Topic: ⚽ UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany ⚽ - Qualifiers - page 64. (Read 46401 times)

I'm confused by the people who still blame Ronaldo, both when the Euros started and after Portugal slumped. So the point is that it is too narrow in assessing the team's play, Portugal played with 11 people and if they blame one person then why are there 10 other people even though it turns out the penalty kick was missed? he is Joao Felix, maybe you  not watch the Portugal vs France match? so you miss many moments that should be evaluated as a whole. Judging individually is certainly very unfair, in football there are definitely winners and losers. Regarding of the attack line the fact is that France is also dull Mbappe Doesn't Have Many Opportunities. So the point is that losing is losing, whether it's about quality or so on, but we can't demand that Ronaldo continue to perform optimally. He is 39 years old and it is normal for his performance to decline.

I think the referee made many decisions against us in the match. Xavi Simons stepped directly on Mert Müldür's shin and this should have been a direct red card. VAR did not even intervene in this intervention. It was a decision I couldn't understand. A red card early in the match could have pushed us to play better. If it had been in the group matches instead of the quarter-finals, I'm sure they would have given him a red card.

Turkey lost to the Netherlands yesterday and were eliminated from the tournament. We went ahead in the first half and then conceded a simple goal in the second half, which was a pity for us because I think we were the better side in the game. Montella's late decisions and some of the players not playing affected the game. Kenan Yildiz should have come on earlier, he shouldn't have even started, but Montella's constant preference for him was not normal.

Luck is also a very important factor, not only England is lucky at this Euro, the French team is also very lucky, perhaps even too lucky. Southgate is still winning, so it is difficult to criticize his decisions, it would be different if he had lost like Spalletti did, who said that his strategy worked in Napoli when everyone condemned him, now that we see how bad Italy looked compared to other teams, we can to say that Spalletti's strategy was very bad. England started to play when they conceded, maybe their excessive caution hindered them.

For me, England have been able to qualify for the semi's by sheer luck. In fact, throughout the tournament, they haven't been impressive and have been fortunate enough to get by with teams that haven't been serious too. For me, Switzerland would have been the country to end their dreams if Saka hadn't squashed their dreams.
 I still don't know why Gareth Southgate won't start the likes of Ivan Toney or Cole Palmer. These two have been changing the game whenever they are brought in and the more they left in the bench, I feel their confidence will be dropping. Maybe he's confused as to who to start and to whom to bench or bring later because of the myriad of good players they have.
Funny enough, they could use this their pattern of getting one goal and holding it down or drawing so they can get to penalties and deceive the other teams in this competition and before you know it, they are in the finals.

The level of ball control possessed by the Netherlands was indeed better than Turkey, but the Netherlands also benefited from one of the own goals scored by a Turkish player so that the Netherlands had that advantage until the end of the match because after that no more goals were scored in the match. I see that Turkey wasn't too bad in the match, but Turkey was just unlucky so they also had to go home at the end of the match because they didn't qualify for the next round.

To be frank I don't know why anybody should point hand at Ronaldo for the exit of his country from the competition because literally, this is a player that got emotional when he missed a penalty against Slovenia and we all don't know how he's feeling considering the fact that he didn't score any goal in the competition. We should understand the fact that country games and league games ain't same because it is always difficult to understand the pattern of play of your teammates in the national team unlike the league games where you are familiar with your teammates because you guys plays together on regular basis so it would be bad pointing fingers at the Portuguese International footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. There is no way he can pass the ball to himself and score goals as a team success is more of a combative efforts rather than just being dependable on a particular player. I know Ronaldo is a big name but that doesn't mean that big players doesn't face challenges in matches. I have watched some of the matches of Portugal in this competition and I can strongly say that Cristiano Ronaldo was selfless in his play because most of the time he passes the ball to a teammate to score instead of being selfish or self centered.

 It is so bad how people are often interested only when you are making progress or becoming successful unlike during your challenging and trying times. I was even surprised that Ronaldo was cheerful after the quarter finals with France and was even consoling an emotional Pepe who was crying because this EURO competition was his last in his football career. No one also cares about how Ronaldo was feeling after their elimination or is it because he didn't express his emotions as well?. They also need to know that France is not also an easy team to win so they met a strong opponent and not lesser team and when a game enters into penalty shoot outs it is always based on luck because any team can lose in penalties.

2 elite teams that have made it thus far in the tournament of the likes of France and England haven’t done very much to earn their spot in the semi final. They’ve just been lifted this far by share grace but, I don’t see that helping any team to lift the trophy. I think all share grace will end around Spain. Spain remains the one team that haven’t depended on luck to push forward but, put in the work, showing their might in all games, defeated Germany even with their home support.
England knows what to do, I didn’t see Saka to have been any free in the game against Switzerland but, he was rather relaxed and not much engage. It only dawn on them when they were loosing by a goal. You know you’re a step out of the tournament and have to put in your all to get back.

The Swiss did good with their penalty spot kick I tell you, Akanji was just unlucky as the delays and mind games that Pickford tried worked. Pickford guess the right way and saved the first penalty, giving England the advantage as, it comes with a lot of confidence for the English players through the rest of the kick. It doesn’t become any difficult to take the shot afterwards, you’ve got lifeline.

Just a note, it’s Türkiye now, no longer Turkey. I know it would take some time but, you would do well to help yourself remember.

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Well, there was only a couple of ways the game could have gone and this time, Türkiye shot themselves in the foot. Haven’t conceived that equalizer, they went ahead to conceive an own goal. It isn’t any less disappointing but, they did the much they could against the might of Netherland. The Oranges did themselves solid.

But i think used such gesture was unnecessary, though UEFA was sanctioned merih, but they were no parties who can be blamed. I agree. UEFA was not fair about the ban given to bellingham and merih, bellingham was 1 match, but Merih was 2 matches. Merih could have avoided the ban by not making a sensitive gesture. And i think he should have known very well that if he is playing in the highest national competition in euro. I think both, merih and bellinghem deserved it.

UEFA is not totally wrong here. I think Merih must realize if he did something wrong that cost his club a loss against the Netherlands. Last, I hope Merih will be more professional in the next competition by avoiding use such unnecessary gesture like that.

There are no black horse teams at the Euros this time. With the defeats suffered by Switzerland and Turkey, only the top teams will advance to the semifinals. I think Turkey is certainly very disappointed with their defeat because they already have tried their best, but they have had many misfortunes in the finishing touch. This is quite reasonable because after Netherlands managed to catch up, Turkey looked rushed and unable to control their composure. As a result, they cannot maximize the good opportunities they have.

Perhaps, that yesterday would be one of the worst performance England have displayed so far in this tournament. Sincerely speaking, I was rooting for their elimination due to how irritating they were playing. Switzerland played the game with utmost dedication and I wish they won the match.

From the beginning of this tournament, England have been surviving on luck even against a weaker team that one might expect them to win easily. Defensive errors and poor positioning of the goal keeper gave room for the England equalizing goal. Switzerland try their best to defend their goal but Saka has always been a freeman since the kickoff and couldn’t be stopped.

English team were lucky to win the game but the Switzerland goalie was very poor in spot kicks, he should have been subbed out for a better kick stopper. I felt sad for Switzerland after all the effort they put in that game.

One by one the underdog teams have experienced defeat in euro today, previously we hoped that one from of Switzerland and Turkey would be able to reach the semifinals of the Euros, but instead both of them lost with great honor to a team that was bigger and stronger than them, talking about yesterday match, of course it was quite painful for Turkish fans, their team should be able to win over the Netherlands after being able to perform quite well throughout the match, even though they often get pressure in the first half, Turkey is still able to play quite well and can even trouble the Dutch defense, but the Turkish defensive line really suffers the bad effect of losing Demiral in this match because that the Dutch attackers were often able to move freely in the Turkish defense.

A one goal lead should have made Turkey play more aggressively in order to score goals again and secure their chances, but their coach seemed to prefer to secure a 1-0 win in the second half, what the Turkish coach did of course backfired on them because hoping for a 1-0 win from a big team like the Netherlands, but apart from this defeat of course I am quite impressed to see Turkey game which has improved rapidly over the this years.

One thing about Ronaldo is that he is the kind of player that loves recognition and respect so no matter how inconsistent he could be on a match he doesn't like to be substituted because that was actually one of the reasons why he was having a problem while he was on Manchester United, perhaps it could be that with how far he has gone in football he will feel disrespected if they should substitute him on the match because just like you mentioned there were more vibrant players on the bench that even has more energy and speed than Ronaldo but they refuse to bring them forgetting that Ronaldo is no longer the forceful player we use to know before because he has come of a age that his strength and energy has started weaken.

Maybe like you said the reason why there coach decided not to change him was because he needed to allow him since this season will be his last playing for Portugal, though his performance on that match was totally not impressive at all because he wasn't helping the team but the only influenced he had was the title.

If you look at the semi-finals and the teams, you can say that all four are very good. Portugal and Germany could and perhaps even should have been there. Portugal had play the best qualifying and Germany played very well in the group stage, but unfortunately not everyone can always win. I think the final match will be Spain against Holland. England have not play so good as Holland so far and Spain are simply the best team. England havent managed to win within 90 minutes in the last two games, 1x extra time and 1x penalty shootout. Spain have won all of their last 8 games, even if they were lucky against Germany. The semi-finals are well filled, I dont think there are any surprise.

They did this because they were in a lagging position, if they did it from the start of the match it would be quite risky because their impressive attacking play would leave a void in the defense line.
Indeed, basically England's performance was not that impressive, especially their attack line which was unable to take advantage of many opportunities so they had quite difficulty scoring goals.
Winning via penalty shootout has a bit of an element of luck, and England were lucky this time to advance to the semifinals.

And in the other quarter-final match, Balanda managed to beat Turkey and ensure the final ticket to the semifinals, this is quite interesting because the Netherlands were 1 goal behind in the first half until finally they were able to turn things around in just 5 minutes, this shows that the mentality of the Dutch players is quite good. .

There are only 4 best teams left now, England, Netherlands, Spain and France.
It will be quite difficult to predict who will enter the final because all of these teams have almost the same strength.

Such a character showed by Turkey last night. But it was still not enough for the win. They were the much better side than Netherlands in the first half and this brought about the goal as well. However they once again had to deal with the manager's hard-to-understand choices. He preferred a very defensive system in the second half which just made things easier for Netherlands to organize more attacks.  

He is such a poor manager that he didn't even want to make substitutions right after conceding the first goal. If it weren't for the players' extra effort Turkey wouldn't be able to reach this phase.

Turkey could have really won last night as Netherlands weren't that great. New generation has great players, Arda Güler coming first. They really can bring bigger successes to their country in the future.  

I don't see this opportunity as something to underestimate France, England and the Netherlands, in fact I also think Spain has something special at Euro 2024 and they really deserve to win the title. Even if many people don't agree with this one, but I think Spain played well and deserved to be in the final. But what is certain is, France is not an easy opponent to beat in the semifinals.

France should be slightly superior when they meet Spain, of course this is because Spain has crucial problems in defense due to Carvajal's absence. Carvajal and Pedri are out due to red cards and injuries and this is a danger sign for Spain especially in defence. Carvajal is really important in the squad, in fact I don't think Jesus Navas can handle the defense as well as Carvajal.

England's game is always boring to watch, if they want to play fast, they can actually do it. However, it seems they prefer to play it safe and be ready for penalty scenarios and that is what happened in this match. They conceded first, but they managed to equalize 5 minutes after the goal was scored against them. Well they should be able to play like they did after they conceded, and if they do that from the start, then I think they will finish the match in just 90 minutes.

The tempo of the match tends to be slow, which in my opinion benefits Switzerland, because they can easily rotate from attack to defense and vice versa. I think Switzerland also has the same scenario, namely forcing England to go to a penalty shootout. but in the penalty shootout round they were not lucky enough to win and they had to be eliminated in this round. However, in terms of their play since the group stage, they deserve appreciation.

Being in great shape isnt the only requirement needed for a forward player, they
also have to create targets for the wingers and to create space by pulling defenders
out of position for fellow attackers, Ronaldo doesnt do that anymore or he doesnt have
the movement anymore. So he might be in great shape but his skills have diminished.

Martinez should get some criticism for not being strong enough or not seeing
that he needs to replace Ronaldo for someone who poses a bigger threat to the
opposition throughout the tournament.

Its the same with Southgate for England, he is reluctant to pull his big
players in a match eventhough he has a world class bench to call on.

In contrast Koeman of the Netherlands is a strong coach and made changes
right after half time to change things in the team, and it worked, they played with
more pace and purpose and caused Turkiye bigger problems than in the 1st half.

The second half of the game came up lively with much dynamic changes and brilliant performance from both sides. And despite that Switzerland eventual loss to England, I truly admire their zeal and fighting strength to not losing out cheaply to England. Fast-forward to the penalty shootouts, unbelievable how Palmer was one chosen to first take the penalty in a squad he's always made to come from the bench, tells a lot how Southgate believes so much in his confidence and talent at taking penalty kicks. Congrats to England sail through to the semi's.