[Football] Nations League & other international football, October 2022

[Swansman]

[MENTION=38333]Swansman[/MENTION] How did Sweden get on tonight at home to the mighty Slovenia? Surely you saved yourselves from relegation to the third tier of the UEFA Nations League?

And if it did all go pear shaped there's always the World Cup to look forward to in November. Oh, hang on.

No idea, didn't watch the game. Probably lost.

But yeah I'm looking forward to England embarrassing themselves in November. Normally I hope that third world-countries go far in tournaments, but I'll do an exception for your boys.

 

[herecomesaregular]

Whether you think Southgate is a good coach or not (personally I don't and think we reached the finals of the Euro's in spite of him), I think the point is he is the wrong coach for this group of players.

We have got an incredibly exciting collection of attacking players that are the envy of most nations - Kane, Sterling, Foden, Rashford, Sancho, Mount, Grealish, Maddison, Bellingham, Gordon, Saka, TAA - but unfortunately, Southgate is ultra conservative and focuses on the defensive side of the game which is without doubt our weakest area, it doesn't work with the players we've got. He tries to protect weak links like Maguire and Dier which massively takes away from our attacking unit.

I appreciate international tournaments are mostly won by defensively sound teams who keep tight but usually those teams also have world class defenders and keepers in their side which massively helps - we don't so we should be focusing on our strength which is attacking and concentrating on hurting the other side rather than waiting to be attacked by them.

Good points. Personally, I wouldn't mind England under Southgate being a risk averse, defensive team ready to spring out on the counter ......if we were any good at it. But for someone so focused on defending, and a defender himself of course, he does seem rather hopeless at organising our defence. He made a fool out of Maguire yesterday.

 

[US Seagull]

Made the mistake of watching the USA vs Saudi Arabia in an almost completely empty stadium.

It was terrible. At the moment I have little confidence that either the US or England will advance out of the group stage of the world cup.

 

[GT49er]

More about our South American contingent - Alex Mac Allister played 70 minutes in Argetina's 3-0 victory (curtesy of two very late Messi goals) over Jamaica, and Steven Alzate played the first half of Colombia's 3-2 win over Mexico (2-0 down when he was substituted though).

 

[One Love]

He's delivered a World Cup semi-final and European final in the last four years.

In the 2018 World Cup, the draw handed a semi-final place on a plate. England lost to the two half decent teams they played.

Home advantage is a huge advantage in tournaments especially historically for England. So in the last Euros, with a kind draw so that we didn't meet anyone of note until the final, laid it on a plate again, especially with home advantage.

I imagine Hodgson could have done at least as well as that.

No doubt the same old story with happen again in Qatar with England losing at the first real hurdle. Unless he picks Maguire in the starting eleven and we don't make it out of the group .