Board 8 > Uefa Euro 2024 (Football General)

(+) Yeah! (+)

12 years is a very long time in anyone's life! Look at Real Madrid fans celebrating champions league almost every year!

Gary Neville's pre tournament comment that Cucurella would be the reason why Spain would not go far is going viral again after he assisted the winning goal lmao.

12 years is nothing in International football.

The tournaments get more special by they are rarer, there are less chances.

Also most people are not in the same place they were 12 years ago. Spain is now the sole most successful team in the Euros, that's pretty huge. No one was calling them favorites pre contest, they won Nations League and people said that tournament didn't matter, it's huge!

So England have the biggest drought between trophy wins but what is the biggest country to never win something? Has to be somewhere in Europe but i'm struggling to think who'd be the best of the rest.

Hmm, historically I would say Hungary or Sweden, but it's a bit hard to judge having not been alive for their best days. On current form, Ecuador or Switzerland maybe?

lol Harry Kane will never win anything in his life

Yugoslavia definitely belongs in the conversation too, by extention Croatia.

Belgium as well.

shane15 posted...

So England have the biggest drought between trophy wins but what is the biggest country to never win something? Has to be somewhere in Europe but i'm struggling to think who'd be the best of the rest.

In terms of squad strength and tournament performance over the years, it's probably Croatia/Yugoslavia at this point. They have made three WC semi finals and were runners up in 2018. Sweden used to be a good call, but they've fallen off in recent years.

In terms of "biggest country" country, then it's probably China or India (depending if you count certain competitions).

Fifa considers Serbia the successor of Yugoslavia. The latter had two WC semi finals. Croatia has three. Sweden has four, most recently in 1994 and before that ages ago. Hungary has two that both ended with silver medals, likewise forever ago.

Wikipedia has a page about WC records that accumulates points. Judging from that the answer is Belgium closely followed by Sweden. Because of counting Yugoslavia as part of Serbia's score and keeping Croatia separate, that one is a bit hard to compare with though.

I think if I was England manager and I had wanted to win that game I would have asked the boys to score more goals than the Spanish team but thats just me

Messi's leg buckled in a non contact injury and he's out at 65 minutes

That was the injury from the first half.

Colombia had too many utterly boneheaded turnovers in ET and it finally burned them

The thing i dislike most about soccer is when the winning team wastes multiple minutes knowing that the extra time will not be added properly.

That said, shame Messi was hurt and hope ot was not the last we see of him. Also Colombia had many chances to put this away but never did.

Unlike Di Maria, Messi has not announced his retirement. I'm sure he will keep WC in the country he lives in a possibility for a last dance.

Just saw pictures of his ankle, that looked uncomfortable.

Also when I decided to stay up for this I was not expecting the match to start that much later, extended half time and extra time. My work day today will suck.

Was really hoping for the Di Maria goal.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Finalissima, Messi definitely plays in that.

I thought about making a best XI for the Euros. Now obviously if you were to make a team you would put in a few players that didn't feature enough or got out early but fit the system better. Anyway, here is what I came up with.

Pickford
Walker Rdiger Saliba Cucurella
Rodri Mainoo
Olmo
Yamal Gakpo Nico Williams

Subs/alternatives (rest of team basiscally):
Maignan
Neuer
Carvejal
Stones
Van Dijk
Ak
Kound
Kante
Wirtz
Musala
Palmer
Simons
Saka
Flkrg
Watkins

Hard not to just pick the whole Spain team, but I'd probably go for

Maignan
Carvajal Rdiger Saliba Cucurella
Rodri Fabian Ruiz
Olmo
Yamal Gakpo Nico Williams

Subs:
Mamardashvili
Akanji
Guehi
Kimmich
Lobotka
Kante
Baumgartner
Musiala
Arda Guler
Simons
Saka
Mikautadze

That picture of Carvejal gesticulating to Saka to stop crying is gonna be around for a long time I think.

Think I'm *off* Footy until the Olympics or the PL starts back up.

Though the evenings are empty without

Well that's a whole 8 days

^ Some dudes have already got the sweats over that wait.

Southgate has resigned from England.

Everyone expected it win or lose.

I only expected it with a loss, otherwise I don't believe we would have gotten the news about FA wanting to extend with him, he would've probably said so ahead of the game.

https://x.com/EURO2024/status/1813187214047695099

Here is the all-star team from UEFA. Six Spanish players.

and they should have Carvajal too tbh

The 2nd-best England manager ever in terms of results (and even Alf Ramsey failed to qualify in 1974, so...) and a fundamentally decent and scandal-free man which - given Hoddle, Allardyce, Eriksson, Capello - is strangely quite the achievement. He is not a world-class tactician but his understanding of that specific role was second-to-none.

I think his detractors will regret what they wished for if we get the opposite: a world-class tactician with no understanding of the role. That's what Capello was, and nobody has botched an international tournament worse than Capello in 2010 given what he had available. If Southgate's replacement tries to make the beast that is the job submit to their own managerial foibles, rather than understanding the job's unique demands and molding themselves to it, they will fail way worse than Southgate ever did.

XIII_Rocks posted...

The 2nd-best England manager ever in terms of results (and even Alf Ramsey failed to qualify in 1974, so...) and a fundamentally decent and scandal-free man which - given Hoddle, Allardyce, Eriksson, Capello - is strangely quite the achievement. He is not a world-class tactician but his understanding of that specific role was second-to-none.

I think his detractors will regret what they wished for if we get the opposite: a world-class tactician with no understanding of the role. That's what Capello was, and nobody has botched an international tournament worse than Capello in 2010 given what he had available. If Southgate's replacement tries to make the beast that is the job submit to their own managerial foibles, rather than understanding the job's unique demands and molding themselves to it, they will fail way worse than Southgate ever did.

Capello stupidly unchanged the Team in that Debacle v Germany.

Spain's players courting the far right with their celebrations. Nice.
Es este tu rey?

XIII_Rocks posted...

in 2010 given what he had available

I still don't understand this thinking. Cole, Terry, Gerrard & Lampard (who neutralize each other), and Rooney. The rest good to average.

Yeah we had that discussion before and I don't want to have it again; it was a core of world-class players at a time the PL teams were winning the CL or making the final every year, and we drew with Algeria and the US, then got absolutely thrashed.

Whether we should have won is one thing (Spain's squad was better) but Capello's management of it was disastrous beyond all question, all doubt.

XIII_Rocks posted...

Spain's players courting the far right with their celebrations. Nice.
Es este tu rey?

Why am I not surprised?

XIII_Rocks posted...

or Uruguay.

Prime Forlan at World Cup was something else though.

Wait England didn't get Uruguay before 14 when Costa Rica won that group of death. Anyway, I think an argument could be made that Uruguay just had a better squad, Forlan aside. The others not so much.

Uruguay having better players is an enormous stretch though clearly the best argument of the teams I listed

I listed them because that's who England would have gotten had they won the group

Oh no, Argentina what are you doing.

Glad to see the public callouts from Chelsea players against a high profile teammate.
Even though he's a great player and losing him would weaken Chelsea, Enzo needs to at minimum get a heavier punishment than what Cavani got for his incident.

The Danish Superliga begun this weekend.

We also have a winter break of course.

WTF Argentina/Morocco

That said final

Ok so Argentina scores at 90+16

Game goes "final" and a bunch of news outlets report the 2-2 tie.

But not actually "final", because fans invaded the pitch and firecrackers were being thrown at Argentina players, so it was instead "suspended", but no one really knew what was going on.

92 minutes later, the Argentina goal is disallowed by VAR.

Nearly two hours later, the game is restarted at +16 and goes until +20 before Morocco wins 2-1.

What the hell France

I dreadfully remember a match Denmark vs Sweden. It's 3-3. A single Danish fan goes on the pitch and attacks the referee. The call is that we lose the match 3-0 because of that.

So apparently here the referee was prevented by Morocco fans for almost 2 hours doing this VAR he had to with them attacking the pitch in great numbers and that's just okay?

Man Morocco's had some interesting games.

They just gave up 10 on 11 90+8 goal to lose to a Ukraine team that just blew a game to Iraq.