Thursday 17 November 2011

Long wait over, now lets talk football Euro 2012 England do not get your hopes up now.

With the busy international period once again proving successful for England after two victories over not only the world champions but also over a country which England had failed to beat in the last 38 years (12 games in total), the inevitable talk about how England will win Euro 2012 has hit the headlines, but when you analyse these two results the reality is that England might just not be that good enough.
 The game against Spain should have been an easy victory for a team which had in their starting line-up nine players who had played and won in the World cup final in Johannesburg just over a year ago, but that did not happen Frank Lampard scoring the easiest goal he will ever score, followed by resolute defending resulted in England and more importantly English fans suddenly believing that if England can beat Spain then England can defeat any country in the world, so by that logic Costa Rica who were 2-0 at one point during the match and were just seconds away from a famous upset victory only to concede to a David Villa hence drew with Spain yesterday in an enthralling game, will surely now believe they can draw with any country in the world right? Of course not they realised that Spain’s manager Vincent del Bosque was rotating his squad making sure he gives the players who will only get a place on the bench a chance (okay so the players may include Fabregas, Torres and Reina), but still del Bosque used both friendlies to use his whole squad of players, so England may have beaten a good Spanish team but England beat a team which at half-time had withdrawn (Silva, Xavi and Casillas), and the tactics by England were simple throughout the whole game, defend, defend, defend then attack corners and free-kicks, credit to England for the win but did this win prove the critics that England can play attractive football and gain results in a word no.
As for the result against Sweden, England were of course more attack minded, and did at times impress but Sweden had their moments and caused a few moments of panic for fans at Wembley stadium, another point that has to be made is that both victories were at home, England are slowly making Wembley a fortress, but away from Wembley England look less assured, although performances and results since the World Cup have been impressive. The problem for England is for every Spain win, there’s a draw against Ghana to remember, and for every win against Sweden there’s still the memories of England being dismantled in Bloemfontein by Germany.
In conclusion England did win two tough home games and the performances by a number of youth players showed that England do have a good crop of youth players coming through as well (Jones, Rodwell in particular) along with the impressive under-21 squad, but the Euro 2012 fixtures start in seven long months enough time for crucial players to gain injuries, enough time for England to have an in-house argument, though these incidents may never occur, and other countries may be significantly weaker than they are now by the time Euro 2012 starts officially, it is too early to say England will win Euro 2012.

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