EURO 2016 THREAD

[ReiseReise]

Sucks to be Luxembourg´s national team. Looks like the whole team is down for the count after getting food poisoning from pasta. Poor, poor guys, right after one of the rare wins in qualifiers, it looks like they might even have to forfeit their match against Belarus.

EDIT: Scotland is like our own mini-version of Italy. Whenever we play them, they look one level higher than they usually are, and we look about one lower. A draw in Ireland would secure Germany´s spot at France 2016, which will probably be a similar match like today´s, hopefully with less shitty set piece defending. All bitching aside, it was good and tough work to score three, and two of the goals were well worked. And we took six points from the same set of games we took three last year, so I guess it´s all good. 

[sabremike]

Ireland all but lock up 3rd place and still have a shot at 2nd, YAY!!!

[Robert S]

Who would have guessed that three of the first four teams to fix the qualification would be Iceland, Czech Republic and Austria (plus Wales and Northern Ireland being pretty close to do so)?

[Zheroen]

Yeah, the damage caused by LVG's approach to the national team's philosophy with WC14 coupled with almost an entire generation of players between Van Persie/Sneijder/Huntelaar's era and the likes of Depay/Promes/Cillessen failing to live up to potential (see Strootman, Kevin - though no fault of his own, he looks done) means we could see another era like the early 1980s for Holland coming up soon.  It's almost as though fortune just will not allow both Holland and Belgium to be simultaneously strong on the world's stage, as the Red Devils' prior rise to prominence came in the wake of Holland floundering after 1978's heartache.   Bringing Hiddink back was an ill-conceived idea, and Blind should have got some experience at the top level instead of being quickly thrust into the role based on his playing days (has that ever worked anywhere)?  If De Boer can get Ajax back on track (there's been something of a worrying decline there over the past couple of seasons), he might be the galvanizing force the team needs.  We'll see, though, they're not COMPLETELY out of the tournament...yet.

[Death From Above]

Seriously what the hell happened with Belgium? I play a lot of those manager games and there's, like, an infinite number of good Belgian players between 18-23. It's ridiculous.

[ReiseReise]

Belgium are always a dark horse to produce some top notch talent. They had an amazing squad in the 80ies, were always a kind of dark horse team in the mid 90ies. This was followed by a sort of fall from grace around the late 90ies / early 2000s, when they brutally failed at their co-hosted EUROs. I remember how we played them in the qualifiers for EURO 2012, they got a huge amount of hype, having lots of talented, young players. It will be amazing to see if the team developes. Considering the level of talent, their performances in 2014 weren´t as great as I had hoped for, but quarterfinals aren´t exactly bad.

The Dutch could still qualify for 2016. They have looked terrible, but they had the occasional weak qualifier, leading to great performances in tournaments, so I really want to withold judgement. And Zheroen has a point, other than thumping Spain, the Dutch playing style was all about grinding out results. The fall from grace is more result- than playingstyle-related. For now, Danny Blind might aswell try to play the young players in the remaining two matches.

While I´m not that surprised about teams that were kind of close in WC 2014 qualifiers like Iceland or participating in EURO 2012 like the Czechs qualified for a tournament that allows for 24 out of 50-something feds to compete, the fact that all of those squads booked their tickets to France as early as they did, partially at the expense of established footballing nations, is really surprising.
There are quite a few groups that see the grande nations struggle more than what anyone could have gussed. Germany looked a little worrying in their bad spell after last year´s WC win, Spain had one of their rare loses in qualifiers early on, the Dutch have been a continuing point of discussion, Greece - who have qualified for what, the last 4 tournaments in a row? - never got their act together, Sweden and Russia got handled with ease by Austria. Italy still aren´t through for sure and Portugal and Denmark are suprised by a very strong Albanian side. I considered the new system to lead to very boring qualifiers, with the status quo being secured, but instead a lot of the solid, but smaller teams seem to play their campaigns with a huge confidence boost, troubling the so called favourites a lot more than what was expected. I really hope some of this carries over to the EUROs, although hopefully not into matches against us,

[odessasteps]

I was listening to one of the Blizzard podcasts recently and someone (Auclair or Marcotti i think) pointed how a lot of this golden generation of Belgian talent was trained outside of Belgium itself. I think they mentioned Kompany and Hazard specifically.

[ReiseReise]

I think with how very young players tend to get signed as early as age 15 or something, even the smaller nations profit from the infrastructures of the big money clubs within Europe. I think, Iceland´s national squads quality stems from most of their players being "legionaires", so to speak.

[ReiseReise]

Ireland vs Germany today. A win and a draw would put us through to France 2016. Scotland has to hope for the former to happen and needs a win against Poland at home. I still haven´t wrapped my head around how we dropped a point last year. But Ireland are tough to play and always require you to put in a shift. If they manage to get carried by the fans they will be a real threat especially considering the new German habit of having lapses of concentration or just the ambition of playing the beautiful game without an actual attempt at going for goal.

 

EDIT: Poor Shay Given getting subbed off. Love that guy and really hope it´s nothing too serious.

[ChesterCopperpot]

Norn Iron!!!

[ChesterCopperpot]

other Ireland!!!!

[sabremike]

Ireland!!!

[ReiseReise]

F*n football. Our team had a good twenty minute spell at the beginning and totally lost it, especially after Götze´s injury. Schuerrle looked like crap. In that condition, our shot at winning 2016 is an outside one at best. Maybe it IS true that the main focus is on the WC 2018? No idea. We need a point against Georgia to secure our spot, since a loss with a Poland v Ireland draw would send us out. This match wasn´t as dominant a German performance as the one back last year, but we never looked threatened to loose this game tbh. Which makes the loss all the worse. Kudos to Ireland though, they stuck to a game plan and made it count.

The games against Ireland should teach our boys a valuable lesson: You can´t start slacking. The team earned the reputation as the world´s best, deservingly so, in Brazil 2014. But this ain´t WWE, you can´t get counted out or get dq´ed to defend your championships. If you loose your match, you just loose. And every team facing us throws everything into the match it seems. The team didn´t get an outstanding job, but decent enough, controlling the majority of it, but they weren´t able to defend a simple long ball. If you want to sit on a game and cruise back home with it, do it ffs. But this means to be able to defend THE SIMPLEST OF ATTACKING MOVES. Rant done.

[RIPPA]

IRELAND BITCHES~!

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

F*n football. Our team had a good twenty minute spell at the beginning and totally lost it, especially after Götze´s injury. Schuerrle looked like crap. In that condition, our shot at winning 2016 is an outside one at best. Maybe it IS true that the main focus is on the WC 2018? No idea. We need a point against Georgia to secure our spot, since a loss with a Poland v Ireland draw would send us out. This match wasn´t as dominant a German performance as the one back last year, but we never looked threatened to loose this game tbh. Which makes the loss all the worse. Kudos to Ireland though, they stuck to a game plan and made it count.

The games against Ireland should teach our boys a valuable lesson: You can´t start slacking. The team earned the reputation as the world´s best, deservingly so, in Brazil 2014. But this ain´t WWE, you can´t get counted out or get dq´ed to defend your championships. If you loose your match, you just loose. And every team facing us throws everything into the match it seems. The team didn´t get an outstanding job, but decent enough, controlling the majority of it, but they weren´t able to defend a simple long ball. If you want to sit on a game and cruise back home with it, do it ffs. But this means to be able to defend THE SIMPLEST OF ATTACKING MOVES. Rant done.

 

How Mueller missed his shot I will never know.

And how are we OUT if that happens? Place 3 is secure and that means Qualifying Round at worst.

[Death From Above]

Have to say, it's pretty disappointing to see Scotland finishing well clear below the Irish. It's not like Ireland is pumping out world class players, they're very getable.

 

Lewandowski is special.

[ReiseReise]

 

F*n football. Our team had a good twenty minute spell at the beginning and totally lost it, especially after Götze´s injury. Schuerrle looked like crap. In that condition, our shot at winning 2016 is an outside one at best. Maybe it IS true that the main focus is on the WC 2018? No idea. We need a point against Georgia to secure our spot, since a loss with a Poland v Ireland draw would send us out. This match wasn´t as dominant a German performance as the one back last year, but we never looked threatened to loose this game tbh. Which makes the loss all the worse. Kudos to Ireland though, they stuck to a game plan and made it count.

The games against Ireland should teach our boys a valuable lesson: You can´t start slacking. The team earned the reputation as the world´s best, deservingly so, in Brazil 2014. But this ain´t WWE, you can´t get counted out or get dq´ed to defend your championships. If you loose your match, you just loose. And every team facing us throws everything into the match it seems. The team didn´t get an outstanding job, but decent enough, controlling the majority of it, but they weren´t able to defend a simple long ball. If you want to sit on a game and cruise back home with it, do it ffs. But this means to be able to defend THE SIMPLEST OF ATTACKING MOVES. Rant done.

 

How Mueller missed his shot I will never know.

And how are we OUT if that happens? Place 3 is secure and that means Qualifying Round at worst.

 

I meant out of direct qualification, which, quite frankly should be the goal under given circumstances. I´m pretty sure there is a decent shot at us playing a semi-decent team in a potential playoff. Who will play us the same way the Irish, Scots, USA and Poland did. So qualifying is all but a given in that scenario, I don´t want anyone to rely on booking the tickets to Euro 2016 via playoff. I tend to say Germany is good enough to take a point at home against Georgia, though.

I guess it just shows how spoilt Germans are in regards to football´s big tournaments. I´m 100 % positive this is the FIRST time Germany lost more than one game in a qualifying round.

 

EDIT @ DeathfromAbove: I was actually shocked to see how well the Scottish performed. If it wasn´t for our two shitty point throwaways against Ireland (so to speak: if things would have gone "normally"), Scotland still would have had chances at qualifying, at least via playoffs. They got narrowed out in both games against us, they drew the Polish, draw and win against Ireland ...it was once again an away game in Georgia being costly. And the fact that we performed very unconcentrated vs Ireland + losing the away game in Poland.

[Roman]

Time for Kazachstan/The Netherlands. Normally that'd be a boring-as-hell match, but this time around it's actually quite interesting. Not the game itself, but to see just how deep The Netherlands have fallen.

[sabremike]

WALES~!~!~!

[SolidGoldBomb]

ITALIAAAAAA!!!

[ReiseReise]

Germany scratch and claw their way into EURO 2016. There were a few "far too close" moments and the Georgian goal was equally as ridiculous as the one we conceeded against Ireland, but in the end we made the tournament in a troubled phase. I really hope Loew uses the time he has in prepping well for France 2016. Schuerrle really is only a shadow of the super sub he was in 2014. Is it okay to blame Wolfsburg for that? Please say it´s okay! I still really don´t know about Loew´s general problems reacting to events happening in the game. I watched the second half basically and saw the team falling apart after their goal. No subs were made up until the 75th minute. We try too hard to get that false nine thing going and we waste far too many chances aswell, Oh well, there´s quite some time to go still,

 

Netherlands are having a mare.Anything but a win while Turkey loses puts them out of EURO 2016. I know people won´t believe it, me being German and all, but I´d actually be sad to not see them in the tourney next year, so I really want them to grasp the last straw. Greece finishing bottom in their group while Faroe are second bottom having won two over them gives Hungary a decent shot of qualifying as "best third place", as the results against the qualifiying groups last place are out of the equasion.

[RIPPA]

Stupid Ireland

[Death From Above]

Czechs up 2-0 on the Dutch. It's over barring something amazing.

[Zheroen]

It's over.

 

Virgil Van Dijk has had one of the worst performances from a Dutch center back I've ever seen.  And that covers a LOT of ground.

 

Time to blow it up and start all over, the way Germany did after Euro 2000.  Maybe bring in Wim Jonk, who has done very well with the Ajax youth setup (since the Oranje is more or less a U-23 squad anyway at this point).

[Pete]

Iceland, Wales, Norn Iron, Slovakia and Albania are in. Dutch are out. Unreal.