so England looked out of place tonight. Do you reckon they're doing blood tests to check something wasn't shoved in their tap water at half time? It was such a dramatic change at half time.
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so England looked out of place tonight. Do you reckon they're doing blood tests to check something wasn't shoved in their tap water at half time? It was such a dramatic change at half time.
England is out of the game, they are almost there but have failed to win against Croatia. I feel sad, now it will be France vs. Croatia in the finals.
It's what happens when you try to win 1 nill and miss sitters all game. Passing back to pickford also isn't a very positive strategy.
I enjoyed the game, but England looked tired and the passing was very sloppy. Not sure what happened compared to their first game but the passing was all over the place, even passing to the opposite team! I think we did well to get to the semi's but I think fatigue got the better of them in the end.
Super proud of the lads, we were the youngest team in the tournament with very little experience of massive games like this yet it went all the way to the wire, in the Semi Finals of the World Cup.
Three Lions!
I guess we'll find out on Saturday if we let Belgium win or not now.
I knew we were going to lose after about 60 minutes - we were fluffing some absolute sitters and Croatia were all over us. We never looked like winning it after the first half. France would tear us apart if we scraped into the final.
Still a great effort by a very young team who are only going to improve. Yeah, I know we had an easy path - but I'm still proud of the team and manager.
BTW people who slate Sterling's performance because he didn't score know nothing about football.
Serious lack of stamina. Couldn't even run with the ball.
Nothing wrong with being proud but lets be realistic here they struggled against decent sides and barely scored from open play the whole tournament unless it was a pub team. That is due to a sub par midfield and was not for lack of effort Deli Alli ran 9.2 miles in that game but was mostly chasing shadows.
While it is really disappointing for England to get knocked out being English myself, and how poor they were in the second half. I feel they are a team with a lot left to prove, and will only get better. Does anyone else feel the same?
Welcome to HEXUS! I have merged ypur thread with this pre-existing one.
Disclaimer - I am not particularly a football fan, but listening to one commentator after the match, one comment was that instead of controlling the ball, they just kicked it out of the field - a bit like England used to do. Its as if they suddenly lost confidence in themselves, and the team discipline suddenly fell apart.
But they were one (if not the) least experienced team in the tournament, and I hope they can only get better.
If they can regain that team discipline, then they have the potential to become formidable.
As it is, they proved the naysayers (like me) who predicted they would get knocked out in the first round completely wrong! (And I'd rather we were knocked out by Croatia than France :) )
The better team won on the night.
England lacked a playmaker, someone in the middle to pass the ball around and steady the ship. You can't have Henderson alone deal with an experienced midfield like the one Croatia had. In the end it was experience vs speed. It doesn't help that they have struggled to score from open play this world cup.
Essentially Croatia sussed out England's game plan and made some adjustments. England didn't make any adjustments to deal with Croatia. Luckily we are not facing France, they would have hammered them.
Kane / Lingard will rue the chances missed which may have been enough to take them through. But you could see from 30th minute until the 90th that Croatia started putting their passes together, moving it across the pitch, being more aggressive and eventually tiring England out. Just before their 1st goal England couldn't even header the ball out of their box.
Best thing we can do is put to bed what would have happened against Belgium by fielding a strong team for 3rd place.
Don't forget they are playing again Saturday :)
Moan the Croatia!!!!!!
this from our Scottish correspondent... :D
We were better in the first half. They destroyed us from the second half onwards. We panicked, played long ball, and southgate failed to put on key changes at 65mins when he should have. Anyway, let's see how today's dead-rubber plays out for the b-sides.
England even performed beyond my expectation at the world, I never knew they could go that far, although I'm happy that the so called big guns were given an early exit, the likes of Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Spain...