Are we sure that the Slovaks even have to shut it down to keep England from scoring?I wouldn't say this is the worst possible matchup for England but there's about an 80% chance the Slovaks shut it down for 120 minutes and bring them to penalties, which is England's worst nightmare
England have been so lucky with this schedule
Spain, Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal are all in the other half of the draw lol.Honestly we’ve been stupidly lucky with the schedules for the last 4 tournaments and then as soon as we play someone half decent we lose.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if England lose this game
England have been so lucky with this schedule
Beating Germany in 2021 on home soil was historically significant. Although they were definitely the better team on paper.So what are Southgate's best tournament wins? Colombia 2018, Denmark 2021, & Senegal 2022?
Beating Germany in 2021 on home soil was historically significant. Although they were definitely the better team on paper.
That's kind of my point. Yes beating germany in a knockout game sounds impressive, but in context that is anything but a massively impressive win. They didn't go on to win anything, we weren't one of the top teams, and the win itself wasn't very impressive either.Weaker squad or not, doesn't really matter that much. Any time you beat a big country in a tournament is going to be seen as a major win. You can always pick holes in it, but it's a significant scalp.
The only thing is that from an England perspective, the 2021 win over Germany is tarnished by the failure to win the tournament in the end. The final outcome tends to be the thing that dominates your memories. Those penalties against Italy to this day dominate the England narrative.
I actually the other day saw a video where Gary Neville talked about losing to Germany at Euro 2000. England of course in reality won that game and he played 90 minutes in it. So he - who played in it - couldn't even really remember it and how it went even though England beat their biggest rivals. Why? Because England also didn't make it out of that group. The memory that stuck with England from Euro 2000 is failure to qualify for the QF, not beating Germany. No matter how big the rivalry is in international football, context matters more.
I agree. England under Southgate has pretty reliably won this type of game without too much difficulty when they had to.England will probably ease past this with another pedestrian performance, who are we kidding. Italy or Switzerland is when we can start talking about them getting knocked out.
I'm a huge proponent of xG and think it is very useful in a league setting. I think it's less useful in a tournament setting and particularly in a knockout setting., where game state matters so much more than in a double round robin.That's kind of my point. Yes beating germany in a knockout game sounds impressive, but in context that is anything but a massively impressive win. They didn't go on to win anything, we weren't one of the top teams, and the win itself wasn't very impressive either.
If that's one of Southgate's best tournament wins, then he has no impressive tournament wins.
I'm a huge proponent of xG and think it is very useful in a league setting. I think it's less useful in a tournament setting and particularly in a knockout setting., where game state matters so much more than in a double round robin.