopp maybe, too. The rest I'm not sure.

Southgate is mediocre but very lucky with draws. Better managers may have to play Spain, France or Brazil before the quarters...England had great generations before and top managers but failed.

The closest they came to being the best was in 1990. Had they won the WC in 1990, it wouldn't have been due to luck. Top team that.

 

[SamBlue]

And this is Spain's second one, forget about the price but I never saw him playing so bad, positional and situational awareness of single-cell organism. Defensive MF role something you are never supposed to complain about to him. The very moment he is left on his own to cover central MF he falls apart.

 

[meltonblue]

Possibly. I think that's the obvious, probably easiest, way out.

I still believe however, a better mind can fit it all together. Pep made David Silva and KdB, 2 natural #10s, play as #8s together.

I don’t think it’s easy as people will expect all three to start. I think it’s the most logical though.

Bear in mind it’s international football, there isn’t the time to work on complex systems or to expect a player to fulfil a completely different role to what they are at least slightly used to.

To me it’s more keep it simple and decide who you want to focus on and build around. Southgate tried to accommodate a few of them and ended up building around no one.

 

[ninjamonkey]

All that means fuck all if you don’t turn up. Then when you do, play the drab, slow, pointless stuff you served up, could it be you are blinded by how good the Prem is? It’s that good because the players you mentioned have better foreign players around them. You struggled to get to the final and you had an easy ride. Swap you over to the other side of the draws no you would have been home a week ago. At least.

To me, the only player who turned up was Stones. The lad was brilliant. The rest? Well you saw the rest.

They've been the best players for the best teams in Europe, they weren't carried by anybody, they did the carrying if anything. If you compared the two starting 11s for the final before the tournament, you're taking maybe 3/4 spanish players maximum other the English players and the England bench is vastly superior.

I'm not blinded by anything, we play shit football because of the manager, it's nothing more complicated than that, we all know it and have been saying so for years. trying to claim the players aren't as good as we think when they've proven they are for their clubs is just a weird stance to take.

 

[axlgod]

England lose, Southgate is a tactically inept dinosaur and we play complete and utter cat shit.
….but hey, at least they’re all friends.

Fuck off Big nose you fucking big nose ****.

 

[supercity88]

They've been the best players for the best teams in Europe, they weren't carried by anybody, they did the carrying if anything. If you compared the two starting 11s for the final before the tournament, you're taking maybe 3/4 spanish players maximum other the English players and the England bench is vastly superior.

I'm not blinded by anything, we play shit football because of the manager, it's nothing more complicated than that, we all know it and have been saying so for years. trying to claim the players aren't as good as we think when they've proven they are for their clubs is just a weird stance to take.

We lack the quality in critical positions - deep lying playmaker and goalkeeper but as a squad we were better than Spain and the manager just didn't have the ability to work things out.

He tried to fit the best players and ended up with a lop sided system.