Euro 2016: Championship Game - Portugal vs. France, 3:00pm EDT, ESPN
I don't think France is necessarily a great team. Their D was pretty iffy after some pre-tournament injuries. But you're ranking them about as low as possible, using some feelingsball to justify it. This is a team that finished the tournament with a +8 goal differential. They were pretty good, which is about the most you can say of any team in the field. There was no great team.
Feelingsball?
The consensus through their game with Ireland was that they had performed poorly. I guess everyone was using feelingsball up till that point though? They played literally one good game (Iceland) the entire tournament.
I just re-watched the first half of Germany-France to see if I had missed something.
0-5 minutes: France comes out strong, Griezmann has a good opportunity.
5-40 minutes: Complete domination from Germany. France cannot string together two passes. I would say 2/3s of France's possession was standing around for free kicks. Also, re-watching it, the non-call on Pogba was atrocious. In fact, its rare to see such a blatant penalty missed and it should have been a much bigger deal than was made by the announcers. Kroos is mid-shot and Pogba runs into his leg. It was an obvious PK and easily the most clear of three that could have been given during the first half.
40-45 minutes: To be fair, France did come into the game the last five minutes. Even last five minutes, both teams creating a couple half chances.
Stoppage time: Given the non-call above, the penalty is laughable.
Anyway, not that it matters, I just find France to be overrated and dull. Griezmann is a nice player, Payet is good against weaker competition and Pogba flashes moments of skill, but they just aren't very interesting to watch. They don't play an appealing style, relying too much on one guy to create a moment out of nothing. And since they don't have a Messi or Ronaldo it isn't as entertaining.
Yes, a very large amount of sports analysis is cheap feelingsball. And you're doing some of it yourself with your various excuses for why Spain, Italy and Germany didn't perform better. "Dominance" means nothing in this game if you don't score. At that point you're hoping for 0-0 and penalty kicks.
Right, but in the case of March Madness there is at least a semblance of balance to the tournament.
Once we got to the tournament stage, there was no balance because of the format.
Also, thank you for bringing up March Madness. I think we can all agree that we're pretty happy with 64 teams right? And that increasing it to 68 was dumb and that if they went to say 96 or 128 we wouldn't be happy? At least that's what I've discerned from basketball fans. Its the same thing with the Euros: 16 was perfect in the same way 64 was perfect for college basketball.
The format of the tournament didn't cause the knockout bracket to be unbalanced. What threw it off was Spain and England finishing second in their groups. If all the favorites had won their groups, there would have been Spain, Belgium, Portugal and England on one side of the knockout bracket, and Germany, France and Italy on the other.
I understand why it happened and I don't disagree with the decision. They underachieved badly in qualifying, they didn't deserve a seed. But it wasn't a fair reflection of their strength, and it tossed one more strong side onto that half of the bracket.
If there were only 16 teams its an entirely different tournament that likely leads to strong quarterfinals match-ups between the top two teams of each group.
24 teams opened up the possibility of what happened.
Also, allowing England to compete. That should be remedied before the next one.
A tournament without England would be no fun at all.
OK, watching them fail to qualify could be entertaining. But banning them? Forget it.
Better than penalties at least.
Not sure why they play the extra time, honestly. If you're done at the end of regulation, just go to PKs then - or don't and play forever until something goes in.
Ever gotten in an argument with a hardcore soccer fan about the "golden goal" format? I don't understand why they so ardently cling to the guaranteed extra-time format. If you've got a game that goes for 90+ minutes and it's still tied, often 0-0, why shouldn't the first goal end the damn thing?
...they said so.
Agreed. Haven't heard a good reason yet.
I'm a bit of a hardcore soccer fan, but I'm not married to the guaranteed extra-time format. I like the golden-goal format. But then I never overly cared about whether athletes making $200,000k+ per week got injured either.
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Pâté, I would guess. "France choked on their pâté" works.
"There's Ronaldo with his top off...yet again."
Ronaldo won over a few people trying to play through an obvious injury...
...and then takes his shirt off after not playing and loses everyone, yet again.
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But his jersey was not delivered nor was it coming to him completely on the opposite side of the field where he was shirtless. It was waiting for him at his bench where he easily could've come over and changed like anyone else.
I don't care, I actually don't hate the guy like a lot of people. I'm just saying, it's shit like that which make people go "oh for fuck sake!"
There was literally no reason for him to have his shirt off for 5 minutes while he celebrated. But do you, bro.
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No doubt that Portugal's been through a lot of heartbreak. For a pretty small country it's had a nice record in international competition. I'm happy for them to have a trophy after all their tournament runs.
They give the refs medals.
Huh.
Q: What do you call an Englishman at a Euro final?
A: The referee.
Portugal earned this. Rugged defense and threatening counters all game.
Kind of weak that they keep talking about how Portugal didn't deserve it.
They won. Period. It wasn't pretty, but that's sports. Some teams play ugly and win...not sure I've ever followed a sport where that doesn't describe a team.
And the fact that they wouldn't have made the knockout stage in the old format...well this isn't the old format. We had the NY Giants win a Super Bowl. We've had other Wild Card teams win. I'm not a fan, but that's how it goes. What was UConn when they won a National Championship in 2014? A #7 seed? A #9?
Don't put these types of teams in the tournament if you don't want them to win.
I also think it's not necessarily true that they'd have been out under the old format. They knew they only needed a draw against Hungary--that's the result they got. But if they'd needed a win they would have played for it, and with Hungary's B team out there (they'd already clinched a spot) they may well have gotten it.
I wouldn't say they weren't playing for a win; that game was 3-3 - probably the most open game of the tournament.
But I agree that it ultimately doesn't matter, because the 2016 tournament was played by 2016 rules, not 2012's.
...but they showed a lot more urgency whenever they needed a goal to stay in the tournament. Hungary took the lead three times, Portugal opened the game up and pegged them back each time. The second time it took only a couple of minutes, the third time it maybe took five. I think they would have had a fourth goal in them if they were desperate enough.
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It's pretty uncommon to finish a group in second place with only three points, though. People would have still been talking about how they didn't win any group games.
Regardless, they did what they had to. I wasn't rooting for them but I do like how the Euro has surprise champions every now and then (Denmark '92, Greece '04, now Portugal '16).
I didn't realize that one the goal, Portugal started the play on a THROW IN at midfield.
Complaining about the handball giving them the goal is weak. The play was stopped and the ball made it all the way to midfield because Portugal put a few passes together for the score.
That has nothing to do with the refs. They blew the call, but it made as much of a difference as if they blew that call an hour earlier.
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Ballack's the only one there that isn't English or American, isn't he? (Or French, but I get the sour grapes. That's different.)
Or maybe the problem is the soccer purists who somehow think the way this sport is played is somehow automatically defensible. It isn't an American problem--what happened today was nothing short of an ugly masquerade of sports. The fact that so many people think this is how a sport should operate is totally beyond comprehension.
Bretos, who's excellent. Twellman. Markgraf. They certainly weren't the worst offenders in this regard. It's the English announcers that are constantly bloviating about positive attacking football and were unhappy that the "pragmatic" approach was successful. Listening to Stuart Robson or Paul Mariner do a game is a master class in how to fail at international football.
They're affirming the worst tendencies of US soccer. I know there's a language problem but wouldn't it be nice if we could bring somebody in from RAI to do a game or two?
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Once Ronaldo went down I somehow knew Portugal, against all logic, would win. Sports are weird like that.
Can't let this game go by without giving Pepe some props. I've been harsh on him in the past. I honestly didn't think he had this game-management stuff in him, but he was the best player on the field today, and very good throughout the tournament.
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