The Football Thread - 17/18 Season

[Scisca]

vivster 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.

That's a bit overboard. First of all Poland was as passive in the second half as they were in the first. There were one or two more chances but that was because Germany left its defense more open by getting even more aggressive.

And you should not flatter your defense. The only one holding back the Germans were the Germans. There were a lot of opportunities and Poland's defense was as open as ever but if no one in the German team is going to make a proper pass, it's all in vain. Thinking your defense was actually good will only hurt in the next match.

Both teams played like shit and in the end Poland profited a bit more from it.

Oh, c'mon. The second half was very different to the first one. We didn't have more opportunities because you were more open, but because we were more open and started attacking you

The defence was very good. In the first half you had no clue how to dismantle it. Pazdan played the game of his life - notably, he was by far the worst player in the game vs N. Ireland, so we are still to see which Pazdan we're going to get in the future. If he keeps this level, it will be glorous, but I'm affraid he may remain a hit or miss.

Both teams played like two good teams would play at this stage of the tournament. Nobody pushed to 100%, but we got a piece of each other. It's a good sign going forward and the fight for first place in the group is going to be exciting