Germany - Scotland

[GordonS]

3 minutes ago, Groundhopping Adventures said:

I will argue till I'm blue in the face that the only point of a National Anthem is 2024 is to get your Football team hyper before a big game. Highland Cathedral makes ye greet but it won't do that. Lyrics are Tourist Board shite. FofS was written by the famously SNP supporting Corries in 1960. 

As an anthem it does its job perfectly. If you hate it you have a heavy dose of the Scottish Cringe and need to have a word with yourself. 

Anyway *puts away soapbox*. Last night was a chastening. Set up to lose 2-0 and it didn't work. Tournament isn't over for us. Germany looked brilliant. 

I sometime wonder how often people who don't go to international team sports events sing their national anthem. Most folk probably never have a reason to in their lives. I've never sung GST? and I'm struggling to remember a time when it could have happened anyway. 

[Zetterlund]

16 minutes ago, Salvo Montalbano said:

A few more observations and comments in the light of day.

I thought the whole point of Christie playing over say Gilmour was because he was so important to our press? Toni Kroos had mentioned that we were horrible to play against and that his Real Madrid teammates had prepared him for that pressing style. What happened? We don't need to be pressing everywhere all the time but we barely pressed them once.

Our passing was abysmal, especially in the first half. MacGregor, McGinn, McTominay, Christie and Ralston were all guilty of giving away cheap possession. That's bad enough (and another reason why I think Gilmour should have started) but allied to the pack of press meant crucially we were losing the ball in our own half. Absolutely criminal stuff and it did give the impression we were overly nervous or overawed by the occasion. 

Why was Clarke asked - and then confirmed himself - that 4 points was the target? For someone who as recently as week or so ago was complaining about "negative Normans" why is he writing off the possibility of two wins? Surely something like "we have two games left, we will be looking to win both but after the three games we'll see where we are regarding qualification" or something non-committal? 

The total lack of pressing was bizarre. Many of our best moments in recent years have come from forcing mistakes high up the pitch, and as you say this is the playing style other teams have come to expect from Scotland. We were literally standing 5 yards off them until they were 30 yards from our goal. I can also barely even recall any actual tackles going in, Porteous' effort aside.

On top of this, the difference in workrate between the 2 sides was glaring. At 4-0 up the likes of Tony Rudiger would have run through brick walls to get the ball back after a move broke down. Scottish players routinely lost the ball then turned their back on play and walked around a bit before jogging casually back. That's unforgiveable and I'm not sure how that can be explained.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

3 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

The total lack of pressing was bizarre. Many of our best moments in recent years have come from forcing mistakes high up the pitch, and as you say this is the playing style other teams have come to expect from Scotland. We were literally standing 5 yards off them until they were 30 yards from our goal. I can also barely even recall any actual tackles going in, Porteous' effort aside.

On top of this, the difference in workrate between the 2 sides was glaring. At 4-0 up the likes of Tony Rudiger would have run through brick walls to get the ball back after a move broke down. Scottish players routinely lost the ball then turned their back on play and walked around a bit before jogging casually back. That's unforgiveable and I'm not sure how that can be explained.

The amount of open space between the midfield and the defence (and the midfield to the lone forward) was just ridiculous. You don't need to have a full press but at least make them work when in your half. 

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, Zetterlund said:

Same as the last 30 years, beige-ing their way to tournaments without anyone noticing then doing not very much when they get there. 

Really?

Criticising another country for their record at Finals tournaments?

As it happens, they usually get through their group, and having done so, eliminated France from the last Euros.

[coprolite]

10 minutes ago, GordonS said:

I sometime wonder how often people who don't go to international team sports events sing their national anthem. Most folk probably never have a reason to in their lives. I've never sung GST? and I'm struggling to remember a time when it could have happened anyway. 

One of the highlights of the recent Usyk - Fury fight for me was the Usyk camp hands on hearts earnestmy belting out Ukraine's anthem on the verge of tears. Team Fury then ambled about having a chat while our Island's dreary dirge played in the background. 

 

[Monkey Tennis]

30 minutes ago, Richey Edwards said:

Years of supporting Ayr United have prepared me for this moment. Not humiliated, not angry, just disappointed. 

I support Queens and I'm still all three.

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, Acastus said:

4 points to get through? We are getting 0 points. 

Maybe 2, 3 even with a win against someone. Not confident of 4, though.

8 hours ago, GordonS said:

Do they not have Playstations in other countries?

Denmark play winter football too. And a Dutch winter really isn't any better than ours - it rains more, on more days, and is colder and windier in Amsterdam than it is in Edinburgh. In midwinter sunset is about half an hour later in Amsterdam than in the Central Belt, it doesn't make much difference.

We've had a pyramid for about 5 years. It has almost nothing to do with youth development anyway, except it has led to some development leagues that are pretty good for non-elite under 20s. 

The heart of the real answer is young kids playing 11-a-side on full size pitches and goals, competitive games and a focus on positional discipline and not making mistakes (which you can learn when you're older) at the expense of technique, which is everything in the modern game.

I watched a few of the games in the UEFA U17s tournament - the ball skills of the youngsters were amazing

7 hours ago, Zen Archer (Raconteur) said:

They were still fighting the British when it was written, firstly as a poem, about a battle at Fort McHenry.

Yes, the British, not the English as @GordonS said. (At least, I think it was him.)

4 hours ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

 

Players coming through?  There are a hardly any club level players coming through.  Just look at the numbers of Scottish U21s getting regular game time at Scottish Premiership level, it's a handful, literally 3 or 4.  

One of the most damning things about our game is that about 60% of the players in our top national league are non-Scots and how many of them are playing at these Euros?  That's right exactly 0.  To borrow a phrase from The Thick of It, our top league is 'stuffed to the gills with dreck' because most teams aren't interested in developing talent.  They want it cheap and easy.  

Even now we are pretty close to asking supporters to bring boots to fill some positions but the really scary thing is most of our best players are around their peak now so when guys like Robertson or McGinn retire there is no one close to that level to replace them.

As bad as that was last night the Scottish national team is going to be in a record bad place in the 2030s.  At this point we might as well forget youth coaching and concentrate on scouring Ancestry.com for Scottish grand dads.

Might as well have shite Scottish players as shite foreigners.

2 hours ago, Doc Holiday said:

Id have stuck McTominay up top next to Adams or Shankey,

Shankey

1 hour ago, Seumas Abrach said:

Upbeat! That would get us in a proper good mood, dancing!Mise, 's toigh leam! I'd go for The Ball of Kirriemuir

"The Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre" for me.

[Zetterlund]

5 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Really?

Criticising another country for their record at Finals tournaments?

As it happens, they usually get through their group, and having done so, eliminated France from the last Euros.

I'm not criticising them. I could say the same about a dozen other countries, which is kind of my point.

They scraped through their group last time in 3rd place behind Wales. Obviously taking France & Spain to penalties was a good effort.

[Butters Scotch]

56 minutes ago, Binos said:

Mcgregor is nowhere near Lambert level 

 

He didn't have a great game granted but then that went for the rest of the team and If you think Lambert would of done any better in that game then you're in dreamland.

Very easy to criticise the guy after that game but he's been brilliant for most of his Scotland career and will end up with a lot more than caps than Lambert which tells its own story. They're both very good players, different in their own ways and I don't think there's much between the pair but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

 

[Butters Scotch]

12 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Really?

Criticising another country for their record at Finals tournaments?

As it happens, they usually get through their group, and having done so, eliminated France from the last Euros.

In agreement with this aswell, Switzerland are very much a better version of Scotland. Not any real stars that can win games on their own but very much the sum of their parts and collectively a very difficult team to break down which top teams have found against them. 

[MazzyStar]

6 minutes ago, Butters Scotch said:

He didn't have a great game granted but then that went for the rest of the team and If you think Lambert would of done any better in that game then you're in dreamland.

Very easy to criticise the guy after that game but he's been brilliant for most of his Scotland career and will end up with a lot more than caps than Lambert which tells its own story. They're both very good players, different in their own ways and I don't think there's much between the pair but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

 

Callum McGregor is just as good as champions league winner Paul Lambert

[Butters Scotch]

36 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

I hate to boil it down. Theres too much to go over to do that, but if I had to, i'd say of our performance individually and collectively, that we utterly shat ourselves. 

The thing I can't past is, Toni Kroos is a legend, one of the best midfielders most of us has ever seen. You aren't going to stop him from playing altogether, but theres a vast expanse of middle ground between that, and letting him do exactly what he wants. I mean, for the first goal.... either of two players can step onto him. Aye, he's so good he'll probably evade them or find a team mate, but he doesnt get to line up and execute a crossfield pass to set up a goalscoring move. We didn't only not stop him, we didn't even inconvenience him in his intentions. And we have recent experience of a scarily similar scenario with Modric. We learned nothing. If I was only allowed one sentence in that dressing room before that game, it would have been "do not let Toni Kroos run this game". 

aye this was my thoughts at the time, we just let Kroos ping the balls out to their fullbacks each time and this looked like part of Clarke's instructions to the team and felt we could deal with that. What ended up happening was that Germany were far too good in exploiting the spaces around our own box, playing neat one two's and their movement was incredible, it was dragging players all over then creating more space for them. We just couldn't handle any of it. 

I'm really surprised Clarke didn't have us setup on the front foot and pressing high up the pitch and make them make mistakes in their own half. At least if we did that then we would have enough numbers to string a few passes together whereas when we are so deep, the times where we did win the ball we had no outball which Germany recognised and their whole team just stepped up the pitch to play in our half where we couldn't get out. Clarke was totally outclassed tactically by the German manager.

[Binos]

5 minutes ago, Butters Scotch said:

aye this was my thoughts at the time, we just let Kroos ping the balls out to their fullbacks each time and this looked like part of Clarke's instructions to the team and felt we could deal with that. What ended up happening was that Germany were far too good in exploiting the spaces around our own box, playing neat one two's and their movement was incredible, it was dragging players all over then creating more space for them. We just couldn't handle any of it. 

I'm really surprised Clarke didn't have us setup on the front foot and pressing high up the pitch and make them make mistakes in their own half. At least if we did that then we would have enough numbers to string a few passes together whereas when we are so deep, the times where we did win the ball we had no outball which Germany recognised and their whole team just stepped up the pitch to play in our half where we couldn't get out. Clarke was totally outclassed tactically by the German manager.

Clarke and tactics shouldn't appear in the same sentence 

[Gaz]

Lambert was an excellent midfielder and had the balls to go somewhere else to get better, unlike someone like Paul McStay happy to stay at the same level at the club he supported scudding diddly teams every week.

[DA Baracus]

4 hours ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

 

Players coming through?  There are a hardly any club level players coming through.  Just look at the numbers of Scottish U21s getting regular game time at Scottish Premiership level, it's a handful, literally 3 or 4.  

One of the most damning things about our game is that about 60% of the players in our top national league are non-Scots and how many of them are playing at these Euros?  That's right exactly 0.  To borrow a phrase from The Thick of It, our top league is 'stuffed to the gills with dreck' because most teams aren't interested in developing talent.  They want it cheap and easy.  

Even now we are pretty close to asking supporters to bring boots to fill some positions but the really scary thing is most of our best players are around their peak now so when guys like Robertson or McGinn retire there is no one close to that level to replace them.

As bad as that was last night the Scottish national team is going to be in a record bad place in the 2030s.  At this point we might as well forget youth coaching and concentrate on scouring Ancestry.com for Scottish grand dads.

Some of the issue is fans. So many just demand short term success with no care for anything beyond.

Some of the fans of my club don't want the new youth academy and would rather that cash be funneled to the first team (even though it's a model that has seen us not play in the top flight since 2012). Falkirk punted their entirely to funnel cash to the first team (then got relegated right away).

Worse are Celtic and Sevco. All they care about is ensuring the other team don't win the next trophy. No long term building. When Celtic were unchallenged after Rangers died they could have tried to set themselves up for ages wirh giving more younger players more time. Likewise, when Sevco were admitted to the league setup they could have done so instead of the signing policy they had/have.

Another thing, and someone touched on this, is that unfortunately far too many of our players are cowardly Celtic or Sevco fans who aspire to nothing more than playing for them and being comfortable.

2 hours ago, pozbaird said:

Flower of Scotland and the amazing ‘away support’ were the highlight of the night. Then the game started. When are Italy on? Now, that’s an anthem. I haven’t Googled this, but aren’t the words of the Italian anthem something along the lines of ‘Italy, my brothers, get right intae’ these kunts and kick their fcuking arses’.

Pretty sure that’s it.

20.00 tonight.

1 hour ago, Doc Holiday said:

What's the Switzerland side like? 

We'll find out at 14.00 today!

[DA Baracus]

2 minutes ago, Gaz said:

Lambert was an excellent midfielder and had the balls to go somewhere else to get better, unlike someone like Paul McStay happy to stay at the same level at the club he supported scudding diddly teams every week.

See also; Callum McGregor.

[DA Baracus]

Anyway, thank f**k we banned artificial pitches in the top league. That will definitely make a difference, along with B teams.

[Leith Green]

 

 

[Dons_1988]

36 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Really?

Criticising another country for their record at Finals tournaments?

As it happens, they usually get through their group, and having done so, eliminated France from the last Euros.

Scotland as a country would implode if we knocked France out of a major tournament. 

[itzdrk]

56 minutes ago, GordonS said:

I sometime wonder how often people who don't go to international team sports events sing their national anthem. Most folk probably never have a reason to in their lives. I've never sung GST? and I'm struggling to remember a time when it could have happened anyway. 

I go to all the home games and if I've been unfortunate to arrive early enough for the anthems don't join in.  

Some anthems sound really cool like e.g. Brazil & Italy but I hate all that my country is best country nationalism.  

I'm glad we aren't like America where the anthem is everywhere.