EURO 2012

[Minder]

If they get Spain they are out, Croatia or Italy would be a 50/50 game.

[ross4life]

England only need a draw to reach the quarter final, so the same situation as euro 2000 when this happened http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/euro2000/teams/england/799159.stm

[CiKe]

If they get Spain they are out, Croatia or Italy would be a 50/50 game.

I didn't think Chelsea could possibly beat Barcelona...if they do win we will never hear the end of it.

[Myles Na G.]

Enjoyed the England game tonight more than usual, possibly because I know that England are so mediocre this time round that there's no danger of them winning the whole thing, That said, Carroll's goal was a thing of beauty. The accuracy and the pace of the cross, the athleticism, the power in the header, really was one of the best of the tournament so far.

[Capt Pat]

Hopefully Carroll increases his value for when we sell him.

[ONeill]

Enjoyed the England game tonight more than usual, possibly because I know that England are so mediocre this time round that there's no danger of them winning the whole thing, That said, Carroll's goal was a thing of beauty. The accuracy and the pace of the cross, the athleticism, the power in the header, really was one of the best of the tournament so far.

Greece and Denmark have won this thing not too long ago. Stranger things than England winning it have happened.

The highlight for me so far was the Poland v Russia game. The pace with close control was of the highest quality - something the England players, bar Rooney and perhaps Cole, could only dream of.

[mylestheslasher]

Hopefully Carroll increases his value for when we sell him.

How much do you stand to make from the sale yourself?

[ziggy90]

Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey and Slovakia have bigger populations than the 26 counties and are watching the tournament at home .

Belgium have been shite for at least a decade. Austria hasn't had a decent team for longer than that. 
Talented teams come around every so often for smaller countries. It's the same in the GAA for counties like Longford and Armagh.   
Croatia will be back in the doldrums at some stage. England won't win anything .

we're getting stuck on qualifying for tournaments being a greater goal than being able to play decent football. Achieve this and you'll reap the reward in the long-term, and qualify for tournaments

Slovakia is more or less the same size as Ireland, has a struggling low-income post-communist economy but can sustain a professional league get teams in the Champions League every other year, and outplayed and outthought Italy at the last World Cup.     

Belgium are on the way back up after a long period in the doldrums (and taking time out to restructure and rebuild), have shit hot youth teams and should comfortably qualify for the next World Cup.

Austria and Switzerland are mediocre I 'll grant you, although the Swiss beat Germany 3-0 a few weeks ago, something Ireland would never ever be able to do the way things are.

It's the level of the above countries plus the Scandinavians that Ireland should be aspiring to reach, Turkey's a different league altogether.

Belgium look to be a coming team alright. Switzerland have the makings of a decent qualifying team but that is only because half of the team are immigrants. 
Ireland aren't bad really considering the size of the country.  This is the first tournament that has been really poor.
I think international soccer is like those slot machines where you put in your money and there are moving layers - the money falls onto the first and then you have to see if it pushes anything down to the next level. and there is another level before you get anything back.

Ireland may occasionally get past the first level.

Playing nice football is unlikely to happen as long as the majority of the players play in England.
The English language is a curse as well. How many players would think of playing in France or Germany ?

England doesn't do detail or pay attention to training. It isn't a national quality. Heathrow airport for example.
Terry Butcher is a real English icon. Get stuck in.  That is the sort of football style that comes out of England.

Spain has 6 times as many top level coaches as England according to the FT.

. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a17182b4-aaeb-11e1-b675-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1xss34emh


The scale of English invisibility struck me last week, in the wake of a long talk I had with Morten Olsen, the sophisticated coach of the Danish national team. We were discussing the influences and inspirations of Olsen's footballing life: Dutch total football, his years as a player in Belgium, Brazil's great teams of 1958 and 1982, Germany, Italy. In the course of a two-hour conversation the subject of England came up only a couple of times: he saw some English football on TV in the 1960s and recalled how beating England at Wembley in 1983 was a key stage in the development of the great Danish team he captained.

England's ranking in the world game – Fifa, rather generously, had us in seventh place last month – is respectable. But compared with the big footballing nations, few young Englishmen play football these days, and our footballing education system is second rate. There are six times as many qualified Spanish football coaches as English ones, and cutting-edge soccer nations such as Germany, Holland, Spain and France churn out technically and tactically sophisticated players by the dozen.

By contrast, Wayne Rooney, the most talented English player in generations, and our only world-class striker, is almost entirely self-taught. Those responsible for his footballing education at Everton believed genius such as his simply could not be coached. So they just left him to it.


[/quote

That bit in bold up there was that a quote by Morten Olsen? If so I'm surprised he left out the Brazilian team of the 1970 World Cup, IMHO the greatest team of all time. The Dutch Total Football team of '74 and '78 were way ahead of their time and were unlucky to run into two teams (West Germany and Argentina) who were hosting the tournament and had great teams of their own.

[Capt Pat]

Hopefully Carroll increases his value for when we sell him.

How much do you stand to make from the sale yourself?

I just want to get him off my hands I don't care how much I make.

[Minder]

Enjoyed the England game tonight more than usual, possibly because I know that England are so mediocre this time round that there's no danger of them winning the whole thing, That said, Carroll's goal was a thing of beauty. The accuracy and the pace of the cross, the athleticism, the power in the header, really was one of the best of the tournament so far.

Greece and Denmark have won this thing not too long ago. Stranger things than England winning it have happened.

The highlight for me so far was the Poland v Russia game. The pace with close control was of the highest quality - something the England players, bar Rooney and perhaps Cole, could only dream of.

Only 8 teams when Denmark won it and Greece were difficult to score against, something teams don't seem to have a problem doing against England.

[Applesisapples]

Just to go back to the ireland Spain game. Only an eejit would have expected Ireland to come with in an asses roar of Spain, the best we could have hoped for was to frustrate them for 90 minutes. There has to be some questions over selection though. Looking at Given and O'Shea's poor performance I would guess they are both still injured, it is understandable that they'd want to play on the biggest stage, but Trapp should have no sentiment when it comes to selection. I'd agree with john Giles that you need to pick your best fit 11 and create a system to suit. trap insists in picking and playing the likes of Paul green who can't even get a game in the championship. We need to pick in form premiership players who are getting game time, they at least might stand a chance of getting a result. That said it is always better to qualify and get stuffed than not. i am loathe to have a go at Trapp because he at least got us there, but he needs a rethink. In relation to the EPL being the best league in the world...bollocks. it attracts some of the best foreign talent for the Sky money. But look at La Liga where the teams are made up of mostly Spaniards with foreign players brought in to strengthen. In the EPL the best teams are built around foreigners with English players being used to placate the FA and the National team. This means that Irish players often lose out, thus you get City dumping Given and Dunne for Harte and that gimp Lescott. On last nights game to poor teams and sweden beat themselves, England are setting themselves up for a hammering.

[puskas]

You kind of proved my point again here Puskas. Belgium as yet have not qualified for anything. Nor have Hungary not Switzerland. So in terms of improvement there's been no markers hit.

Coaching and systems are hugely important.

But in countries the size of Ireland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, the ability to compete on the world stage will always be cyclical. 3-4 players come along at once who are either world class talents or something close to it, and not only can you play winning football, you can play nice football too.

Poland had it in the 70s, so did the Czechs.

Belgium had it in the eighties, so did Ireland and Denmark towards the end. Bulgaria and Norway had it in the nineties. And so on.


Where I fundamentally disagree with you is how you set up your team during the lean years. If your players aren't good enough to take on the better teams toe to toe with nice football, you must employ other methods. You win games, you keep your coefficient up, and when natural along filters in again, the hard work is not climbing the rankings again.

I mustn't be explaining myself well here. You say "coaching and systems are hugely important" but then seem to dismiss any point in bothering with that by saying it all depends on the arrival of 3 or 4 talents. where these 3 or 4 are expected to come from if you don't overhaul your structures and try to compete with the best, God only knows. Germany did it after Euro 2000, Spain did it in the early-90s. The examples I gave above were of smaller countries that Ireland could look to as models for baby steps improvements. Never happen in Ireland though with our "natural" predisposition to be shit at football and grateful for the crack when we hoof our way into a tournament every decade.

here's an article today on how the Spanish did it. http://euro2012.irishexaminer.com/analysis/spanish-template-shows-the-way-forward-for-ireland-197692.html

"One famed foreign coach was watching an Irish U-21 game, he turned to the official beside him and just scoffed: "Watch here. This guy will just get it, put his head down and run with it." The player did exactly that. And we saw the ultimate results of it all in Gdansk. "

Someone above challenged my use of the word embarrassing to describe Ireland. Well if Irish fans aren't embarrassed by how we play, then we deserve all the stuffings we get.           

[CiKe]

Does no one else find the questioning of Moyes at half time in relation to the Spurs job as really bad manners? The guy comes on and now I'm sure he's not doing it for free, but still they deliberately put the guy in a quite sh*tty situation. If it had been me i'd have found it hard not to hit Lineker a box when the cameras rolled off.

[Tony Baloney]

Does no one else find the questioning of Moyes at half time in relation to the Spurs job as really bad manners? The guy comes on and now I'm sure he's not doing it for free, but still they deliberately put the guy in a quite sh*tty situation. If it had been me i'd have found it hard not to hit Lineker a box when the cameras rolled off.

You would assume the producers would clear it with Moyes beforehand?

[laoislad]

Mick McCarty makes a decent co commentator.
Brian Kerr on RTE is painful.