England v Croatia Match Thread

I saw us win Le Tournoi. Anything after that is a bonus.

I saw us win in 1966 and have hopes of us winning it again before I pop my clogs,

PLUS

I hope to see Town in the championship as well.

Tonight we looked tired in the 2nd half ,

BUT

If we had took our chances in the 1st half we would have been 2 or 3 nil up,

Then it would have been them looking tired chasing the game,

Never mind we did well to go so far.

Quoted from ginnywings

No complaints from me. Croatia just had more guile and craft in midfield as i feared they would, and if anyone deserved to get the winner it was them. Perisic was immense. Not really quick or tricky, but he powered up and down like a bulldozer all game. It's just that little step up that we can't quite bridge, and again England produce good players, but very rarely world class ones. It was a combination of good set pieces and a favourable draw that got us as far as we did, but both times we played against opposition with better quality players, we lost.

Did well, restored a bit of faith, but ultimately, not quite good enough to get those goals in open play that you need at the right times. Think the French should win it now.

Thank you ginny for a well balanced perspective. I agree totally but would like to add 1 or 2 or ten ! points
We've had world beating 30 minutes v Tunisia Colombia n Croatia. How do we build on that?
Far better performance overall than many people believed
Pickford trip pier Kane  maguire etc will be far better players, playing for far better teams in 2/4 years time
Many parallels with the Belgium France game last night where Belgium threatened early n could've been out of sight before the other team gradually exerted their control n influence and came out on top.
Whichever team won tonight will really really struggle v France
Croatia played as well as they could've hoped for.they are an excellent team, that as usual in the uk media, is vastly underrated. Just because you haven't played or succeeded in the premiership doesn't make you a bad player. The movement for the 2 goals plus the excellence of atleti's right back proves that.
Plus they worked so hard to close us down. V disappointed at the reversion to long ball Shiite but their hard work forced us to do it.
We have under 17,19,20 n 21 champs. We are only going to get better.
This is the best footballing England team I've seen in 30 years with everyone comfortable on the ball.
Everyone manager players coaches will learn from this and we will come back better n stronger.
Roll on the euros its distinctly possible we could win it.dont despair,

Some good points forza and i agree with your assessment on the whole. We too said some of the very same things in our post match analysis straight after the defeat. Most were happy with our overall performance but admitted we were not quite there yet. We also discussed the fact that the younger England sides have worked their way to winning tournaments over a period of time. Firstly getting to quarters, then semi's, before finally starting to win things. Let's hope the senior team can do the same. I also agree that Croatia were underestimated by a lot of people. They have many experienced players in their side who play for the cream of Europe, with heaps of medals and titles between them. You don't get to play regularly for Real Madrid, Juventus, Inter, Bayern and Atletico if you're not a top pro. Also totally agree with the comparisons to last nights game. Both Belgium and England played very well for the early parts of the games, but couldn't apply the killer touches required. Both France and Croatia rode the storms and exerted their influence more as the games wore on. The next step for both England and Belgium is to learn how to win tournaments. All in all, it's far more encouraging being an England fan than it has been for decades, and i think Southgate is right when he says this is just the beginning and there is better to come. At least i hope he is and i'm not despairing, far from it.

If you don't take your chances you don't win anything.

Nothing to do with Southgate our Achilles heel has been missed chances throughout this tournament.

Against mediocre you get away with it but against quality, you get punished. We bossed them first half and made them look poor but only had one goal to show for it.

The halftime talk for the croates would have been we are only a goal behind push up, pressure our defence and chase us down. Their tempo was far higher than ours and they deserved the win.

Still, a great effort to get to the semi-finals and show English football is back on the world map with a young squad capable of better things.

Just thought it was a different game in the 2nd half as Croatia used the flanks better and our 3 at he back had to become 5 leaving us short of numbers and creativity in mid field, they adapted, as an experienced team you'd expect that.  

In hindsight it's easy to say that we should have done this and should have done that but over the 120 minutes Croatia where the better side. Their international "experience" showed as the did a real job on the ref towards the end of the first half and coming off for the break as he went to pieces in the 2nd half and beyond.

Unlike previous recent tournaments on and off the field England did their best I'm not sure you can ask for anymore. I guess the important thing now is to keep the expectancy low and keep playing for England something players look forward to, do that and a lot might just look after itself.  

Quoted from forza ivano

Thank you ginny for a well balanced perspective. I agree totally but would like to add 1 or 2 or ten ! points
We've had world beating 30 minutes v Tunisia Colombia n Croatia. How do we build on that?
Far better performance overall than many people believed
Pickford trip pier Kane  maguire etc will be far better players, playing for far better teams in 2/4 years time
Many parallels with the Belgium France game last night where Belgium threatened early n could've been out of sight before the other team gradually exerted their control n influence and came out on top.
Whichever team won tonight will really really struggle v France
Croatia played as well as they could've hoped for.they are an excellent team, that as usual in the uk media, is vastly underrated. Just because you haven't played or succeeded in the premiership doesn't make you a bad player. The movement for the 2 goals plus the excellence of atleti's right back proves that.
Plus they worked so hard to close us down. V disappointed at the reversion to long ball Shiite but their hard work forced us to do it.
We have under 17,19,20 n 21 champs. We are only going to get better.
This is the best footballing England team I've seen in 30 years with everyone comfortable on the ball.
Everyone manager players coaches will learn from this and we will come back better n stronger.
Roll on the euros its distinctly possible we could win it.dont despair,

At last, someone who's not on a downer!  There was obvious frustrations last night, as much as I like how Southgate has set the side up I thought it needed a bit more oomph and energy in midfield, personally I would have gone for Delph in there to add a little bit of energy and just retain possession.  Would have taken a brave manager to do so but I think Vardy for Kane was needed in the second half.  Kane's effectiveness (dropping deep and winning flick-on's for Sterling) had gone by then and with Croatia pressing higher and higher we had the option to exploit the space in behind.  Doing that Southgate woud have tied the rope around his own neck.

England invited pressure needlessly and abandoned what had served us well.  But with some of the meltdown comments, not just one here, you would think we had got knocked out in the group stages in disgrace.  We lost to a very good Croatia side, a side who dominated our midfield with their two established world-class players.  England on the other side are a team just finding their feet.  There's no-one in or around that eleven who will be too old by 2020 or 2022, as a team we will be better in 2 and 4 years time.  We've got loads of talented players coming through who all have that tournament winning mentality about them.  

By all means let's be disappointed and reflect on the 'what if' but can we just appreciate how well this side and the set-up have done rather than the doom, gloom and constantly looking for someone to blame?

It will be interesting to see the running stats for the game. Can't help but feel that Croatia covered a heck of a lot more ground than our players and you don't deserve to win if you don't work hard enough or intelligently enough. As I mentioned last night, the way France defended their one goal lead against Belgium was night and day in comparison to the space we left available for Croatia in the middle and on the wings. You've got a player of such quality as Griezmann who was willing to absolutely run his mammaries off closing down the opposition players in comparison to Alli who jogged around to little effect. Young barely crossed the half-way line last night, either. We'd have been better off moving to 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 to ensure we had enough players in midfield. Instead, we let them have the run of the pitch, allowing dozens of crosses to come in without challenge.

I don't really blame the players too much because it's up to the manager to adapt to changes during the game and, though our choices were limited, bunging Dier in midfield every game off the bench shows a distinct lack of something, somewhere.

The media are praising everyone to high heaven today, but I think the manner in which we failed last night was all too typical of what we've seen so many times and doesn't deserve much praise. Croatia played decently after half-time, but it was as much a case of us letting them do what they wanted rather than them bringing the game to us - there was a reason they were well below us in the world rankings before the tournament started, some good players though they may have.

I don't think we'll see any sort of a rethink from Southgate (and I'm not saying anything major is really required), but we're going to struggle if we're so reliant on Kane and set pieces for goals. Our other first-choice attacking options are Sterling, Alli and Lingard who have goals/game ratios around 1 in 25, 1 in 10 and 1 in 8 respectively at international level. Even Rashford only has a 1 in 8 ratio though many have been as sub appearances. We just didn't hit the target nearly enough in the knockout stages - 1 shot on goal every 50 minutes - and this indicates a deeper problem, especially when you consider we enjoyed some good attacking spells during this period.

Hopefully, Southgate will realise that he needs to evolve his approach to some degree. Euro 2020 qualification ought to be a piece of cake when you consider our ranking and the number of teams in the finals so hopefully we'll try out a few different combinations and variations to find something which works a bit better or gives us a 'Plan B'.

I think we forget it's not just as easy as saying "we should've done this" or "we should've done that".......there's a quality team on the pitch with us who aren't going to allow us to do what we want.

Yes some players didn't put in 10/10 performances in every game but isn't that football? There's some weaker areas of our team but it's an evolving team in a relatively new system. As DHM said, you replace some of the weaker players with young lads coming through who have experience of winning international youth tournaments - I'm looking at Phil Foden particularly - and it might give us an edge compared to where we are now.

So I don't think the "what we should've done" inquest should be too strong/critical because we've surpassed expectations, and 31 teams at this World Cup will end up being able to look back and think what they could've done differently.

Half of the team will improve enough with this experience definitely, but for England to progress as a national team, we'll need a few coming through from the lower age groups to improve quality over the next two or three years.

I think Southgate will learn too. Can't for the life of me get my head round him playing Ashley Young, poor defender and a total roadblock going forward on the left, and he left Jordan Henderson woefully exposed second half last night.

In all honesty, getting to the semi finals has to be deemed a confidence boosting progression. But being realistic, we didn't need to beat too much to get there..