England squad to play Ireland/Brazil

Allezfan · June 4, 2013

Mikey_Fitzgerald said:
I thought the 2nd half performance against Scotland was enough to classify the match "good", but I take your point

And, tbf, you only really need two or three good performances to win an international tournament, see france 98, denmark 92 or argentina 78.

Or England in rugby, the best teams do just enough to get through and then up the gears when they need to.

Allezfan · June 4, 2013

ijjysmith said:
I was there mate. That Croatia team was out of this world.

Nice, I was at I think a 3-3 with russia that was a great game, like. Won't say where that was, like in case I get banned.

It was a very northern tournament, too. Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester vs just London, Birmingham and Nottingham,

Good stuff.

ijjysmith · June 4, 2013

Artetafan said:
Nice, I was at I think a 3-3 with russia that was a great game, like. Won't say where that was, like in case I get banned.

It was a very northern tournament, too. Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester vs just London, Birmingham and Nottingham,

Good stuff.

Yeah I remember that 3-3.

I got to two games at Hillsborough.

Denmark with Laudrup etc... vs Portugal with Figo and Eusebio in the crowd. Finished 1-1, wasn't amazing game, but I sat right near the Portugal fans who were so so loud and setting off pyro every 2 seconds. Awesome.

Then me and dad went to the Denmark Croatia match which was just awesome, as we didn't expect that from Croatia. How little we knew! I always remember a quote from my dad, 'who is that warming up? He looks really good'. Yeah, it was Mikel Beck warming up for Denmark before he went to Middlesbrough and was the worst footballer we'd ever seen!

Mikey_Fitzgerald · June 4, 2013

I sadly didn't get to any Euro 96 matches

I will defo be there if a major tournament ever comes back to England though

Elong · June 5, 2013

Artetafan said:
Euro 96 is also one of those things that gets whitewashed as being much better than it actually was.

We all remember the well behaved crowds and feel good non hooliganism and forget the riots in trafalgar, the russian student stabbed on suspicion of being german and the manchester bombing which happened during the tournament.

And we all remember the 4 goals vs the netherlands and gazza's goal vs the scots and forget how utterly awful england were the first game and a half and the fact only a biased ref got them through a game vs spain where we were largely outplayed.

It's the atmosphere and euphoria being a home nation brings to your memories though, sure it wasn't the best tournament from a neutral point of view, but there were some cracking new players to come out of that (Paborski, Suker etc), and it was entertaining being English. The last rugby world cup (held over here) was pretty shocking too, and NZ scraped over the line with a dour win, fighting for their lives. But it'll be the best world cup any kiwi will remember.