- Joined
- Sep 25, 2021
Well, England should have these aspirations. They had the most expensive squad and the squad has the quality to perform better. With being the birthland of modern football and hosting the most expensive league filled to the brim with quality players every fan has the right to ask for more than England delievered. At any time the English could have gotten kicked out.
Because in the end we talk about an English squad that only got 1 win and 2 draws out of their group matches. And in none of these threee matches England dominated their opponent. Both draws could have easily ended up in a loss for England so worst case would be a 3-point-England. By any standard this can't be enough. And it's even worse bc by any metric we nowadays have, all these fancy new statistic like passes per defensive action, xG and whatnot, England performed on Luton Town levels in the group stage. The English team did not only fail the so called eye test (how a team looks on the pitch, a very subjective metric, obviously) but they were in fact fucking dogshit. They were that much dogshit in the group stage that not only Austria scored three times the goals the English scored but that the Austrians had in one match more shots on target and chances created than the English team had in 3 group stage matches.
They beat a better Dutch team? No. The Dutch performed on a similar level in the group stage which means the Dutch were actually really bad. They improved their performance but only for the round of 16 match against Romania and truth is Romania was dogshit in this match by any metric available. So a better Dutch team played against a very bad opponent.
The Turks were on par with the Dutch.
The Dutch started good against England but after the English scored the equalizer they started bullying the Dutch completely. That was one half of a half where the English team showed what they were capable of doing if they just want to do it. Only the half time saved the Dutch from catching another goal. And then in the 2nd half only God knows why the English decided to not keep on bullying the Dutch. Only when Watkins and Palmer got on the pitch the English started doing better again. Same as against Spaín later. Watkins and Palmer got on the pitch and -boom- the English immediately scored the equalizer and kept on pressuring the Spanish team - until the English decided to go back to parking the bus again.
Everyone is talking highly of the Spanish team and yes, they were the best team. But they were not unbeatable. The English could have beaten them and the Germans could have beaten them too (Germany was the only team forcing the Spanish into overtime). The Spanish will only get beater from now on and are already world cup winner material.
But to be fair, Southgate really gets way to much shit. In fact, Southgate and the English team got that much shit that way to many people were overlooking the bad performances of Belgium, Portugal, the Dutch, Italy, Croatia and especially France. They all performed very poorly. And that's why this Euro Cup felt so underwhelming at times. Basically we only had two teams that showed a constantly good performance, namely Germany and Spain. One tier below we have Switzerland and then we have Austria. That's not some names getting thrown around when we talk about good performances on the pitch.
And in my personal opinion especially the French deserve way more flack for their shit. They were playing very defensive in the past tournaments and this year they showed up with an even more defensive team. Effectively they played with 8 fucking defensive player when they have enough quality offensive players. Fuck Deschamps. In 12 years of Deschamps the French only won 1 trophy in the end. They gave away 2nd with the final in Qatar. In fact back then the French only had their first shot on goal in the 70th minute. That's fucking horrible. Pretty sure that in a few years a lot of people will realize how underwhelmig Deschamps' French team actually was.
Southgate's English team is a team of ambivalence. His success, compared to former English teams, and his stats show this on one side. On the other side he lost two fucking finals in a row when the English could have won both of them. The Italians weren't that strong back then and the Spanish were beatable. Another issue is that Southgate's English team never beat any other nations ahead of the English, like the French, the Spanish and other teams. Because as much success Southgate had at tournaments as soon as the English faced a better team on paper they actually lost. The tournament brackets favored the English throughout Southgate's run too. To bea fair tho a favourable bracket is not something Southgate can influence but if you want to win trophies you have to beat the big dogs at some point (weird to call Croatia a big dog as they never won anything but back then they were ahead of the English; Germany 2020 was not a big dog, the state of our team in 2020 was bad, we barely made it out of the group stage). Something he simply never achieved during his run. But whoever is going to take over the English team now is stepping into some big shoes bc he will always be compared to Southgate and history will redeem national team coach Southgate.
