OT: Euro04 - Page 8

Alneyan · #71 June 24th, 2004, 10:33 PM

I... feel the pain. My sympathy to Mark and Oleg. *Drows in sorrow*

Rollo · #72 June 24th, 2004, 10:58 PM

POR-TU-GAL!

Clearly the best game so far. What a fantastic match!
It was a hard one to watch for me as those were my two favorite teams playing against each other. Good to see that the better team won. England was way to passive for 80 minutes of the regular playing time. I hope that Rooney isn't too badly hurt.
Now I hope that Portugal makes it all the way to the title. It will be the Last chance for the players of the 'golden generation' (Figo, Rui Costa, Couto, et al.)

[ June 24, 2004, 21:59: Message edited by: Rollo ]

gravey101 · #73 June 24th, 2004, 11:02 PM

Oh, well, better team won to be honest, but there was nothing wrong with England's goal at the end of regular time and we should have won the match there and then. The referee mad a bad mistake in my opinion.

oleg · #74 June 25th, 2004, 01:28 AM

Yeah, it was pathetic.

Once ahead, pull midfield players back into penalty box. Kick longballs to isolated forwards and hope for the best. Does not work against quality teams like France or Portugal

I actually think referee was right - Terry held goalie down with his hand over shoulder. You can not do that inside the box. Even if you honestly go for the ball, goalie has a right of way.

primitive · #75 June 25th, 2004, 09:49 AM

Good call by the ref. Most refs would have missed the stiff arm by Terry.

gravey101 · #76 June 25th, 2004, 02:43 PM

I think this pictures sums the situation up nicely :-)

primitive · #77 June 25th, 2004, 02:59 PM

LOL Gravey. That�s funny

But for the record., here is another picture of the incident (not done in photoshop

)

This one is taken about 2 tenths of a second before the previous one and clearly shows:
- The stiff arm.
- The goalie in position to reach the ball (or at least challenge for it) if he was allowed to jump straight up.
- The ref just outside the box and with a clear view of the arm/incident.

gravey101 · #78 June 25th, 2004, 03:07 PM

I see the pictures, and understand your point, but they don't show what the live footage shows IMO. I don't think the goalie has a chance of challenging Campbell. He was out of position and Terry was in the way. We will probably never agree on this one but there you go. With Rooney out for the tournament it probably saved England the pain of losing to Sweden (or the Dutch) in the semi-final... we really weren't good enough, espcially in central midfield where we just kept giving up posession time after time. Anyways, hope springs eternal, and on to the 2006 WC.

[ June 25, 2004, 14:09: Message edited by: gravey101 ]

PeterD · #79 June 25th, 2004, 08:13 PM

Last post was dead right. We had no midfield
worth talking about. The defence did ok but with
no connection to the forwards we were never going
to win.

Beckham was awful, you simply cannot miss 2
penalties at this level and win. He may take a
good freekick but he's not a good captain.

Football is a tough game and you have to have a
tough captain, one you can hear all over the
pitch. We've had good captains but he isn't one
of them.

Sure we played well against Croatia and beat the
Swiss but we lack a creative spark to manufacture
goals from nothing.

oleg · #80 June 25th, 2004, 11:08 PM

I feel much better tonight. At least we lost to a team with a bunch of world class players. But French...

Now, that is a shock of the most shocking tournament ever