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Euros

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dionaeamuscipula
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Euros

#419498

Postby dionaeamuscipula » June 14th, 2021, 4:02 pm

It is written in the stars.

England will beat Czech Rep.

Croatia will beat Scotland.

Croatia and Czech Republic will draw 1-1

Scotland will beat England 1 - 0 with a Harry Kane own goal, and go out anyway.

and hello to Patrick Kluivert for those with memories of Euro 96.

DM

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Re: Euros

#419499

Postby pje16 » June 14th, 2021, 4:04 pm

Not on the planet I'm on :lol:

SalvorHardin
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Re: Euros

#419504

Postby SalvorHardin » June 14th, 2021, 4:13 pm

It could be worse for Scotland. At least they haven't got Peru and Iran in their group :D

Nice to see yet another addition to the Scottish goalkeeping howlers collection :D

"Ecosse, nul points" methinks

Stan
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Re: Euros

#419571

Postby Stan » June 14th, 2021, 10:15 pm

The poor old Scots are so consistent in failing time and again :D

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Re: Euros

#419593

Postby BobbyD » June 15th, 2021, 3:05 am

Stan wrote:The poor old Scots are so consistent in failing time and again :D


To be fair what England lose in consistency with one little blemish on their otherwise perfect record of failure at major tournaments, they more than make up with in absolute numbers of tournaments at which they've failed. A much more impressive feet given the considerably larger pool of talent they've had to draw on over the last 7 decades.

EssDeeAitch
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Re: Euros

#419597

Postby EssDeeAitch » June 15th, 2021, 5:28 am

Stan wrote:The poor old Scots are so consistent in failing time and again :D


Being taken out of the Euros against their will (not original, but I can't remember where I saw it)

Bubblesofearth
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Re: Euros

#419619

Postby Bubblesofearth » June 15th, 2021, 9:17 am

BobbyD wrote:
To be fair what England lose in consistency with one little blemish on their otherwise perfect record of failure at major tournaments, they more than make up with in absolute numbers of tournaments at which they've failed. A much more impressive feet given the considerably larger pool of talent they've had to draw on over the last 7 decades.


Beyond a certain level I'm not sure how much it's about population size. IMO both England and Scotland have a poor record, certainly the Euros where neither team has never even been to the final let alone won it. Compare that with Denmark (pop 5.8m) who won it in 1992 and Portugal (pop 10m) who have been to 2 finals and won one.

Neither England nor Scotland have ever, in my memory at least, played the kind of good passing team game that the likes of Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, France, Denmark etc etc seem to be able to conjure up. I don't know what the reason is, grass roots training or something else, but I'm pretty sure it's not primarily about population.

BoE

pje16
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Re: Euros

#419621

Postby pje16 » June 15th, 2021, 9:29 am

Iceland's population is 341,000
My London borough, Barnet, has just over 400,000
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53990757
What a shameful day :oops:

kiloran
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Re: Euros

#419624

Postby kiloran » June 15th, 2021, 9:57 am

Bubblesofearth wrote:Neither England nor Scotland have ever, in my memory at least, played the kind of good passing team game that the likes of Spain....

BoE

Worked well for Spain last night ;)

--kiloran

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Re: Euros

#419630

Postby BobbyD » June 15th, 2021, 10:35 am

Bubblesofearth wrote:
BobbyD wrote:
To be fair what England lose in consistency with one little blemish on their otherwise perfect record of failure at major tournaments, they more than make up with in absolute numbers of tournaments at which they've failed. A much more impressive feet given the considerably larger pool of talent they've had to draw on over the last 7 decades.


Beyond a certain level I'm not sure how much it's about population size. IMO both England and Scotland have a poor record, certainly the Euros where neither team has never even been to the final let alone won it. Compare that with Denmark (pop 5.8m) who won it in 1992 and Portugal (pop 10m) who have been to 2 finals and won one.

Neither England nor Scotland have ever, in my memory at least, played the kind of good passing team game that the likes of Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, France, Denmark etc etc seem to be able to conjure up. I don't know what the reason is, grass roots training or something else, but I'm pretty sure it's not primarily about population.

BoE


Lost a long reply to auto-log out.

Gist: It's population times how embedded football is in your culture which will provide a decent guide to your prospects as a footballing nation. Brazil and Argentina dominate South American football, India and China are nowhere on the scene. Look at the World cup since they stopped using boats to get there. The least populace nation to win it is Spain. You get the odd anomaly in the weaker tournaments like Denmark winning a tournament they failed to qualify for, but small nations with prolonged participation at the top level tend to be called the Netherlands, and they've never won the World Cup.

Think of it as a lottery. If one in every 100 million people has the potential to be a great footballer, one in every 50 million the potential to be a really good footballer and one in every 10 million the potential to be a good footballer the two things which determine how good your national squad is going to be is how many tickets you have in the lottery and what other things they might be enticed to go off and do instead. If all your kids gorw up wanting to be a footballer and you have a population of 210 million then you've won the lottery. You are also called Brazil.

There are some other factors, money doesn't hurt for instance, but being a big football loving population will see you through.

The England thing is down to the fact that historically the English prefer athletic prowess and 'commitment' over technique and ability. It's not long ago that Spain and Germany had 4 times as many professional coaches as England. It's also why historically England's latest prodigy has generally peaked at 21 just before doing his ACL.

pje16
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Re: Euros

#419632

Postby pje16 » June 15th, 2021, 10:50 am

This story is the most amazing one about players per popluation
A village with a population of less than 1700 produced 50 players (see the link)
If London's population produced at the same rate they would have approx 250,000
and there are only just over 110,000 professional players in the entire world
https://shanklyhotel.com/blog/glenbuck-bill-shankly/
Full story on Amazon Prime
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Shankly ... B07GSDPWJH

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Re: Euros

#419649

Postby didds » June 15th, 2021, 11:52 am

Bubblesofearth wrote: Compare that with Denmark (pop 5.8m) who won it in 1992


didnt DK only end up at the finals cos another nation was thrown out (Russia?) beforehand... DK having failed to qualifty otherwise?

not that that removes their winning of it of course :-)

didds

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Re: Euros

#419652

Postby BigB » June 15th, 2021, 12:00 pm

didds wrote:
Bubblesofearth wrote: Compare that with Denmark (pop 5.8m) who won it in 1992


didnt DK only end up at the finals cos another nation was thrown out (Russia?) beforehand... DK having failed to qualifty otherwise?

not that that removes their winning of it of course :-)

didds


Breakup of Yugoslavia (rather than USSR) I think. Yes DK did not originally qualify.

BigB

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Re: Euros

#419657

Postby BobbyD » June 15th, 2021, 12:20 pm

BigB wrote:
didds wrote:
Bubblesofearth wrote: Compare that with Denmark (pop 5.8m) who won it in 1992


didnt DK only end up at the finals cos another nation was thrown out (Russia?) beforehand... DK having failed to qualifty otherwise?

not that that removes their winning of it of course :-)

didds


Breakup of Yugoslavia (rather than USSR) I think. Yes DK did not originally qualify.

BigB


Yes war in Yugoslavia, The Soviet Union competed as CIS.

It was a whopping 8 team tournament, so strong in in its field that even Scotland qualified!

Well done the Danes, but aberration not proof of the potency of smaller nations.

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Re: Euros

#419707

Postby gryffron » June 15th, 2021, 3:19 pm

BobbyD wrote:The England thing is down to the fact that historically the English prefer athletic prowess and 'commitment' over technique and ability.

Even today, pretty much all the PL teams play a high press. At least all the good PL teams do. Which works very well in winter, but is unsustainable at 28 deg. Hence why England are rubbish at summer tournaments, even when they're in Europe. They're either exhausted after 20 mins (like Sunday) or try to play Mediterranean style passing football, which they're no good at.

:(

Stan
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Re: Euros

#419721

Postby Stan » June 15th, 2021, 3:51 pm

A number of factors why England don't do particularly well at International tournaments.

1. The fans on the whole prefer club football rather then International.

2. The "little England" mentality has bared us from learning from the best of other Countries until we started to get foreign coaches working over here.

3. As eluded to above in this Country it's been a case of brawn over brains sadly.

4. Our historic Colonial false superiority is also a factor as with other Colonial Countries.

AIMHO.

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Re: Euros

#419758

Postby CryptoPlankton » June 15th, 2021, 6:57 pm

BobbyD wrote:
Well done the Danes, but aberration not proof of the potency of smaller nations.


How much of an aberration was it though?

Euros:

Czechoslovakia won 1976 (approx 71st in world by population)
Netherlands won 1988 (68th)
Denmark won 1992 (115th)
Greece won 2004 (87th)
Portugal won 2016 (88th)

Copa America:

Uruguay 15 times winners (134th)
Paraguay won 1953 and 1979 (106th)
Bolivia won 1963 (80th)
Chile won 2015 and 2016 (63rd)

World Cup:

Uruguay won 1930 and 1950 (134th)
Czechoslovakia finalists 1934 and 1962 (71st)
Hungary finalists 1954 (94th)
Sweden finalists 1958 (91st)
Netherlands finalists 1974, 1978 and 2010 (68th)
Croatia finalists 2018 (130th)

Given football is a global game, the fact that only two of the 20 most populous countries (Brazil, 6th, and Germany, 17th) have won a major tournament suggests to me that this population theory may need a little refinement - especially as it is the most popular sport in many of these countries, including NIgeria (7th), Mexico (10th), Egypt (14th) and Turkey (18th).

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Re: Euros

#419786

Postby BobbyD » June 15th, 2021, 8:06 pm

CryptoPlankton wrote:
BobbyD wrote:
Well done the Danes, but aberration not proof of the potency of smaller nations.


How much of an aberration was it though?

Euros:

Czechoslovakia won 1976 (approx 71st in world by population)
Netherlands won 1988 (68th)
Denmark won 1992 (115th)
Greece won 2004 (87th)
Portugal won 2016 (88th)

Copa America:

Uruguay 15 times winners (134th)
Paraguay won 1953 and 1979 (106th)
Bolivia won 1963 (80th)
Chile won 2015 and 2016 (63rd)

World Cup:

Uruguay won 1930 and 1950 (134th)
Czechoslovakia finalists 1934 and 1962 (71st)
Hungary finalists 1954 (94th)
Sweden finalists 1958 (91st)
Netherlands finalists 1974, 1978 and 2010 (68th)
Croatia finalists 2018 (130th)

Given football is a global game, the fact that only two of the 20 most populous countries (Brazil, 6th, and Germany, 17th) have won a major tournament suggests to me that this population theory may need a little refinement - especially as it is the most popular sport in many of these countries, including NIgeria (7th), Mexico (10th), Egypt (14th) and Turkey (18th).


For a number of reasons I'd filter that list of tournaments. World Cup > Continental, and recent>distant. Not sure if it made it back in to the rewrite but I specifically excluded any tournament which teams travelled to on a boat. Many early tournaments were small field tournaments decided to a significant degree by who could be bothered to make the journey, in a world where foreign still meant something, and for many years the Olympics not the World Cup were considered the crowning achievement in international football and the game itself was played at a considerably lower level with regards to both player conditioning and training, and tactical development. It's far easier to outperform in a non-optimised system. Also I've largely argued that size is a significant factor in how good you should be, if you insist on appointing manager who won't select your best striker because he is a Pisces, or black, then you have noone to blame but yourself. There are a whopping 10 members of CONMEBOL and they've been playing a South Americaqn tournament since 1916

You are bound to see smaller countries out performing from time to time, just like you see smaller clubs making it to the later stages of the CL, but not even the Netherlands who have an outstanding record of innovation, player production and achievement can do it consistently and have only actually qualified for the WC 10 times.

Anyway France Germany is on...

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Re: Euros

#419789

Postby CryptoPlankton » June 15th, 2021, 8:10 pm

Stan wrote:A number of factors why England don't do particularly well at International tournaments.

1. The fans on the whole prefer club football rather then International.

2. The "little England" mentality has bared us from learning from the best of other Countries until we started to get foreign coaches working over here.

3. As eluded to above in this Country it's been a case of brawn over brains sadly.

4. Our historic Colonial false superiority is also a factor as with other Colonial Countries.

AIMHO.

IMHO

People tend to over-analyse England's performances and underestimate the role of luck in such sudden death competitions. We are one of only eight countries to win the World Cup - that's pretty cool. A lot of it boils down to who gets the breaks. Some countries have had a bit more luck than others and that is the nature of sport. I'd suggest that England has had slightly below average luck over the years, which may have led to the perception that they have "underperformed". But they have reached the quarter finals 9 times and had a couple of unlucky eliminations in the round before that, which compares favourably with all but the top three or four countries in terms of performance.

Some examples of how things could have been different:

1982 - didn't lose, but eliminated. (West Germany)
1986 - Hand of God in quarter-final - how might things have gone if it had been spotted? (Argentina)
1990 - Semi-final, Gazza's feet too short, Waddle's shot an inch or two from going in off the post - penalties lottery. (Germany)
1998 - Last 16 penalties. (Argentina)
2002 - Freak goal by Ronaldhino in quarter-final (Brazil)
2006 - Penalties in the quarter-final (Portugal)
2010 - Last 16, goal disallowed (no goal line technology) at 1-2 - who knows how it would have gone? (Germany)
2018 - Semi-final

It's hardly catastrophic to have lost to those nations and in many cases England could be justified in feeling a little hard done by. With a bit of luck in 1990, I fancy England would have beaten a very average Argentina in the final. We would then be comparing England's two World Cup wins with Germany's three. I think England have been about as good as we can expect, but not quite had that little bit of luck needed to beat the very best.

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Re: Euros

#419830

Postby BobbyD » June 15th, 2021, 11:43 pm

CryptoPlankton wrote:Given football is a global game, the fact that only two of the 20 most populous countries (Brazil, 6th, and Germany, 17th) have won a major tournament suggests to me that this population theory may need a little refinement - especially as it is the most popular sport in many of these countries, including NIgeria (7th), Mexico (10th), Egypt (14th) and Turkey (18th).


My statement was
Gist: It's population times how embedded football is in your culture which will provide a decent guide to your prospects as a footballing nation.


1. China - No significant long term footballing culture.
2. India - No significant long term footballing culture.
3. USA - No long term footballing culture, and with a very developed and professional sporting system which sees NFL, NBA, and MLB hoover up talent. Football isn't competitive.
4. Indonesia - Not renowned as football crazy
5. Pakistan - It's simply not cricket
6. Brazil - 5 World Cups/9 South American Championships
7. Nigeria - 3 AFCON titles/4 times losing finalists/8 3rd place finishes out of 32 tournaments
8. Bangladesh - It's simply not cricket
9. Russia
10. Mexico - Regular World Cup attendees without much success. Won 11 out of 26 CONCACAF Gold Cops/ Championships, twice Copa America finalists, 4 times semi finalists.
11. Japan - Not renowned as football crazy
12. Ethiopia
13. Phillipines
14. Egypt - Record 7 times AFCON champions.

I could go on... but you have to go down to 33rd to find the least populace World Cup winner, which using the Wiki list of countries by population puts all 8 World Cup winners in the top 15% of most populace countries. Doesn't seem like there is no correlation. Ignore countries where football isn't the dominant sporting culture, and you start to list the most successful regional and world footballing powers.

Like I said there are other factors. Money helps. Having the tournament played on your continent is also a bonus (hard luck Africa), as is FIFA seeing your success as profitable (pure coincidence I'm sure, but for some reason the words Korea and Italy spring to mind...).


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