EURO 2012

New Zealand scored one more goal against Italy in 90 minutes at the World Cup than England could manage in 120 minutes today

England are shit.

That is all.

England in penalty shootout loss shock.

Ah well, now I have an extra reason to support the Germans in the semi-final.

Apparently, after Diamanti scored the winning penalty, all the Italy players ran to celebrate. Balotelli went to console Hart. 

Apparently John Terry put a full Italy kit on and joined in the celebrations.

Buffon I  > Buffon II   ???

also, England only managed 36% possession whereas we had 43%

 

Joe Hart completed more passes (45) than any other England player tonight. Lol.

how many did Pirlo make? more than the entire England team?

The penalty shoot-out is worth watching carefully.  See http://dai.ly/LKfYqg.

 

Five points:

1.  It isn't in the linked video, but the preparations of the 'keepers were very different.  Hart stood on the field and obviously read scouting reports on how the Italian players tended to take their spot kicks.  Buffon went off the field - probably to check his notes, too, but if he'd been throwing up, praying, or smoking a cigarette nobody would have been the wiser.

2.  The English penalties are attempts to technically outperform the 'keeper with a combination of pace and placement.

3.  The Italians mainly try to outwit the keeper.  Balotelli has a stutter-step, Pirlo humiliates Hart with the Panenka, and Nocerino fakes his shape.  (It looks to me that Diamanti shoots straight as a response to Hart's diving saves, but I'm not 100%).  Montolivo's miss was an attempt at a technical, unstoppable penalty.

 

4.  Other commentators have picked Pirlo's kick as the turning point of the shoot-out, and I agree.  After being so clearly out-witted, Hart's bravado was unlikely to have any effect.

5.  Mario Balotelli actually celebrates his goal like most other players would.  He must have been ecstatic.  (Much as I like patrick's suggestion, you can also see him running to celebrate with the rest of the Azzurri after the winning penalty.)

Aside from 5, this is a nice demonstration of the different national approaches to the game.

Apparently England managed about two and a half times as many passes as Pirlo.  See http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/season=2012/statistics/castroledge/analysis/newsid=1829025.html

 

But I don't think that's too important.  England were not in it to play tiki-taka.

Yeah, it was more a comment on how good Pirlo was than England's approach. Pure class.

Thoroughly enjoyed watching the English fluff it on penos again this morning. Mainly just stoked we will see more of Mario in this tournament. 

Not sure why you think that penalty humilates Hart.

Despite being gutted at the penalty defeat (again - thought we would steal it after Italy missed), quite proud of England and pleased we made the QFs. Made the best of what we had against a team clearly better than us, left the tournament having made a good fist of it after a debacle of prep with the managerial controversy and injuries to key players (wish we had more depth, but can't see it developing until major changes are made to our domestic set-up). I like Roy's pragmatic approach to dealing with technically superior opposition. It gives us a chance to win games and I don't care that some find us unattractive to watch - entertainment is the luxury of the neutral observer and football is not about being neutral.

Have to agree. It's a brave/silly keeper who chooses to just stand there when the Italians had shown themselves very skilfull at hitting the corner of the net beyond Hart's reach - the miss aside, which given it was wide, has to be an attempt to hit the corner too. Pirlo executed a brilliant penalty perfectly (the git). No humiliation in being beaten by that.

 

PS: given that Italy's penalty shoot-out record before today was almost as bad as ours (2 wins of 6 vs 1 win of 6) and that Italy were almost perfect today with, unfortunately, great penalties - can we find out how they fixed it!

Wouldn't mind knowing who the commentators are and how to give feedback. The guy that did England-Italy is the same guy that always seems to be used for the Sky coverage here for the Euros and under-age WCs. The best thing I can say is at least he's being rotated with some better commentators this tournament. Specific annoyances:

- Oleh Blokin never played for Russia and as a Ukrainian would be insulted to hear it said. He played for the USSR before their break-up.

- England have played in two Euro SFs not one; not sure if he was forgetting 68 or 96, but you'd think a commentator would do basic research.

- All through the game, he kept going on about England's abysmal penalty shoot-out record. No issue with that, but before today Italy were just 1 game better than ours having only prevailed in 2 of 6 - as a mate said before the game, if it goes to pens it could be 1-0 after 10. You'd have thought that the two records being almost equally rubbish would warrant a mention.

- Apparently (as in I didn't hear it, but the person I was with said), he confused Man City and Man Utd several times when referencing Baloteli and Hart.

- All he does is tell you what you can see for yourself, though he often gets it wrong, in a fashion that suggests he's probably come from radio commentating not television.

- He always sounds so damn smug about everything, moralising on player behaviour and then not saying anything if the replay proves him wrong. Plus he does that annoying thing of saying things like, "x is saying y to his player/the ref/etc there" in response to a manager's/player's/crowd member gesticulation/expression - otherwise known as making shit up - which wouldn't be so bad if you thought he was even close half the time.

If I'm watching at home, and therefore have control of the remote, I try to keep the volume low enough for his voice to be a "blur" without losing all the crowd noise for games he commentates.

That Pirlo - he's a pure player... 

A sol-sation player

http://espnfc.com/en/news/1115255/redknappwilshere-our-pirlo.html

'Arry - you're dead to me now.

 

Interesting factoid before the semi-finals - Germany has never defeated Italy in an official game.

You'd better be popping that cherry this time around Deutschland.

Had to laugh at this example. If you only ever read headlines, you end up with a completely different perspective to if you read the articles. A friend used to be a journalist. One of the reasons she moved on to a new career was utter frustration at the misleading and sensationalist headlines that got appended to her work. She wasn't with one of the national dailies and didn't cover sports, but said it was the same for most papers. The English tabloids are the worst. They have totally misrepresented England over the years and they seem to hate the national team more than the WUMs that live on YF. No idea how they manage to keep it up without their readers noticing, as was wryly pointed out by a documentary on the England manager's job a few years back, that they just recycle the same headlines and editorials for every manager since, and including(!), Sir Alf. Just goes to show how dumb tabloid readers are - shame the influence of the tabloids is so apparent.

Anyway, internet news sites are even worse, as you'd know if you spend more than 10 minutes browsing Stuff. The worst thing is the comments - if you pick a story with a controversial or emotive content, you soon realise that most of the people commenting have only read the bloody headline!

Anyway, going a bit off topic, but you did make me chuckle. Well, that and you treating the national clown Mark Lawrenson as a real pundit with proper opinions! I recommend reading WSC for proper insight on English football and real opinions.

Oh yeah. A 1-1 and 0-0 in Euros, a 0-0, 3-4 aet, 0-0, 1-3 and 0-2 aet in WCs. And for completeness East Germany's two games were 2-2 and 0-3.

That's quite a few Italian few clean sheets too.

Deutschland - genau!

Get some Nina in ya Italia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMO1D0tF3uc

 

There is a few comments on UK sites about how NZ playing Italy at the WC using similar tactics to what what England did last night. They all fairly much agree that NZ did a better job. More goals(1), more time in possession, more passes completed....I think thats hilarious. Well done Ricki and the boys.

Considering England is a side of exceeding well paid pros playing in top clubs you would expect more from them. They were diabolically bad. Their passing game and ball retention would be an embarassment to a schoolboy side. So yet another tournament England failed in. 

Which brings me to another point....NZ, because of our traditions and ties to the UK have tended to follow the English style of game. The evidence suggests that this is not a great style to emulate. Most nations around the world don't try and play like this. Around the country there a few signs of a change. Declan Edge in the Waikato, Tribulitx at AC are a couple of coaches trying to install a more possession/passing style of game. This change can't happen quick enough...yet at the top level we still seem to hire guys like Emblen to coach our youngsters at top levels. Old school English CB coaches are not what we should be about. Tribulitex should be coaching the Olympic side IMO.

Italy were better throughout the game and should have won in 90 minutes. Pirlo once again showed that he is a real artist on the pitch. 

Well regardless of the extent to which British pundits were underestimating Italy, my prediction about England going home was correct.

 

So you predicted the favorites for a game would beat the underdogs. Amazing powers of foresight there. 

 

We should have sent the New Caledonians!

Yeah, I'm pretty awesome alright. Seriously though, if we want to play the "pick people's comments" apart game, I think the TAB had Italy as slight favourites but a lot of bookies around the world had the game as a dead heat: http://www.bsnsportsblog.com/soccer/england-italy-odds-euro2012-match-betting-preview

http://www.goal.com/en-ca/news/4223/betting/2012/06/24/3196558/euro-2012-odds-england-vs-italy

http://www.examiner.com/article/2012-euro-cup-schedule-italy-vs-england-las-vegas-odds-pick

these guys picked England as slight favourites:

http://www.clickliverpool.com/sport/other-sport/1216471-england-v-italy-odds-england-may-need-penalties-to-defeat-italy.html

and these guys picked Italy as slight favourites:

http://www.caughtoffside.com/2012/06/24/england-v-italy-odds-bet365-free-bets-offer-in-play-bet/

You make it sound as if Italy were clear favourites, which was obviously not the case.

Okay so a couple of pages back  I made some slightly stupid comments, and if you read the post where you got that headline up there from you will see I actually said I thought a lot of the commentary leading up to the game had been quite fair. Then you hit me up again, so I make a bit of a joke about it, and then you make that comment about predicting the favourites to win. We can keep playing this game of one-up-manship or we can just say that on internet forums sometimes people make offhand comments that don't necessarily stand up to close scrutiny and move on.

Yeah the commentary is awful - why is it so hard for broadcasters to get someone decent to do big games? Also because in these games they don't ghive their names you don't even know who you are complaing about. He was better than Dewhurst, De Jong or Tommy Smyth but thats all

Interesting, but probably not all that accurate. The crucial point is that Italy from 2010 and 2012 are two completely different sides. Italy from 2010 was the worst Italian side I have ever seen in some 25 years of following international football, and by a quite a margin too. They were old at the back and not all that convincing, and were absolutely devoid of ideas going forward. Indeed, their elimination during the group stage testifies to this, where they not only drew with us, but also lost to a very average Slovakian side.

This side plays much better football, especially  going forward - some of the respected players who have clearly gone past their use by date have been discarded, they've brought in some younger players, and they've also selected players in form even if they didn't necessarily have much international experience or youth on their side (Diamati could serve as a good example here). They've also selected quite a few Juventus players in the team which is helping with the cohesion on the field. All in all, this is a much improved Italian side on the one from 2010 (even though I feel if they get past the semi-final they will have significantly overachieved in this tournament), and I suspect the All Whites would have much, much more trouble containing them than  the Italian side from 2010.

I don't mind De Jong. If Smyth and Dewhurst have ever procreated, we now know what their commentating-offspring would be like!

Dewhurst with a "y"?

Prime TV will be showing Portugal vs Spain, but not Germany vs Italy.

*sad face emoticon*

 

Are the Euros not on NZ Sky?!

Yes they are.

Spain vs Ronaldo tomorrow. Thoughts? I'm thinking 2-1 to Spain in extra time, although I think I'd rather see Portugal win just cos they are the underdogs. On the other hand Ronaldo is an obnoxious tosser. Then again, he's also funny and can be fun to watch if he's in the mood.  I'm torn.

Doesn't matter - whoever wins will lose to Germany in the final.