saintant

One of the things I took away from watching the game was that, even when France had made subs, scored and were dominating the game, we didn't retreat into our shell. We kept men forward and counter attacked effectively when we could which led to us scoring two more goals which helped win us the game. Pity we hadn't done that against Argentina.

Accept it's low level opponents but Saints looked quite decent in those highlights. There were some decent transitions and movement. Fellows and Archer looked lively.

Bronze medal isn't it.

6-4. Let's hope we can win the 2nd set.

Wasn't going to bother watching but glad I did. Fantastic game.

You see this is what happens when we don't get all eleven players behind the ball 🙂 Good game but looks like we'll lose now.

Christ, the assistant guy is in bits 🙂

I accept that France aren't competing but we look so much better with Eze in midfield rather than two defensive midfielders in Rice and Anderson. We are not playing keep ball between the centre backs, they are actually driving forward. There is movement and we are getting between their lines. France have been woeful but this is a refreshing performance from England.

Not sure we did anything to warrant him offering his forgiveness. The upshot of the whole spying saga was that Boro were given a shot in the final that they hadn't deserved so, if anything, he should be thanking us.

I'm reasonably chilled because I could see no way we'd have beaten Spain in the final. Better to be disappointed now than more so on Sunday. Having said that our tactics after taking the lead were pathetic and I think that was down to a combination of players and manager decision making.

Agree. Good player especially at that price.

Just goes to prove how ridiculous the punishment was. Them laughing was the reaction the spying attempt deserved but they then realised they could enter into the dark arts and benefit.

Simon Jordan talking absolute sense and looking pissed off at the fact that Jim White was clearly trying to get him to wade in against Tonda.

After we scored we should have kept two wingers high up the pitch and Kane at centre forward with Bellingham as the link to give Argentina reason to fear a counter attack. Rice and Anderson protecting plus the back four in place was a better bet than 11 back and booting the ball knowing it's coming straight back at us. With 11 back we didn't even defend sensibly which was demonstrated by the fact that Argentina still had acres of space down both flanks to enable them to put dangerous crosses in. Again we didn't defend those crosses with 5'9" MacAllister winning numerous headers in the centre of goal. All the while Messi was patrolling and pulling the strings. Quite simply England scored then turned into headless chickens and played the remainder of the game exactly how Argentina would have wanted.

England clearly had no structured plan on how to manage the game after going one nil up. As a collective the team automatically retreated and all took up defensive duties to try to preserve the one goal lead. It's such a senseless thing to do because we just handed the whole initiative to Argentina and they didn't have to worry about defending themselves. It is baffling how so-called elite footballers can believe this is a tactic that will work. Spain didn't do it against France, they just carried on doing what had given them the lead and ended up scoring another.