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England squad announced today and a couple of big surprises.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/36300164
Relatively big omissions from the squad would include: Mark Noble, Michael Carrick, Phil Jagielka, Theo Walcott, Danny Welbeck, Phil Jones.
Interesting squad from them though.
Noble very unlucky. He had a super season and made some of the comments from last year in the Ireland section look a bit silly in hindsight.
Wellbeck injured for 9 more months. Hardly a big omission :) Walcott deservedly overlooked.
Agreed on Noble, a superior player to Henderson I would say also yet he'll probably make the starting XI. I suppose it's Danny Drinkwater's rise that has hurt Noble's chances the most though.
Did anybody see Joe Cole on that Fantasy Football Show with Paul Merson recently? It was very interesting generally but particularly when Cole was speaking about the various England teams he played on. He was saying it was frustrating that they were so rigid, that they never tried to play anything other than 4-4-2. He mentioned how crazy it seemed when they came up against what would be regarded as inferior players, journeymen from the likes of Bolton and Wigan playing for their national sides, and how they used be able to tactically pass England off the park, despite England having a team full of Champions League winners.
They seem to be a bit more flexible these days though, and have some good players coming through. All about getting the balance right now and picking the right ones.
Here's hoping Spurs' slump continues into the Euros.
Some of the players Spain are leaving out: Costa, Mata, Torres, Javi Martinez. Jaysus.
The omission of Jaysus in particular is a surprise.
Not super surprised to see Phil Jones not part of the England squad, he's become so injury prone that it's impossible to rely on him. Costa's exclusion seems well-earned.
Pirlo left out of the Italy squad. Hard to know if that really matters for us.
Silviu Lung (son of) is in the Romania squad. It'd be hilarious if we met them and it went to penalties.
Raphael Varane ruled out for France now so that's their first choice centre back partnership done for, with Sakho being unavailable. Huge blow.
I guess we're now officially a generation on from Italia 90 :-(Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Huge blow for France not having the two regular centre backs at the competition.
Sakho is free to play but not sure if France have called him back in or not. Personally I think he's a train wreck but with Varane absent, well beggars can't be choosers I guess.
The Iceland squad was announced 3 or 4 weeks ago without any fuss.
I received a gift of match tickets for the Euros from my son so we will be following Iceland in France. Seeing as we have suffered and celebrated about 100 games together, counting those where he was fast asleep in the pram left beside the coffee stall, this is a natural happening even though we'll be both be on Irish passports.
This is a "cute" unusual promotional video financed by one of the sponsors, it synchronises video clips of some the players as kids with the present, the dream becomes a reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgYJkjjczeM
Anyone else feel terribly sorry for Didier Deschamps after Eric Cantona accused him of being a racist in his latest attention-seeking missive?
It's clear as day that Cantona is still bitter that France started winning tournaments as soon as they cast people like him and Ginola aside.
And it's clear as day that he takes a great degree of satisfaction in France's recent failures, which is really quite pathetic.
Anyone with a brain can see that there are valid non-footballing reasons for not calling up Benzema and Ben Arfa.
And Deschamps was ten times the player Cantona was at club and Intl. level.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks
Steady on.............Cantona wasnt too bad with United, lol
Nobody can pout better than Cantona.
France played Cameroon this evening . I didn't realise France have one hell of a squad.
The most memorable moments came in last 5 minutes, when Cam. equalised.
At first it looked that France were caught out on the hop but then in the replay you see one of those "how did he get away with that?"
Now I feel we were cheated out of a great last minutes comeback against Netherlands at WC1994 by an over fussy ref.:)
If it doesn't play at selected time the incident is at 4 mins 24 seconds onwards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-4QD8Q5PMDk#t=264
Adam Zrelak, who scored the winner for Slovan Bratislava v UCD, is cut from the final Slovakian squad, but Jan Mucha, Slovan's keeper, is in, so some UCD interest at least. :)
Do you remember those days when France were absolutely gash in a whole heap of ways. Ginola and Cantona weren't the sole reasons for that.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks
I thought it was a double dose of Murphy's law that did France's WC´94 hopes in, pure GUBU.
Nice little article on extratime about the Euro 2016 squad members who've played against LoI sides.