EURO 2012

Not really. In the time I've been watching they failed to qualify in 84, lost every game in 88, were humiliated in 92, were dreadful in 00, and failed to qualify in 08. The relatively good times of 96 and 04 were the exception, rather than the norm.

i've seen every major tournament since 1990 and i'd say 2010 was about the worst they've played and the most humiliating exit. not qualifying is obv worse but if we're talking performances after they get to a tournament.

I forgot Japan 02, this was better than that

I was just comparing exits btw - 2004 was probably the best overall performance, and you can make a good case for that being the one England should've won (and spared us Greece to boot)

darragh, i do see the sense in him setting the team up this way for this tournament, and i do appreciate that coming into the job so late wasn't ideal. my concern is what happens going forward. which tbf isn't just down to hodgson but the fa as well, but still.

Really hoping for a couple of belters now in the SFs. QFs were so one-sided.

Eng comedy spirit made this the best game - not saying much.

what will happen going forward will have as much to do with the standard of available players as it does with Woy i think, he had a pretty weak deck to play with this go round

Really wished Ita won after 90 mins and destroyed Eng -- these wishy-washy heroics till pens really stop people from comfronting the v poor quality of what is produced. But yeah yeah we've had this one time and again on ILX.

Rooney clearly unfit. It was a waste of time taking him.

― Ismael Klata, Sunday, June 24, 2012 9:30 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd replace 'unfit' with 'shit' tbh. what has he got to be unfit about? he didn't look like he cared that he looked like a travesty of his 'reputation' tonight.

it's not roy or his system, it's that our players clearly can't play beyond the domestic season with anything like the effort they put in from august to may (with no mid-season break, 2 domestic cup comps, europe etc, and the insistence it seems of only picking players from the top 6 (or so, liverpool being the exception)).

we're shit and we know we are.

There was no one on the bench who would've done better than Rooney or Welbeck. Carroll wasn't any good.

they'd have done better to start with carroll and welbeck and pretend that rooney was injured. the seemingly enforced post-suspension inclusion of rooney was the downfall of this campaign.

having said that i'm more than happy not to get tonked by the germans.

He wasn't match-sharp in either game, and couldn't run after the hour mark in this one. You know why he was left on, but again that's the other major weakness of hoping something'll turn up.

thought taking off milner was odd, i felt he played very well.

Milner was wide open on the right about 500 times.

Ox for Young wd perhaps have been better than Walcott for Milner but i wdn't go as far as saying Milner played very well and the system obviously stopped at the halfway line anyway

But I mean other than Defoe, whom I do rate, what's the alternative, Grant Holt? England do not have that many good players is ultimately why they don't win things. Even with the perfect system they still wouldn't.

Not really the system, England didn't have the players to change things up in midfield, as proven by having to bring on Jordan Henderson.

Above all England's players just aren't good enough, and they need a playmaker and a clever screening midfielder desperately.

will tonight's exit have increased or decreased the value of the premier league product for 2012/13?

rights are already sold so immaterial probably

Makes no difference to the Premiership.

Quite possible that Defoe's head just wasn't right, his dad died a fortnight ago.

Nobody's watching it for the Englishmen, c'mon.

if an englisher had tried pirlo's penalty strategy and been stopped, would that englisher be now facing death threats?

can't agree that parker was any worse in his position than the average england player or that carroll was poor when he came on tonight- he won header after header without any other attacker moving to profit.

Felt england played to their 'strengths' to get as far as they did in this tourney- possession, one-touch pass and move, touch, movement- these are not english strengths. Absorbption, determination at cb and cm, darting attacks using power, delivery from wide/set plays, these are england strengths.

Hodgson's main fault was relying on rooney to make anything happen beyond that. Rooney hasn't been that guy in years. Worse, rooney was at the end of most chances that were created by a reasonably well functioning gerrard/milner/johnson unit from the right, and the odd young/cole cross from the left, so those few breaks were fuckin wasted and all.

Carroll or defoe were both better choices tonight, and blatantly so after 60 mins.

agree with all of that

Tbf, Darragh, Hodgson could have been swayed by the majestic header that Rooney scored in the previous match. 'Goal of the tournament, nay, the century,' I believe Ronan called it.

pooh-pooh grant holt a little more there lads, then consider how many league goals twp would chalk up in that team.

England no more lack players to fit a functioning system than italy- who carried a few men tonight and who have not played well bar once in this tournament- nor a couple of other teams that reached the quarters (in portugal's case, the semis)

Parker's okay and did okay, but he obviously isn't the class that's needed here. Look at the semifinalists - three of them have De Rossi, Schweinsteiger and Busquets doing that job.

i don't like rooney. a lot.

Aside from Buffon saving Johnson's shot, their best chance was Welbeck's miss after exchanging passes with Rooney. And if Carroll playing 'well' amounts to neither scoring nor linking with teammates then I don't see what the point of playing him is.

tbf to twp- and i don't like to be, he gets more praise than he has ever near merited- he is a better finisher for utd than he shows for england. And he was ok tonight on the break- for some reason he was in this role as opposed to gerrard?

England seemed set up to play with carroll as a target man but were stuck knocking balls in to a rooney who couldn't be arsed.

not carroll's fault his perfect knockdowns are ignored five or six times in 30 mins, tbh.

On tonight's performance alone i'd have him at spurs.

Parker's role isn't equivalent to di rossi's- who was poor tonight and not much cop vs us either.

Nor busquet's, tho if yr argument is 'isn't as good as spanish equivalent' then wtf at singling out parker.

Same goes for germany tbh.

i thought italy were pretty good, apart from the lack of conviction in front of goal. they passed the ball beautifully.

Yeah it sort of is his fault, if knockdowns are what a player is being judged on - if knockdowns are all he's good for, at that - he's not an international class centre forward, not in this century at any rate.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2012/6/24/1340575862376/England-woe-008.jpg

hold me, gary

oops

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2012/6/24/1340575862376/England-woe-008.jpg

Carroll looked like he's been practicing chest control but forgot to practice passing

dmac/localg were you rooting for england?

Lol, hardly anyone roots for England around these parts. Or admits to anyway.

i'm not against england in a big way but i would find it odd to cheer for them. i try to be positive towards them but can't help lolling when they concede or lose. and tonight i really didn't want them to win the penalty shoot-out because a win would have been so undeserved.

i also have italy in the sweep at work but that's neither here nor there given germany await.

i'm more interested in them being in it than not.

I'd cheer them against italy anyway.

Again, pooh-poohing a player that can turn a 60 yard hoof into a ground pass in one touch pretty much every time would be fine if england had the players in midfield to retain, recycle and use possession effectively. They don't. There was very little wrong with carroll's aerial game tonight, he probably won close to 4/5 of his headers. If young or rooney aren't waiting for the knock-on there is fuck all he can do more for them. He tried, successfully, to take a few down out of the air and bring them in, but that wasn't enticing them either- young didn't even want to be on the pitch at that stage.

RIP, I guess: A soccer fan in China has died after staying up for 11 straight nights to watch every game of Euro 2012, according to a report in Chinese newspaper Sanxiang Metropolis.

Poor guy was watching in the middle of the night, then going to work - I have a lot of respect for pandemic and his commitment to the sport but I hope he's taking care of himself.

it's a little ridiculous that the match started at 21:45 local time

this escaped me earlier but

i'm not sure what pirlo did all match that was so damaging tbph, i musta missed a few things.

yeah I think you must've! Italy couldn't finish and the opposition wasn't of the highest quality but still, that was a commanding performance.

poor chinese guy. that's exactly what i'm doing, but usually go to bed at 5am to grab at least a couple hours sleep.

Diamanti scored eight goals, though only three came from open play with most coming from penalty kicks. On 4 May 2010 he was voted runner-up as Hammer of the Year by the club's supporters, for the 2009–10 season, behind winner Scott Parker.[7]

glad wiki remembers this too. diamanti was a really fun player at west ham and commentators calling him a reject can go fuck themselves.

I only saw this from 70 mins onwards. England were fucking dour. One thing that really annoyed me was the misuse of Theo and Carroll. Carroll was doing really well in the air but with no-one following up, it was pointless. That seemed the role Gerrard should be playing. And how fucking hard is it to play a decent ball for Theo to run behind a full back? I think Scott Parker overhit one and they just thought 'its not worth it, he can't even get on the end of that one' and just decided not to play w/ him after that.

http://tf-chalkboards.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/images/09Xqy.png

Arrow: pass (blue = successful, red = unsuccessful); Arrow: defended the ball; Cross: tackle (orange: successful, purple: unsuccessful). Green heart: interception; Grey rectangle: shot by opponent blocked

Soz, circle is defended the ball

For people wondering why Pirlo was so great last night. He was the heart and soul of this Italy.

Plus, Italy had 36 shots at the goal, a record this tournament:

http://tf-chalkboards.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/images/09hRx.png

Ha, nice stats! England's one shot on target there from superstriker Glen Johnson.

It'll all be OK; we've got Jack Wilshere.