Uefa nations league

[Grangemouth Bairn]

12 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

 

He’s done about as well with that squad as anyone had any right to expect. He’s a terrific coach.

 

Is this a windup ? I’m waiting for the follow up.

[NorthernLights]

Sections of the English media are seething over VAR.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/9240746/var-england-holland-nations-league-raheem-sterling-dave-kidd/

[Savage Henry]

Sections of the English media are seething over VAR.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/9240746/var-england-holland-nations-league-raheem-sterling-dave-kidd/

 

I don’t necessarily disagree with the point there, but it’s a terrible example to chose. He was clearly off side. Ergo, no goal.

 

ETA: I have no idea who David Kidd is, but I guess he’s basically Derek Johnstone and his views can safely be dismissed as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.

[Marten]

15 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

 

I don’t necessarily disagree with the point there, but it’s a terrible example to chose. He was clearly off side. Ergo, no goal.

 

ETA: I have no idea who David Kidd is, but I guess he’s basically Derek Johnstone and his views can safely be dismissed as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.

Exactly, fair enough if you are against VAR, but how can they say that "This is not the correction of clear and obvious errors"? Offside is one of the few issues in football that can objectively be determined as a yes or a no with no other interpretation possible. This goal was offside, so it was a clear and obvious error.

Let's also not forget that just moments after the disallowed goal there was another VAR moment in England's favour (penalty for the Dutch or not?), another correct decision imo.

[doulikefish]

Sections of the English media are seething over VAR.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/9240746/var-england-holland-nations-league-raheem-sterling-dave-kidd/

Yes its been great,the same people were screaming for it when the self proclaimed world champs were denied 300 odd penalties every time a defender touched a player in Russia

[The Marly]

As someone who's sits and watches SSN, I disagree. 

How are the sports channels in Portugal, Holland and Switzerland portraying it?

[GordonS]

3 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

After a Champions League final that was underwhelming unless you were a Liverpool fan.

The slightly second class nature of this tournament might work in favour of neutrals.

Both sides will want to win it more than they fear losing.

That's been the revelation of this touranment, and it's shown there's too much pressure on players and managers at World Cups and Euros. Through the groups and now into the semis there has been a lot of free, open, attacking football and it's been very good to watch. Teams that were reserved and cautious have tended to be punished (like Germany). By accident or design, it seems to have hit a sweet spot between being meaningful and serious, with matches players badly want to win, but not so serious that it puts a weight on their shoulders or leads to conservative tactics.

On a related note, bring back the Tennent's Sixes.

[Thistle_do_nicely]

13 hours ago, Cerberus said:

In Garif we trust.

 

Has there ever been a Englishman more typified by this fella?-

 

[cyderspaceman]

It's not fvcking HOLLAND!

[cyderspaceman]

5 hours ago, Savage Henry said:

 

I don’t necessarily disagree with the point there, but it’s a terrible example to chose. He was clearly off side. Ergo, no goal.

 

ETA: I have no idea who David Kidd is, but I guess he’s basically Derek Johnstone and his views can safely be dismissed as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.

Quote

What a hideous passion-killer this system is.

This is not the correction of clear and obvious errors, it is nit-picking and is already a blight on the game.

They really ought to have been heading to Porto to face Cristiano Ronaldo’s hosts in the final, with the chance to win a proper trophy for the first time since 1966

Oh dear. They don't like the rules being applied, do they?  The passion would also have been killed if the ass. ref.  had flagged correctly.

Goal line technology would have stopped them winning their one and only world cup 53 years ago (and counting) when another linesman erred . 

[highlandcowden]

18 hours ago, Have some faith in Magic said:

Yep, absolutely.  ' The Dutch fans are finally singing'

It's a shame we can't get him in world cups and Euros. 

probably weren't rioting beforehand like proper fans do,either

[Marten]

2 hours ago, cyderspaceman said:

It's not fvcking HOLLAND!

Amen!

[Marten]

How are the sports channels in Portugal, Holland and Switzerland portraying it?

The media in The Netherlands are pretty much portraying it in the way I look at it: they realise it's nowhere near as important as a World Cup or Euros, but a good chance to win some silverware and inject some confidence in the national side that was pretty much gone for around 4 years.

[Blootoon87]

Ah, another late Ireland goal. What a surprise.

 

Wrong thread, sorry.

[RandomGuy.]

5 hours ago, cyderspaceman said:

Oh dear. They don't like the rules being applied, do they?  The passion would also have been killed if the ass. ref.  had flagged correctly.

Goal line technology would have stopped them winning their one and only world cup 53 years ago (and counting) when another linesman erred . 

They seem to ignore the irony it was their bitching and screaming about Lampard non goal 8 years ago that started the process of getting technology into football.

Edited June 7, 2019 by RandomGuy.

[Bishop Briggs]

6 hours ago, cyderspaceman said:

Oh dear. They don't like the rules being applied, do they?  The passion would also have been killed if the ass. ref.  had flagged correctly.

Goal line technology would have stopped them winning their one and only world cup 53 years ago (and counting) when another linesman erred . 

Very true but the ref and linesman bottled it, rather than erred, in 1966. They were "homers" and could not have been sure that it crossed the line.

Goal line technology would also have allowed Lampard's 2010 goal against Germany to stand. That was an outrageous howler that should have ended the officials' international careers. The seethe, however, was rather hilarious.

[pandarilla]

They seem to ignore the irony it was their bitching and screaming about Lampard non goal 8 years ago that started the process of getting technology into football.

To be fair, that lampard goal might be the worst (and funniest) of all time. We might have bitched a wee bit as well.

They were getting humped regardless but football is absolutely fucked if no-one can somehow tell one of the refs that the ball was literally a yard over the line.

[WALMOT]

From the Guardian today by Barney Ronay

Tommy Robinson made an appearance in Guimarães on Thursday night and there are reports of England fans chanting his name in bars but together we can fight this influence

‘This is not just pride or celebration. It is certainly not sport. It is identity politics, planted in whatever ground it can find’. Illustration: Matt Johnstone

Back in the mid-1980s, when English football was a wild, rust-caked, occasionally frightening place, a group of Leeds United supporters noticed that the National Front had gained a small but significant foothold around Elland Road.

Football was seen as a fertile seeding ground for far-right politics. On matchdays the NF had begun to sell its magazine, Bulldog, outside the ground. They became a visible presence, gained a little traction, took a share of the day.

Eventually there was a reaction. Rob Conlon wrote an excellent article about this on the website Planet Fútbol a couple of years ago, recalling the founding of the fanzine Marching Altogether, which staged its own counter-campaign.

Tommy Robinson filmed punching man outside England match

Marching Altogether was funny and waspish. Its goal was to mock, challenge and ultimately reduce the racists. The club weighed in. Howard Wilkinson was a vocal supporter of inclusion not division. Vinnie Jones went out to pubs in the city’s mixed areas and met the locals. It was not perfect, of course. But football did stand up for itself. A line was drawn. And on that occasion they did not pass.

Fast forward 30 years to the storm-soaked Atlantic coast of the Iberian peninsula and something else is stirring. Yes, it’s here again. England and abroad; the itch that never seems to get scratched.

Happily there was no real trouble at the Estádio D Afonso Henriques on Thursday night. The Henriques is a sallow, low-slung corrugated hanger of a stadium. The England end was crammed with the usual flags and sheets and proclamations. They came, they stood, they sang about Gareth and coming home and being England till we die, which is a given in any case under current citizenship rules.

Even a shameful crush at the train station passed, by all accounts, without incident. The England fans were just part of the spectacle. But the fear now is that they will be back and in greater numbers in Porto when England’s third-place game becomes just a sideshow for a weekend in the sun.

There has been plenty said and written about the antisocial behaviour of some English people in Porto and Guimarães this week. There is general agreement on the main point . Standing arms-spread in a rococo town square, paunch straining out beneath a St George’s Cross vest, singing songs about bombers you never flew and Irish colonial fall-out you never studied at school, teeth bared at the centre of a sun-beaten, booze-addled face the shade and tone of a collapsed Halloween pumpkin: this is not a good look.

Generally the tone has been either despairing or punitive. How did we come to this? And what are we supposed to do now? And yet there are of course things that can be done, because this is not taking place in a vacu

 

Police patrol the Estádio D Afonso Henriques stadium in Guimarães before England’s Nations League semi-final against the Netherlands. Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images via Reuters

Tommy Robinson was also in Guimarães on Thursday night, dressed in a non-combatant’s camouflage jacket on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings and as ever up for the fight in every sense. He was as usual snapped and papped and projected across social media.

This was not a random day trip. Tommy Robinson goes places in order to be Tommy Robinson. His presence is a political act in itself. It works too. The occasion responded. There are reports of England fans chanting his name in bars in town, not to mention sightings of those familiar political symbol

The poppy has of course been borrowed extensively in recent times, a symbol of remembrance routinely added to football banners as a statement of patriotism. There are flags around referencing the 600-year old battle of Agincourt – not the real Agincourt, an expert military victory for an army of professional soldiers, but the propaganda version, first floated by William Shakespeare, of noble underdog Anglo-resistance to the evil beyond the water.

This is not just pride or celebration. It is certainly not sport. It is identity politics, planted in whatever ground it can find. It is no secret where it is coming from, a spill over from a wider sore in the wider politics. The Brexit movement has long since been co-opted around England football (some travelling England fans were even seen heading pointedly through the non-EU queue at passport control: oh yes, that’ll teach ’em).

 

It is of course a very small group of people we are talking about. There are broadly three main types of travelling England fan these days. First the large majority, who are just there to watch football and have a bit of a trip. On Friday lunchtime Porto was full of these England fans, shopping peaceably, eating in cafes, enjoying the sun.

Second and far more visible is the new brigade. Here they come, the twenty-something dorks in shorts, the Generation Z football-casual on a spree: singing the songs, doing the walk, taking on the culture like a 1980s mod revival. It is hoolie-lite stuff, stag-do culture, boorish but not exactly sinister or organised.

And finally there are the others, those for whom this is, however dimly grasped, a political thing: the ones in the EDL shirts, the ones who like Tommy. It is those moments when group three exerts a critical mass over group two that things might turn ugly; and when group one, the larger majority, can have an influence.

The weekend will, hopefully, pass off with nothing more than a sing-song, some sunburn and a little light-to-moderate banter-vandalism. But this is not a random travelling show these days. There are those in our domestic politics who take an interest in football’s young male sub-culture.

The story of Leeds and a hand-printed fanzine suggests it really is possible to reject this influence, that standing altogether can have an effect if there is genuine support at every level – from the FA, to the admirable Gareth, right down to the powerful, peaceful majority. This is about more than simply bad behaviour. Football has resisted before. Don’t let it pass.

Edited June 8, 2019 by WALMOT

[accies1874]

I get the impression that over the past few days the English fans and media have had discussions about building from the back, that other countries had many years ago.

[Jaggy Snake]

Seferovic goal please.