The Football Thread - 17/18 Season

[Scisca]

RolStoppable said:

Scisca said:

You're kidding, right? Sorry, but after this game Poland vs England is no contest. Poland entered the elite top 5 of the tournament's favourites. The group is Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland. England isn't up there, unless you think that a draw against struggling Russia is somehow on par with a draw against the World Champion Germany. Hint - it's not.

To me the game went according to our team's gameplan the whole way. The first half the coach wanted to defend, the second he wanted to fight and trade blows - and that's what happened. Lets be honest, if we can keep Germany's offence so limited, England wouldn't even sniff our penalty box. Also, despite Germany being in possession of the ball for a longer time, we had more and better scoring opportunities. The draw is well deserved though, obviously. It was the most fair result, as both teams are very evenly matched. It's not the result I was hoping for, but then again - it's still a group match. The coach wanted to see what the team is capable of and I'm sure he's very happy with the result, as the team proved to be very versatile and capable of playing rock solid defence as well as offence on par with Germany. I'm satisfied with what I saw, considering the stage of the tournament we're at.

The last series of games is going to be fun with both teams going all out, wanting to score more goals to get the first place in the group

Congrats to both teams, it was a tense game despite the lack of goals.

Poland isn't in the group of top favorites, you nutcase. As far as I remember, Neuer didn't have to catch a single ball. Poland has demonstrated that they can defend, but they failed to show that they can score. Lots of teams can defend, so it isn't anything special these days. Nothing yesterday suggested that Poland is a team that should be seriously considered for the semifinals. They played too cowardly, they were too harmless. They aren't on the same level as Germany, Italy, France and Spain.

You must have been watching a different game, or are sour as hell. Or know nothing about football. It was a good game of two equally good teams and I think both teams got a good estimate of where they are at right now. This was still only the group stage, keep it in mind.

Germany dominated the ball, but we had more and better scoring opportunities and were closer to scoring. Milik wasted such great opportunities it was painful, his header at the start of second half was the best opportunity of the entire game. The 11m shot he wasted later should have been an execution as well. Lewandowski had his opportunity as well, but waited too long. All these guys were wide open, these were clear situations, if having so many open situations againt the World Champions indicates a team that can't score, then who can? I agree that Milik and Lewandowski are blocked a bit, but this is a tournament, we've already advanced to the next round, so there is time to improve and these players are the cream of the crop, so I have no doubt they'll wake up. There are many games in front of us and I see the game with Ukraine as the perfect opportunity to finally get over this funk and enter the knock-out stage on fire. The opportunities are there, the team works great, is very deep (we lost our first goalie to injury - did anyone notice it yesterday?), has its style and knows what it wants to do and creates great opportunities - they just have to start converting, but I have no doubt they will get locked in soon. This is a tounament, you won't win it, unless you grow during it, but so far not many teams have shown more, while our players are still hungry and have room to grow.

The players admitted, that they started the game with too much respect for Germany, but then again - Germany is among the established teams, while we're still searching for our ceiling. So many people still believe that teams like England are better, after all (if yuo still think you're better, compare the teams in which our players play. There are no English players in the top teams). I think this is the last tournament for quite some time that we play in this role.

And sure, we're not on the same level as Germany. Last 5 games in last 5 years were 3 draws and one victory for each of the teams, equal in goals scored. That clearly indicates a noticable difference in level Sorry, but that's too many games to call it a fluke. We are in the same league, no matter what you say.

To me there are 3 groups in this Cup:
Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland - the best teams, they will decide who the winner is going to be
Croatia, England, Portugal, Iceland, Belgium - a notch lower, but still dangerous. Croatia is probably the best here, Iceland can be scary as hell
The rest - the rest Czech Rep is potentially worthy of note here, we'll see how they play againt Croatia.

Came too late to bet Italy:Sweden (I was expecting 1:0 for Italy)
Czech Rep 1:2 Croatia
Spain 2:0 Turkey