I had to be on a work call for the first 30 minutes and missed 3 goals? Where is the Deschamps defence?
2024 UEFA Men’s European Championship
- Thread starter Dummy Hoy
- Start date
This Spanish team is much more fun to watch than the 2008/2012 death by a thousand passes winners (even though those teams were still capable of huge wins)
It's a hard thing to research, but it feels as though there have been so many come back situations in this tournament -- far more than I can remember in other tournaments.
He was the subject of the controversial no-call on a handball against Germany, knocking out the hosts.
At the very least, three of the semi-finalists (all other than France) have come back from a goal down to win their games in the knockout rounds - England vs Slovakia and then Switzerland on pens, Spain vs Georgia, Netherlands vs Turkey
I was just thinking the same thing. If Spain has success could it spell the end of the Spanish tiki taka? (At least for a moment.) I'm rooting for them for that reason, though I'd like to see France score again and make this an epic match.
Yeah, it started on the first matchday too. Italy over Albania. Ned over Poland. I think others took draws after being down (well, unless it's 0-0, a draw is always a "comeback" is guess). But I thought that by and large in major tournaments, the record of 1-0 leaders was really high, typically.
I'm rooting for France to score too, but Spain seems the more likely to get a third at the moment.
I remember this story from 2021 and I think now like I did back then that it’s such horseshit. The sample size is so small and there’s so much luck involved that you can’t draw any safe conclusions. France lost that2016 final because Lloris had his bell rung in the sequence before the goAl and his reaction wasn’t as good as normal. How does this prove that defense wins championships?
I agree. Any tournament is too small of a sample. Grouping multiple tournaments doesn’t account for changes to the game in terms of specific tactics, rule changes etc. It’s pointless. Analytics gone wild.
Just play to the strengths of your players, specifically your best and ones.
I went to look up the reports on the study - I think the story of that study got a bit changed in the retelling, since the study also covered the 2010 Spain team and the 2014 Germany team, and was about overall tournament success and not just defensive tactics - load management, penalty approaches, group stage approaches etc. As @Nick Kaufman points out, this was a study done in 2021 and it looked like Southgate took whatever approach he learned from that very well in leading his team in the Euros that year and in Qatar the following year, playing a defensive-minded but still relatively attractive form of football. This year's version of the England team seems so dour in comparison to the 2021 and 2022 teams that I would be hesitant to blame the study.
Where Southgate and the FA have really used analytics well is their whole approach to penalties, as that picture of Pickford's water bottle shows. Makes me mad that so much heartache was caused previously because England team managers didn't think that performance in penalties could be improved.
Analytics is usually good because it relies in colossal sample sizes. This seems Kline shoddy analysis, like Reep”s analysis that had 80s English teams hoof the ball up the pitch for a header.
Griezmann played well last game, after being silent for 30 minutes. I wonder if bringing him on late can energize them.
personally I soured on Southgate after the final against Italy in which I thought he engaged in scared coaching taking no risks whatsoever in a game situation where there was every reason to do so. Since I ve heard of that study at that time and I thought it was nonsense, I came away thinking that Southgate was no good.
With Kolo Muani out, you're already sacrificing pace. If this goes another 5 or 10 minutes as a 2-1 game, I think you need to put Giroud on. All that fucker does is score. Can't go out by a goal with him on the bench. Fuck the Xs and Os.
Mbappe made a great run and drew several defenders, but then just stopped, and no one else filled in the space he created from the left.
If France is just going to fire hopeful crosses towards space in the box, he seems like he might be the right guy to turn one into a goal.
The guy has a soccer ball magnet in his head. The ball just finds him. As long as France are seeming to create chances, Deschamps won't do it. And he probably shouldn't -- nostalgia isn't a reason to make a substitution. But there are certain players who just find themselves in front of the net, and he's one of them.