Portugal v France

[Toepoke]

Increasing the size of the tournament by 50% was always going to dilute the quality. 

Crazy that 44% of European teams get to play in he finals.

They should reduce it to 16 teams again for 2024...

[Kirk]

1 hour ago, Mox said:

Awful game, awful tournament, awful champions. Cannae wait for club football to come back.

Aye coz celtic are mintit

42 minutes ago, jock strap said:

Happy for Ronaldo.

Really happy the tournament is over. 

Why hes a jobby!!!!

 

A team that has won one game in 90 mins has won, didnt even win to get out the group, its crazy. They were shite, ronaldo was shite and yet they lap it up. Extending it was wn awful idea! Bad night for football.

[COLT NY]

I don't think there's a problem with that many teams at the finals.. In fact, I think it's good as it makes the qualifiers more interesting and allows for new faces to appear at finals.

The change I'd make for next time is to remove the round of 16. Keep the six group format, but only the group winners and 2 best 2nd place teams go through. You'll see less cagey opening round games with that format.

[Toepoke]

18 minutes ago, COLT NY said:

The change I'd make for next time is to remove the round of 16. Keep the six group format, but only the group winners and 2 best 2nd place teams go through. You'll see less cagey opening round games with that format.

Only 8 teams getting out the groups would be pretty brutal .

Maybe have it that the top 2 go through but the teams with the 4 best records get a bye to the quarter final, that would encourage more positive play?

 

[COLT NY]

Aye, I'd be happy enough with that too... Let's not forget though that it wasn't that long ago that only 8 teams made it to the finals. That was brutal. 

Whatever they do... getting to the next round should never be a formality for any team, and nobody should be able to do it without winning.

[Rossy]

It was the tournament for 'organised' teams.

Portugal, Iceland, Wales etc.

One or two games aside, completely uninspiring.

[vanderark14]

9 hours ago, Toepoke said:

Increasing the size of the tournament by 50% was always going to dilute the quality. 

Crazy that 44% of European teams get to play in he finals.

They should reduce it to 16 teams again for 2024...

I disagree with this, the tactics set out by managers caused the lack of entertaining matches not the amount of teams in it. The top teams were still there, they just couldn't break down the organised sides. We can't blame these organised teams because we can't expect them to go toe to toe with the more talented sides. Sitting in and spoiling the match is hardly new, Greece won it 12 years ago by being the most boring side ever so the format is not the problem.

This format gives the so called smaller nations a greater chance to qualify for the knock out phase and then its one off matches. I don't want to see a return to the old format because then it becomes like the CL where the top teams continue to dominate.

The coverage by Sky this morning is laughable, they are having digs at Portugal for only winning one match and not being entertaining. I doubt very much that they would be saying the same had England won it this way and neither would anyone in Scotland if by some miracle we did a Greece. We'd all still be pissed as hell and partying for the next 25 years. I'm also puzzled as to why some are pleased for or sympathetic to Ronaldo, why? has he gone through some sort of hardship that I missed? The guy has everything we could only dream of so excuse me if my sympathy for Ronaldo is non-existent.

[Angus_Young]

The game summed up most of the tournament, and indeed a huge amount of 'elite' football for me these days. 

Boring, uninspiring, players too cagey and teams set up not to lose. 

Must admit I'm finding it more and more difficult to sit through full games of the supposedly 'big' matches these days and what I seen of this tournament has done nothing to change that, probably made it worse in truth. 

 

[Bannannan]

The beautiful game is no more.

[Ally Bongo]

I dont know why anyone is surprised

In the last 20 years Portugal have been an absolute disgrace at World Cups and Euros

Despite having some World Class players their whole approach has always been not to lose the game rather than win

And when its clear that the opposition is getting the better of them they pull out the Mourinho rule book of timewasting and persistant fouling etc

Portugal v Holland in 2006 is a classic example

Portugal werent confident they were going to win by skill alone so they tried their best to reduce it to a kicking match and succeeded

Edited July 11, 2016 by Ally Bongo

[Rossy]

26 minutes ago, Angus_Young said:

The game summed up most of the tournament, and indeed a huge amount of 'elite' football for me these days. 

Boring, uninspiring, players too cagey and teams set up not to lose. 

Must admit I'm finding it more and more difficult to sit through full games of the supposedly 'big' matches these days and what I seen of this tournament has done nothing to change that, probably made it worse in truth. 

 

The only time I watch a Champions League game these days is for a laugh when Celtic get knocked out in the qualifiers.

After that, wake me up when Real/Barcelona/Bayern etc etc have won it.

 

 

 

[Parklife]

I really enjoyed Euro 2016 overall. Some excellent games, accentuated by outstanding coaching performance from, in particular, Antonio Conte, Lars Lagerback, Bernd Stork and Fernando Santos. All making the best of their resources. 

Most games were tight affairs, which only adds to the case for the current expanded tournament. I've got to say, i really enjoyed watching some of the teams i knew very little about. Hungary in particular were a revelation. Their counter-attacking ability was something that really surprised me. 

[Angus_Young]

13 hours ago, Parklife said:

I really enjoyed Euro 2016 overall. Some excellent games, accentuated by outstanding coaching performance from, in particular, Antonio Conte, Lars Lagerback, Bernd Stork and Fernando Santos. All making the best of their resources. 

Most games were tight affairs, which only adds to the case for the current expanded tournament. I've got to say, i really enjoyed watching some of the teams i knew very little about. Hungary in particular were a revelation. Their counter-attacking ability was something that really surprised me. 

I'll give you Conte and Hungary tbf. Took in a Croatia game too and it was decent. Not sure if it's my general attitude to football, before a ball was kicked, that is clouding my judgement of it as a whole but it was all just very meh to me. 

Had I not been working on Sunday night I doubt id have even watched the final. Only watched one semi due to Wales being in it and even at that I only lasted 65 minutes. 

You were over for a couple of games weren't you? 

Edited July 11, 2016 by Angus_Young

[Angus_Young]

13 hours ago, Rossy said:

The only time I watch a Champions League game these days is for a laugh when Celtic get knocked out in the qualifiers.

After that, wake me up when Real/Barcelona/Bayern etc etc have won it.

 

 

 

Agreed.  I'm struggling to think of a full CL game I watched last season. 

Possibly Chelsea - PSG or was that the previous season? 

[George Saint]

I really enjoyed Euro 2016. In fact, I think it's probably my favourite ever Euros (after Euro 96, but that's just because England did well back then - the tournament itself was not as good as this one). I think the 24 team format worked really well and I would be happy to see it continue on that basis. It was great to see some of the 'smaller nations' qualify for the first time in a long while. I think there's a lot of people here looking back at previous tournaments with rose tinted spectacles on. I've also heard people in the media talking about Portugal winning only one game in 90 minutes. So what? As England fans we like to remember fondly Italia 90, but how many games did England win in 90 minutes? Just the 1-0 victory against Egypt, right? Argentina got to the final that year and I think they only beat Brazil and maybe one other team in the group stage. Portugal might have needed extra time, but they still beat Croatia and France - two excellent teams - as well as Wales. You can do what you want with statistics - another way of looking at it is that Portugal didn't lose a single game in the tournament, and they only conceded one goal in four knockout games. I'd say they were more than worthy winners. I think some of the pundits are just trying to find ways to have a go at Portugal because those pundits spent the whole tournament telling everyone that Portugal weren't very good. Now that they've been proven wrong, they're trying to diminish Portugal's achievement. All I can say is that from an England fans perspective, I'd give my right arm for a tournament like Portugal have just had.

 

[Parklife]

8 hours ago, Angus_Young said:

I'll give you Conte and Hungary tbf. Took in a Croatia game too and it was decent. Not sure if it's my general attitude to football, before a ball was kicked, that is clouding my judgement of it as a whole but it was all just very meh to me. 

Had I not been working on Sunday night I doubt id have even watched the final. Only watched one semi due to Wales being in it and even at that I only lasted 65 minutes. 

You were over for a couple of games weren't you? 

I think, as Saint George says, folk look back on past tournaments with rose-tinted specs on. They seem to only remember the good games and forget the dross. Folk also seem to now judge a game's merits on the number of goals scored. They don't care about quality, they don't care about good organisation and defending, they don't care about tactics, they don't care about ball retention (remember all those folk who used to say Spain were "boring"  ?) all they care about is goals. 

The finest game i watched all tournament was Italy vs Belgium. A wonderful game which had so many intriguing facets to it. A well coached italy side, stout in defence and breaking with great efficiency. Up against a Belgium team with much more talent but nowhere near as well coached. 

Yeah, i was across fro 3 games: NI vs Ukraine, Spain vs Turkey and Iceland vs Hungary. 

[Toepoke]

I agree Belgium v Italy was the best game, and I did enjoy a lot about Euro2016, but I don't think it's rose tinted at all to look back and say previous tournaments were better, have a look at some of the highlights at the link below, especially Spain v Yugoslavia,  an absolute classic.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TvN3atqXpg

For me the 16 team format was the perfect size, it made for some hugely exciting group games. Having 3rd place teams get through the groups considerably lessens that excitement...

[sbcmfc]

People talking about the dilution of quality by introducing more teams are overlooking the fact that Northern Ireland won their group, and Iceland and Wales would have been in contention for best runners up.

Most of the teams that came through the play offs were pretty disappointing. Russia, Sweden RoI...

[Newryrep]

19 minutes ago, sbcmfc said:

People talking about the dilution of quality by introducing more teams are overlooking the fact that Northern Ireland won their group, and Iceland and Wales would have been in contention for best runners up.

Most of the teams that came through the play offs were pretty disappointing. Russia, Sweden RoI...

we had three decent performances outa 4 , not saying we played like Brazil 1970 but decent enough bar V Belgium

[Toepoke]

1 hour ago, sbcmfc said:

People talking about the dilution of quality by introducing more teams are overlooking the fact that Northern Ireland won their group, and Iceland and Wales would have been in contention for best runners up.

Most of the teams that came through the play offs were pretty disappointing. Russia, Sweden RoI...

Are you not contradicting yourself there? Under a 16 team format those disappointing play off teams wouldn't be at the finals.

I just read this damning verdict of the new format, hard to argue with some of the points...

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/euro2016/portugal-winning-euro-2016-is-exactly-what-uefa-deserved-after-michel-platini-s-vision-backfires-a3292821.html

[sbcmfc]

46 minutes ago, Toepoke said:

Are you not contradicting yourself there? Under a 16 team format those disappointing play off teams wouldn't be at the finals.

I just read this damning verdict of the new format, hard to argue with some of the points...

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/euro2016/portugal-winning-euro-2016-is-exactly-what-uefa-deserved-after-michel-platini-s-vision-backfires-a3292821.html

Didn't make my point particularly well.

What I meant was, people cite teams like Iceland etc as examples of the dilution in quality, when they'd have (probably) qualified for a 16 team tournament. More established teams like Russia and Sweden were Pish.

[Toepoke]

19 minutes ago, sbcmfc said:

Didn't make my point particularly well.

What I meant was, people cite teams like Iceland etc as examples of the dilution in quality, when they'd have (probably) qualified for a 16 team tournament. More established teams like Russia and Sweden were Pish.

Fair doos although I think folk would be wrong to say that. Iceland and Wales playing as they did would not have retracted from a 16 team competition IMO. 

N. Ireland maybe not so much, but then they won their group from Pot 5 which is a pretty exceptional outcome...

[Parklife]

1 hour ago, Toepoke said:

Are you not contradicting yourself there? Under a 16 team format those disappointing play off teams wouldn't be at the finals.

I just read this damning verdict of the new format, hard to argue with some of the points...

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/euro2016/portugal-winning-euro-2016-is-exactly-what-uefa-deserved-after-michel-platini-s-vision-backfires-a3292821.html

It's a load of garbage, one of the worst articles i've read in quite a while.

What relevance does how long a team is leading in matches have? Absolutely none. This desire to slag Portugal for not winning in 90 minutes is bizarre, have these people never encountered knockout football before, don't they know how it works? 

He then cites Wales and Iceland as examples of poor quality teams, both would have qualified for 16 team tournaments. He then makes up that it'll be expanded to 32 teams - pure conjecture, since he offers no evidence of plans to do so. 

Probably why he's writing for the Evening Standard tbf. 

[vanderark14]

23 minutes ago, Parklife said:

It's a load of garbage, one of the worst articles i've read in quite a while.

What relevance does how long a team is leading in matches have? Absolutely none. This desire to slag Portugal for not winning in 90 minutes is bizarre, have these people never encountered knockout football before, don't they know how it works? 

He then cites Wales and Iceland as examples of poor quality teams, both would have qualified for 16 team tournaments. He then makes up that it'll be expanded to 32 teams - pure conjecture, since he offers no evidence of plans to do so. 

Probably why he's writing for the Evening Standard tbf. 

would this journalist have such a problem with the format if England had won it?

there was nothing wrong with the format, its the usual bluster when the big teams don't win a big event or a big match

[Toepoke]

As with Greece I've no problem with how Portugal won the Euros  (other than Ronaldo's pathetic attempts at scoring from every set piece). But under the typical group format they'd have been eliminated in the first round. As the guy says, a tournament that takes over a fortnight to lose a third of the teams is flawed IMO.