Overachieved, without a doubt. There's no way anyone would have expected to be in the semi-final, you'd have been laughed out the room if you'd said 4 weeks ago that England will get this far.
People say "England had an easy draw", but they ignore the fact that we've made very heavy weather of...
I guess it depends on what you think the Ballon d'Or should be. Some think it should be for the best player in the world, others think it should be for the player who's achieved the most that year. I personally think it should be for the best player in the world, otherwise you end making cases...
True, although the second part of Southgate's success is his faith in the ability of the players to be able to play attacking football. For the whole of that period, we played a rigid 4-4-2 with long balls and defensive football, when we had players capable of playing so much more attractively...
Yep, we have a good team, but not great individuals. I'm proud of everyone involved.
And congrats to your team. You deserved to win tonight and I sincerely hope you win the final. :hooray:
I know, I agree with you. We are a better team now, but the individuals we have now are not even close to the ones we had then.
Kinda makes me sad to think what Southgate might have achieved if he had got his hands on Gerrard, Rooney, Lampard, Owen, Terry, Scholes...
I'm sorry but we really don't have one of the best squads in the world. We've got Kane, who is the only world-class player (and even he is a Ronaldo-type finisher rather than a creative player, so he goes missing when there's no service), and then some decent-to-good players around him. The...
Well, against the very top nations, we simply are. We're at a similar level to teams like Croatia, Uruguay, Italy, Holland, Portugal - below the likes of Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, Brazil, and Argentina.
And thanks for the congratulations. :)
Haha, it can mean bland or tasteless yep, but I always associate it with bad. But look, let's agree to disagree. I enjoy watching smaller teams fight against the odds with all they have. I do think fans of Barca (and other big teams that win most of their games and regularly win trophies while...
Why all the hate towards this England team?
I swear, some football snobs would be happy to just have France, Brazil, Spain and Germany in the semi-finals every World Cup.
That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion, but I will just say that being bad and being boring are not the same thing. Atletico Madrid, for example, are very 'boring', but they are one of the top handful of teams in the world.
Not that I think England were boring. Some lovely football in...
We weren't naff at all. We fall some way short of being one of the very top teams, and lack the top level quality in the attacking third, but we are a good team and outperformed all the favourites bar France and Belgium.
Two years ago we were humiliated by Iceland.
Four years ago we got a point in the group stage.
Six years ago we got dominated by Italy in the round of 16 and went out on penalties after having like 2 shots all game.
Eight years ago we scraped out of a group containing Algeria, Slovenia, and...
That's because we sat back in the second half thinking we could pick them off on the counter. It's always a lot more tiring playing without the ball. We should have got the 2nd and 3rd when we were on top before sitting back, but oh well. It's an inexperienced team which will learn a lot from...
We weren't 'naff', we just lack that final, top-quality creative play in the final third. We compensated for that with our strength on set pieces, but that can only take you so far. We don't have great individual players, yet as a team we far overachieved. That's not bad at all. In fact, it's...
Gutted we lost. I don't get to support my team in games of this size... well, ever. So to lose is really heartbreaking. At the end of the day, England's weakness throughout the tournament was a lack of ruthlessness in the final third. We just didn't have that top-level quality to create enough...
Best of luck tonight, for you and the other Croatians on here. I mean that. I hope we win, but Croatia is a class team, and I hope you lift the trophy if you beat us tonight.
I support a second-tier team in England and we've never won a trophy in our history; the closest we've come was the FA Cup semi-final in 2015 where we lost 2-1 to Arsenal after extra time. Tonight's game is by far the biggest game I've ever watched as a fan. It could well be the last semi-final...
In short: Site has been functioning great and chat add-on (which is also paid) is also holding up. No crashes in recent year.
Having said that, forum itself barely makes anything through adsense. 15USD per month is pathetic and not enough for up-keep.
And if we can cover the server ourselves I would best take ads altogether.
Price of the hosting company went up significantly and I would appreciate donations: It's time to cover the server for the next 6 months.
https://i.ibb.co/5gz0ymdk/Forum-Invoice.jpg
Members who are able and willing to contribute to maintaining the forum costs are welcome to donate via paypal: bojan@barcaforum.com
Thank you