Parksey wrote:Corazon de Leon wrote:Parksey wrote:Corazon de Leon wrote:Pathetic in the end.
It wasn't really though, was it? I mean, it wasn't, really.
It was disappointing, gutting, a little sloppy at times. Even despite not being a great team ourselves, we had it well within our capabilities to see the game out at 1-0.
But it wasn't pathetic.
One shot on goal in 120 minutes is pretty pathetic, in my view. When you’ve got 20 and 30 goal a season EPL strikers against Dejan Lovren and a keeper with a dodgy hamstring, you need to be doing a hell of a lot better than that.
Of course, we weren't creative enough, no-one is going to argue against that. But we weren't pathetic. We were threatening and our pace did worry them, just we couldn't finish these attacks off into something clinical. Our one shot was arguably the most clear-cut in the entire game. Had Kane scored (he should have), we might have seen the game out with one shot. Would it still have been pathetic then, to only have one shot in 90 minutes?
Pathetic is conspiring to give away an easy victory, of not giving enough effort, of horrendous mistakes, of not caring enough etc. Being sloppy in attack at times is not pathetic. Croatia aren't mugs, and back in the group stage many were tipping them as dark horses. Lovren is capable of playing well, he was part of the Liverpool side who got to the CL final. It's not pathetic to get knocked out by a side who have him in their defense or a keeper who had a slight niggle in the last game. It's ridiculous to think so, in my eyes, and merely reactive to the scoreline and defeat.
No-one's happy about how we struggle to score in open play, least of all me. This isn't breaking news though and has been going out throughout the tournament, so I'm not sure what's so pathetic about it now we have been beaten by a team that is, probably, a little better than us.
We were also 22 minutes away from actually seeing the game out. Whether we would have or not is moot, but we were fairly comfortable first half.
I’ll answer all of these points in order
1. It’s pathetic because after half time England didn’t look capable of getting a shot together, and defended absolutely calamitously - Croatia could’ve won 3-1 or 4-1 in normal time and we’re unlucky not to do that. As someone else said, they could barely string five passes together from about the fiftieth minute onwards - it’s a pathetic end to what had been a very good tournament.
2. With that in mind, england absolutely did conspire to give away an easy victory(by completely retreating into themselves), make horrendous mistakes(the marking for the second goal, the bizarre knockabout and clearance from Pickford that almost gifted Croatia a 1v1 at 1-1 and looked beyond shaky towards the middle period of the second half and beyond.
3. You don’t have the right to tell me what I’m reacting to. I’m far from a committed and reactive England fan, they’re not even my first choice of national team to support. But if you must know I’m reacting to the second half and extra time performance - to go from being fairly comfortable to completely falling apart is, in my view, fairly shocking.
4. Croatia aren’t particularly better than England. Obviously the FIFA rankings aren’t the be all and end all of judging a football team but England are, or were, higher than Croatia before the tournament started. As well as that, Croatia looked very poor at the back against Russia and their players looked tired and in trouble towards the end of that match, even when they were 2-1 up. They never looked like anything but the better team after they equalised tonight.
So yeah, that’s my view on it, feel free to disagree. I’m absolutely not commenting on their performance as a whole, which I was very impressed by. I’d sum it up as a very good and assured tournament which ended with a very disappointing and, yes, pathetic performance right at the death. There’s a lot to build on but that was not a good football match.
