Euro 2024

[HawkMan]

12 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

Question for those who follow Association Football more closely -

Do you know who any of these Scottish players are?

 

As a follower of Association Football or " football " as it is apparently known as, the Scottish players are pretty well known. Robertson is the captain of Liverpool, Mctominay is at Man Utd,  McGinn star player for Aston Villa,  pus a few Celtic players and English championship players thrown in.

Edited June 14, 2024 by HawkMan

[unapologetic pedant]

Ben Thaler would have taken 5 mins to make that decision. 

[17 stone giant]

That's a penalty and red card for me.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Penalty coming here, potential red card. Could this get any worse for Scotland?

[unapologetic pedant]

19 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

As a follower of Association Football or " football " as it is apparently known as, the Scottish players are pretty well known. Robertson is the captain of Liverpool, Mctominay is at Man Utd,  McGinn star player for Aston Villa,  pus a few Celtic players and English championship players thrown in.

I'm stuck in the era when almost all the Scottish national team played in the English first division. We just assumed any from the SPL were rubbish.

Pity the infamous Hansen collision v Soviet Union was with the unknown Willie Miller. Would have been a lot funnier had it been Souness.

Edited June 14, 2024 by unapologetic pedant
Wrong opposition

[unapologetic pedant]

3 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Penalty coming here, potential red card. Could this get any worse for Scotland?

We want 8.

[HawkMan]

4 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Penalty coming here, potential red card. Could this get any worse for Scotland?

Or better for an Englishman.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

1 minute ago, HawkMan said:

Or better for an Englishman.

Well me and my brother are certainly have a good time watching this!

[17 stone giant]

I was disappointed that Porteous got sent off. I wanted it to be McGinn.

[Maximus Decimus]

33 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

Question for those who follow Association Football more closely -

Do you know who any of these Scottish players are?

Worth noting that by 2021, Scotland hadnae qualified for major finals since devolution.

People don't like to mention they've only qualified since because they added another 8 teams to the Euros.

If I'm being kind, they might have done it anyway this time. 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

 

[Maximus Decimus]

5 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

Or better for an Englishman.

I used to want Scotland to do well, like I would Wales or Ireland.

Then I got the sort of Scottish brother-in-law who buys Croatia tops when they knock us out, with his extended family being openly anti-English and not in a banter way. I know it's not all Scotland but it makes it hard. 

[unapologetic pedant]

3 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

 

Poor old Fiercy McFierceface.

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

Its been so easy for Germany, they've been able to go out and play their attacking football without any worry of any sort of attacking threat coming from Scotland.

[Maximus Decimus]

57 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

Just realised Maximus said a couple of decades of seriously bad performance and I went back further than that, but I think my point still stands. For example, Euro 2012 we lost on penalties to Italy. They were the better team, but with a bit of luck in the shootout we'd have been in a semi final.

There are plenty of examples where penalties have stopped us from doing much better, and others where we've met the eventual winners early. I said a couple of decades, but would discount 2004 and partly 2002.

That 2012 game was probably as poor as I've seen an England team play. We also played Ukraine before it in one of the worst winning performances I've ever seen. We used to be unable to string a couple of passes together.

Another good example was 2010. We apparently had a decent squad but were lucky to draw 1-1 with the USA, had a 0-0 with Algeria and scraped through against Slovenia. We were actually favourites before getting pummelled by Germany.

Southgate hasn't eliminated these type of games (USA in 2022, Scotland 2020) but byenlarge we've won the games we're supposed to and won them well. The result has been a far more positive tournament experience for the last 3. Even in losing to France, we gave a very good account of ourselves and were arguably the better team. 

You could argue a better manager would've got us over the line, but there is no reason to even suspect they would have done. 

[unapologetic pedant]

15 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

I'm stuck in the era when almost all the Scottish national team played in the English first division. We just assumed any from the SPL were rubbish.

Pity the infamous Hansen collision v Soviet Union was with the unknown Willie Miller. Would have been a lot funnier had it been Souness.

Continuing the theme, Alan Rough didn't exactly cover himself in glory after the collision. He was another I thought was a mug from the SPL.

However, credit where it's due. Went to Bolton v Partick Thistle Anglo-Scottish Cup 1977. Result 0-0. Alan Rough was the main reason it finished scoreless. He had a great game. Must have been one of those keepers who was a brilliant shot-stopper but prone to gaffes.

[unapologetic pedant]

Contrast with RL.

Germans and neutrals won't be whining about blowouts or fretting about viewers switching off. They'll just want more goals and more attempts on goal.

 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Great goal!

[17 stone giant]

1 minute ago, Maximus Decimus said:

byenlarge we've won the games we're supposed to and won them well.

We haven't always won them well. In 2018 we beat Tunisia 2-1. We beat them 2-0 in France 98.

But you're kind of making the point others of us have made. We beat the teams we're supposed to beat - which is what England have mostly always done. The Iceland game is really a standout because it's the one time that England have lost to a team that nobody expected us to lose to. That just hasn't happened in other tournaments. We've had mediocre results in group stages over the years many times - 1986 0-0 with Morocco, 1996 1-1 with Switzerland, etc. but we still got out of the group, so ultimately it didn't matter.

I'll just focus on 2018 under Southgate:

England beat Tunisia 2-1, Panama 6-1, lost 1-0 to Belgium. So in the group stages, we lost to the one recognised decent team.

Then it was 1-1 with Columbia (win on pens), a decent 2-0 against Sweden (I say decent because our results against them have often been poor, not because Sweden are a giant of international football).

Then it was a 2-1 to defeat to Croatia in the SF, followed by  a 2-0 3rd place playoff defeat to Belgium. Now, we can say who cares about the 3rd place playoff, but maybe Belgium didn't care that much either - and they still beat us 2-0.

On what planet is that an amazing performance by England on Southgate? And as I said above, had we lost the penalty shootout in the last 16, nobody would have considered that to be a good World Cup.

My honest opinion is that Southgate gets an easy ride because he's such a great bloke - it's impossible to dislike him. If he was an abrasive character like Mourinho, his record would be treated much more harshly than it is. In fact, an less likeable character probably wouldn't even still be in the job.

[gingerjon]

Oh, that's disappointing. VAR has chalked off a penalty and now a goal for offside.

But it's still 4-0 for Germany. Loving it.

[unapologetic pedant]

Some of Britain's most notoriously misanthropic serial killers were Scottish.

Blame the weather and the Fitba. 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Bloody hell!! And that was Scotland's first shot of the entire game.

[Maximus Decimus]

10 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

We haven't always won them well. In 2018 we beat Tunisia 2-1. We beat them 2-0 in France 98.

But you're kind of making the point others of us have made. We beat the teams we're supposed to beat - which is what England have mostly always done. The Iceland game is really a standout because it's the one time that England have lost to a team that nobody expected us to lose to. That just hasn't happened in other tournaments. We've had mediocre results in group stages over the years many times - 1986 0-0 with Morocco, 1996 1-1 with Switzerland, etc. but we still got out of the group, so ultimately it didn't matter.

I'll just focus on 2018 under Southgate:

England beat Tunisia 2-1, Panama 6-1, lost 1-0 to Belgium. So in the group stages, we lost to the one recognised decent team.

Then it was 1-1 with Columbia (win on pens), a decent 2-0 against Sweden (I say decent because our results against them have often been poor, not because Sweden are a giant of international football).

Then it was a 2-1 to defeat to Croatia in the SF, followed by  a 2-0 3rd place playoff defeat to Belgium. Now, we can say who cares about the 3rd place playoff, but maybe Belgium didn't care that much either - and they still beat us 2-0.

On what planet is that an amazing performance by England on Southgate? And as I said above, had we lost the penalty shootout in the last 16, nobody would have considered that to be a good World Cup.

My honest opinion is that Southgate gets an easy ride because he's such a great bloke - it's impossible to dislike him. If he was an abrasive character like Mourinho, his record would be treated much more harshly than it is. In fact, an less likeable character probably wouldn't even still be in the job.

I suspect we'll never agree on this. I don't deny that results have helped and he's been fortunate in this regard at times, especially in 2018.

For me, it's about the performances and the fact that the players seem to want to play for England. For years we'd struggle against poor teams and look like we couldn't pass a ball against decent teams. The players looked miserable playing for England half the time. That second half against Iceland was a group of elite footballers, looking terrified and clueless. It had been coming for years.

Say what you like about Southgate, but he's changed the culture amongst the players and the country. The last QF defeat was a much more positive overall experience than the QF defeats in 2002, 2006 and 2016. Those 6-1 and 6-2 wins used to be godawful 0-0s like Algeria, or 2-0 late wins against Trinidad and Tobago.

My opinion is that it didn't have to change. We could've easily got another manager and carried on like we did in 2016. 

[Maximus Decimus]

10 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Bloody hell!! And that was Scotland's first shot of the entire game.

6 German scorers tonight.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Just now, Maximus Decimus said:

6 German scorers tonight.

It was nice of them to help Scotland out a bit.