Italy v Sweden play off

[Bentley Bullet]

I've stopped following England, they're not successful enough for my liking. I just support Donny Rovers now!

[arkseyrover]

What is the point of England going to the finals after playing dour, boring, frightened football scraping through preliminaries against third and fourth rate opposition just to be a dull, boring embarrassment when they come up against real teams. Complete waste of time.

[Bristol Red Rover]

It's a long.time since I felt even slightly nationalistic at the euros or world cup. Seeing giants fall, miserably, and the fresh enthusiasm of minnows triumph or fail, that's the beauty of these competitions.

[BillyStubbsTears]

You've got it Nick. And I've not been wrong yet have I?

[GazLaz]

Tournaments are a farce anyway. You need plenty of luck to win them. The format isn’t designed to find the best team.

[Pancho Regan]

Amazing how lucky those Germans are though eh?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Aye. And how unlucky we have been.

[drfchound]

What is the point of England going to the finals after playing dour, boring, frightened football scraping through preliminaries against third and fourth rate opposition just to be a dull, boring embarrassment when they come up against real teams. Complete waste of time.

Might a well just give the trophy to the Germans now then and save a lot of money.

Probably give Blackburn and Wigan the automatic promotion places for L1 this year while we are at it and not bother anyone to challenge them eh.

[Bristol Red Rover]

Tournaments are a farce anyway. You need plenty of luck to win them. The format isn’t designed to find the best team.

The whole fun and excitement of a tournement is that it engages luck, form, prep, desire, confidence, risk, team spirit, embracing the physical and cultural football "terroir" of the host country, and so on. The cream will still tend to rise. But what you might call luck is more than the throw of the dice, it involves attitude and "riding the wave". That's something that England for example haven't pulled off for a long time, and I doubt will do this time round, but if they do it could be exciting.

[anne honemous]

I think Greece are possibly the best team to have won a tournament in recent years.

Their tactics were entirely negative; a totally defensive anti-football style purely designed to stifle the opposition, slow the game and pinch something off half chances, but it worked and they were unbreakable and unspectacular in the same breath.

Other countries have won it through having talented players who could sometimes turn a game on its head in one single moment.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Usually, a team that is unambiguously in the top 3-4 in a tournament on overall performances is the one that goes on to win it. That's been the case in every World Cup I can think of. Yes, there's luck - France should probably have won in 82, although Italy were glorious when they hit form. Brazil in 78 if the Peruvian Govt hadn't offered to throw the match with Argentina in return for having a dozen political prisoners sent home to be tortured. Netherlands in 74 if they'd not tried ducking about in the final. Maybe Germany in 06, although in that semi-final, Italy were magnificent. Apart from that, I can't think of a tournament in my lifetime where the very best side in the competition hasn't won it.

So luck doesn't really play that much of a part.

[andysly]

I think England grew into being the best team at Italia 90 after a dodgy beginning, we were also the best team at Euro 96.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Italia 90?
Best team?

We drew against Ireland and Holland and labouredto beat Egypt.

We ground out a result against Belgium.

We beat Cameroon courtesy of two penalties. One of which was questionable.

We rose to the occasion against West Germany for sure. But you can't truly say we were the best team in the tournament. West Germany had been consistently far stronger than us. Italy (with home advantage) were at least as good as us. Argentina, similarly. I'd say we were where we finished. 4th best.

Euro 96.

Again. Plodding in the qualifiers bar that gem of a performance against Holland.

Nothing special against Spain.

A decent showing in the semi, but we weren't the clearly better side. You might just about make a case that we were the best side. But then we did have home advantage. And we couldn't make that work for us. 

[Akinfenwa]

I still don't know how Portugal managed to win Euro 2016.

They didn't win a single group game, finishing 3rd with 3 draws, and only ended up winning 1 game in normal time, the semi-final against Wales.

It was the most underwhelming winner of an international tournament I've seen.

[Akinfenwa]

Looking at the England squad it seems nowadays that if you simply exist on the periphery of a Premier League squad then you're in!

Are we really this desperate? I suppose we are.

[anne honemous]

I still don't know how Portugal managed to win Euro 2016.

Ronaldo.

A world class player that turned a totally average team and made them into something special.

[andysly]

Italia 90?
Best team?

We drew against Ireland and Holland and labouredto beat Egypt.

We ground out a result against Belgium.

We beat Cameroon courtesy of two penalties. One of which was questionable.

We rose to the occasion against West Germany for sure. But you can't truly say we were the best team in the tournament. West Germany had been consistently far stronger than us. Italy (with home advantage) were at least as good as us. Argentina, similarly. I'd say we were where we finished. 4th best.

Euro 96.

Again. Plodding in the qualifiers bar that gem of a performance against Holland.

Nothing special against Spain.

A decent showing in the semi, but we weren't the clearly better side. You might just about make a case that we were the best side. But then we did have home advantage. And we couldn't make that work for us. 

Thanks for correcting my viewpoint, obviously not entitled to an opinion.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Not at all mate. I was just giving my own view.