EURO 2012

nice ;)

is it just me or was that ramos pen shite? didn't execute it properly, not delicate enough.

A penalty that hits the net is never shite.

It was fine.
xp re Ramos (especially considering his one vs Bayern.

Spain are so awesome defensively. Good match, Portugal played Spain straight up and concentrated on playing their game the best they possibly could rather than solely concentrating on nullifying Spain.
Meireles pass to Ronaldo on 90m was so so terrible.

na don't get me wrong it was a good'un obv. but as panenka pens go, it was underwhelming! you're supposed to momentarily stop breathing as you realise 'wait, wtf, he hasn't... fuck me he has.' time's supposed to stand still. went in though so who gives a fuck.

i find it hard to say that portugal were that great. like italy they took the game to spain, rather than parking the bus, as everyone else has done against them this tournament. like italy they at least matched spain for most of the game (in this they overachieved, they're nothing as good of a team as spain on paper), but faded at the end (last quarter of an hour of the ninety minutes for italy, the entire period of extra time for portugal). spain often start slow, but del bosque got it wrong tactically and this compounded it. negredo didn't look like he had any idea of what his role was, and was largely ineffective when the ball did manage to arrive at him. silva and xavi both underperformed massively in the first half imo. i didnt think fabregas was that great but an improvement on negredo? absolutely. navas looked livelier than silva but going for the byline and whipping in crosses - for who? - which invariably hit the first man and at best went out for a corner, as if spain know what to do with one of those, just isn't a good enough plan b. thought arbeloa had a bit of a torrid time and should've been sent off. thought pedrito was great and if only he'd had more playing time - this season, this tournament - he might just have gotten something.

i feel like the spain backlash is so fucking strong that we give portugal so much credit for containing them and stopping their play, and yet ignore the fact that despite portugal never gave spain control, neither did they look like scoring, or have a shot on target.

but faded at the end (last quarter of an hour of the ninety minutes for italy, the entire period of extra time for portugal)

Yes, teams are noticeably falling off against them - it's really heavy going to not have the ball, especially when you choose to press as Portugal often did.

xp.ha some terrible english in there, you'll decode it.

yeah, but i think you have to press spain to beat them. it's the best tactic. you just need to be better than portugal going forward - which germany are.

thank fuck somebody who used to play in England scored to enliven this otherwise by-the-numbers encounter

The shots on target thing is so misleading; Ronaldo is about as good a goalscorer there has ever been and still cocked up a couple of decent to good chances. Especially the break at the end, that is usually his bread and butter.

A penalty that hits the net is never shite

Only because penalties defy analysis. The only useful analysis you could do would be to assess their saveability by height, disguise, distance from the corner, etc. Of course we never hear that, it's always "great penalty" for the ones that go in and "it's a poor penalty to be honest" for the ones that don't - even when they're identical in every respect except which way the keeper dives.

The thing is that ultimately that's all that matters, so all pundits more otm than me, basically.

that chance near the end was difficult, tho it needn't have been if the decision and execution from meirelles wasn't shite

The only useful analysis you could do would be to assess their saveability by height, disguise, distance from the corner, etc.

I saw something a few years back when they did this and worked out that the best way to take a penalty in terms of risk vs likelihood of scoring was to hit it low and hard into the corner. Up there with all that research about how cornflakes get soggy when they're wet.

I once read the best way to save penalties is to stay standing up in the middle, as between going left, right and through the middle people are most likely to go through the middle and you can cover more space standing up etc.

But also keepers feel like heroics come from big diving saves or whatever, so they always do that

The amount of panenkas that people are going to be trying now, I'd totally stand still and catch them if I were a keeper. (I'm not, clearly.)

I bet those chipped penalties look fucking lame if the keeper doesn't move. Berbatov looked like the coolest penalty taker in the universe until he had one saved when it just looked shite.

Ha!

the Graun's weekly youtube roundup thing today has a clip of five shitty panenkas, most of which have precisely that happening

A keeper would make a panenka extremely unlikely by standing still for the first penalty of a shoot out. Just standing still for each one seems like an unwise policy.

28% of the goal is unreachable for any well-struck penalty, iirc the research. High into the corner to the side of the kicker's favoured foot is preferential, but an arc around the goalie's reach is a close enough depiction.

from the initial angle last night nani's looked unsaveable- if the keeper stands and reacts there's a good chance that's within arm's reach.

But the keepers were good in the penos last night tbf, just a technically good shootout.

if you just stand still, this happens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XuEGHHoZGM

actually i guess he did save it!

game was fuckloads better than Lineker and Hansen made out

Yes, fuck off to the golf course and let people who actually interested in football comment on it. Didn't Hansen once say he wouldn't watch football if he wasn't being paid for it? Why have the BBC also got tonight's semi-final? At least Klinsmann will be on the panel, but does this mean they won't be covering the final?

Strange way to divvy it up - ITV got four of the six ENG/IRE group games, but BBC got first dibs on the QFs and both SFs. Final live on both channels.

Oh right, I forgot that ITV would be more interested in Engerland than the semis.

Don't know what the viewing figures for non-Roy's Boys semis will be like

8.8m watched SPA-POR last night.

So financially ITV made the right choice

Well, 20.3m watched ENG-ITA; BBC also got a bigger audience for their one ENG group game than the two broadcast on ITV, AFAIK.

8.8m is quite a jump from the sub-7m who watched the GER-GRE semi four years ago (but there was generally a lower level of interest in the that tournament from the get-go).

premature but my team of the tournament so far

--------------------Casillas--------------------

--Lahm---------Pepe--------Hummels-------Coentrao

---------------Pirlo-------Kheidira--------------

---Ronaldo-----------Ozil--------------Iniesta---

-------------------Ibrihimovic-------------------

Has Ronaldo playing out of position and Lahm too(kinda). Mountinho can feel hard done by and Gomez can play his way in tonight I guess. Perhaps Jordi Alba unlucky as well. Pretty obvious team really.

cronaldo rw?

Yeah I know. Just trying to shoehorn him and Iniesta into the same team. It's like Gerrard and Lampard all over again! ;)

iniesta am, ozil rw, ronaldo lw

iniesta is just awesome, player of the tournament contender playing in maybe his third best position

i think ozil has looked alright playing wide / inside right for madrid a few times

Yes that's better
xp

                          rui patricio
boateng           corluka                   papadopoulos  
                                                                    alba
                             tymoschuk
            zyryanov                       modric
               
srna
                                                        konoplyanka
                             gomez        

bit indie

that's not supposed to be the best players, there's no ron vlaar for a start, but they are at least good players & with an emphasis on eastern europeans players who performed well in flawed sides or without much experience or out of normal position / playing style

you wouldn't change them for any of the England team

Is that you 'Arry?

Btw Ismael, did your dad enjoy the QF?

redknapp has just sold corluka to lokomotiv for £5.5m ftr

just didnt fancy im

ha no it only went through yesterday so that would have been levy i guess

Corluka didn't perform that well except in the Spain game which was perfectly suited to him (ie it was about having exceptional positional sense and not having to worry too much about being skinned for pace).

Would love to retain Corluka but guess he wants to leave by now?

xps I only spoke to him briefly from some airport or other, but he said it was definitely the best game he saw (he was also at Poland-Russia and Portugal-Czech Rep). He did say he had a cracking view of the penalties, from a point opposite the dugouts and towards the end where they were taken. Hopefully there'll be a photo or two of england agony that I can post for general amusement.

thought provoking idea -- all managers are fired/suspended in may, chief exec buys/sells whoever he likes, (re)appoints manager in july