In the spirit of more threads.
Tournament winner: MarxismTournament winner:
Dark Horse:
Biggest flop:
Golden boot:
Breakout star:
Dark Horse: Denmark
Biggest flop: Spain
Golden boot: Depay
Breakout star: Mason Mount
In the spirit of more threads.
Tournament winner: MarxismTournament winner:
Dark Horse:
Biggest flop:
Golden boot:
Breakout star:
Dark Horse: Denmark
Biggest flop: Spain
Golden boot: Depay
Breakout star: Mason Mount
France
Denmark
England
Mbappe
Jonas Wind
Tournament winner: Portugal
Dark Horse: Turkey
Biggest flop: Germany
Golden boot: R.Lewandowski
Breakout star: J.Felix
I don't think Denmark are that much of a dark horse at this point. Everybody seems to be backing them to get to the semis.
Tournament winner: France
Dark Horse: Turkey
Biggest flop: England
Golden boot: Benzema
Breakout star: My knowledge of football players is terrible these days so fuck knows.
I'm quite up for the Euros for that reason, because it'll more resemble an old school tournament where one was seeing players for the first time. I just saw 'Donyell Malen' while looking at the golden boot contender list and thought nope, never heard of him.
Tournament winner: Spain? idk
Dark Horse: Whoever lucks a good round of 16 draw. Sweden maybe.
Biggest flop: Whichever group f team drops points to Hungary. France are definitely due. Also don't think Croatia are getting out of the group.
Golden boot: Memphis Depay
Breakout star: Jack "Jack "Jack Grealish" Grealish" Grealish. Am I doing it right?
Last edited by -james-; 10-06-2021 at 04:43 PM.
Tournament winner: Germany. I'm not entirely convinced by France or Portugal and whilst Germany are shit right now I think they might just shit their way to the final
Dark Horse: Obvious answers here are Denmark and Turkey but I feel like they've moved out of dark horse range now so I'll say the Czech Republic
Biggest flop: England, I think they'll finish third in the group
Golden boot: Lewandowski
Breakout star: I'd like to say Florian Wirtz but I don't think he'll be given the minutes so I'll say Nicolo Zaniolo.
This is the least confident I've ever been about international predictions.
Edit: Zaniolo didn't make the final Italy squad (Mancini is a fool) so I'll change the breakout star to Gravenberch
Last edited by Sir Andy Mahowry; 11-06-2021 at 06:49 PM.
Without having looked at brackets or anything
Tournament winner: France
Dark Horse: Italy finalists
Biggest flop: Belgium
Golden boot: Ciro Immobile
Breakout star: Same as Offy, I don't even know who would qualify as a breakout anymore. But I've just been shocked to learn that Adama Traore plays for Spain, and I'd love for him to come out of nowhere and go all Wolves beast mode on the tournament, leaving a generation of Barca mate fans extremely confused.
Winner: Germany. It could be tight, though.
Dark Horse: North Macedonia. I want a minnow to get far thanks to the stupid format.
Flop: England. It's a tough group to get out of and I've not been convinced. Granted, it's England but I'm just not as excited for this as I was with 2018.
Breakout: There's an Argentinian ref involved. Expect him to make a mockery of the European game.
On England, it's reached the point where the prospect of us stinking up another tournament, be it through awful play, piss poor results, or a combination of the two, is absolutely unacceptable.
We've been 'good', in what, one since 2004?
Aye, but also about 3 since 1970.
Although it's hard to properly quantify retrospectively, I mean, for about half an hour Euro 2000 was amazing, and look what happened there.
The only time I've genuinely thought we might win one, after the tournament started, was 2018.
At least we did better than Germany. 2018 was a weird moment where we might fluke it. Especially when Croatia went to extra time with Brazil? in their quarter?
Sounds about the same as Spain it you ignore the four year stretch where they had football solved.
I dunno. I think you can attribute a lot of England's early exits to minor nuance/randomness like penalties, brain dead red cards, injuries, Kane not squaring it to Sterling etc., I don't get why it needs to be woven into a narrative like they're all connected.
Southgate seems extremely good at fostering team spirit and seems to quite appreciate a shithouse, and those seem like good things.
It's all about the round of sixteen against the group f team. Odds on if they make it to the Wembley games.
Spain’s team looks a bit grim. Laporte will need to carry them
I've been enjoying the England Retrospective series here. First one is free, rest behind a fiver a month paywall, but well worth it imo.
Euro 2008 should have been our tournament. None of the other teams were all that, but David James was in the PFA Team of the Year; the defence was all Champions' League finalists; Joe Cole was at his peak; we had in-form central midfielders that a proper manager would have made work; and Michael Owen was even fit. But the manager...
The best manager we had was Glenn Hoddle. The rest have all been turgid shite from Sven onwards.
Euro 96 and Euro 2004 were the only ones I thought we could actually win. I might have felt the same about 2018, but I was immune to hope by then.
All of our managers have been pretty crap, given that not a single one of them has got us playing well for any period of time long enough to encompass a qualifying campaign and an actual tournament. Not even one.
What is it about Denmark the everyone is anticipating so much?
I do feel we would've beaten the Czech's in '96. Might have also won in '90 against that fairly iffy Argentina side. Although Maradona would've probably played out of his skin for it.
I won't count it out. We've lived to see Greece tactic it out.
Tournament winner: The football family and maybe Portugal.
Dark Horse: Finland
Biggest flop: Spain
Golden boot: Lukaku
Breakout star: Glen Kamara
The teams that play well don't often win tournaments, and the teams that win tournaments don't often play well.
I think the criteria are squad depth, squad morale, player quality and/or squad cohesion, ability to shithouse, and a bunch of luck. "Playing well" is irrelevant.
It's a real tragedy that Mourinho has yet to manage in a tournament. He'd be glorious at it, with any nation.
And to further elaborate, England rarely do this. All too often we either lack the ability to attack, defend like a bomb is about to go off any minute or a combination of the two.
No team has ever won a tournament without playing well.
Do you mean the Portugal who won the euros after barely qualifying from (and looking dogshit throughout) a group where they faced Iceland, Hungary and Austria, and only won one game in ninety minutes in the entire tournament? That's exactly what I'm referring to when I reference luck. One game goes slightly different and they're failures. Tiny nuances in international tournaments dictate entire narratives. They were not a good side.
Ronaldo was absolutely awful for most of euro 2016 also iirc.
They beat Croatia and an in-form Wales (who beat Belgium) in spite of it being a toss up between Nani and Pepe for who was their second best player. They also won a final against heavy favourites without their best player, which required a level of discipline and mental strength that many teams haven't got. They did an excellent job with what they had because they were coached properly.
Yeah they were great at shithousing. They beat Wales, yes. And Poland in the quarter final. Pretty dreamy draw.
Fact is they looked absolute dogshit in the group and knockouts. Nobody is watching those games and thinking hmm, yes, future champions. They just happened to win a few ties so they're restrospectively a proper football side.
Yeah, I mean the Portugal that didn't lose a group game and conceded 1 goal in the knockout stages. Even if I'm not being facetious and admit the group was bad for them, which it was, they conceded one goal in 450 minutes of knockout football while defending unbelievably.
If you can't see the difference between that and the shitshows England regularly put in then I don't know what to say.
Yeah, and we lost to a knackered Croatia after a dream draw in 2018, because we haven't got any bottle and couldn't protect a lead, because we're coached by a gimp. This 'shithousing' doesn't just come out of nowhere. It's inferior players coached to play to their strengths. Imagine us in a final against a really good France in France and Harry Kane goes off after ten minutes. We would fall to pieces.
People were looking at them thinking they could win after they got a knockout game or two under their belt because they defended incredibly and were clearly quite content to win every game 0-0 on pens, as long as they won. They had a gameplan and executed it superbly. That IS playing well.
-james- your argument seems to be things happened as they did happen, but they just as easily could have happened another way if one thing that did happen hadn't happened or one thing that didn't happen did happen.
Things happen in football for a reason and while there may well be a million alternate universes with one that contains an England who're multiple tournament champions, we're not in that universe, we're in this one.
I'm yet to go through the squads, form and possible routes (ain't no one got time for that tbf) but upon a quick scan just now of the groups..
Likes: Italy, Belgium, North Macedonia, Scotland, France, Portugal
Dislikes: Group C, England, Group E and Germany
Italy and Scotland seem to be going under the radar whilst Portugal is up there with France in terms of talent but don't have the fuckwits feeling empowered by king fuckwit Karim.