Euro 2016 - hype, anticipation and general excitement

Daylight robbery, no justice for the England 11 there.

Aaaaand the English are up to fighting again, in the stands this time....

All those fighters that can fit into england shirts and still picking those two centre halves

Lee Dixon, magnanimous

can't decide if i am more convinced by LBI's anti-English fan bias or the BBC's pro-English fan bias

https://twitter.com/ianherbs/status/741736287737122817

WD, I'm not anti-English by any means, but cmon. Check one Twitter etc. 'fans' behaving terribly.

Not just the players that shit the bed so

lol!

Ha!

Caught the last twenty minutes. Genuinely amazed Russia got anything out of this but credit to Slutsky for shaping them into something resembling a team again.

lol i was teasing really LBI, do not use twitter and no inclination to start, England fans abroad are always the worst and i would never try to defend that shit.

but on this particular occasion it does seem like they may have been more sinned against than sinning? no police in a stadium w/ unsegregated fan groups does seem a little wtf given the heightened security measures that have supposedly been put in place

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc

Reports and video. After letting off smoke bombs, Russian fans charged on England fans at full time.

Seems like some serious complacency from the hosts here, after all the shit that kicked off earlier there is no segregation?

Rooney, Dier and Lallana played great, btw.

Yeah idk WD, Russia's fans tonight at least seem just as worse.

It just annoys me there's no mention of British fans destroying Marseille on here whatsoever. But whatevs.

The poor bloke whose Twitter handle is @woy is taking it with good humour

https://twitter.com/woy/status/741715957161299968

Less of the "British" please LBI, ta

xpost

Here are some Welsh fans being nice:

https://twitter.com/photosofootball/status/741701073665183744

Noted, Ailsa, and you're right

Glad to see Wales fans being cool. I really enjoyed the atmosphere in their game.

French BeIN have just called Eric Dier 'Payet Anglais'

Amazing.

Kicking off in Nice between some NI and Poland fans according to twitter reports.

Yep. England / Russia and Poland / NI are probably the two worst ties of the first stage for potential fan violence so it might calm down after this weekend.

"the best England tournament 90 minutes in two decades"

Second half was pretty drab fwiw.

Is Poland/NI a Catholic v Proddie thing or is there another reason?

Xpost Yeah most def, had been drinking and regretted that as soon as i posted it.

Still, it was much better than usual, and I maintain that if we do that twice more and don't get out the group that'd be preferable to blagging our way to the latter stages the way we have for the past x # of tournaments

Reading now that NI/Poland isn't them fighting each other but both sets of fans being set upon by locals

Second half was pretty drab fwiw.

this.

I was actually living in London during Euro '96 and can recall getting a late bus to Plumstead from work and witnessing the post Germany defeat kristallnacht that seemed to have occurred everywhere. Football hooligans are such grim beasts. I used to meet some great people travelling away, but also some of the worst people ever as well.

Obviously got hugely carried away last night ito praising the England performance as best in decades or w/e, touch of the sun perhaps, but I have nevertheless been genuinely amazed at the amount of criticism I'm seeing leveled at Hodgson and some of the players this morning - a mess, tactically inept, a demoralising start to a tournament etc.

have these cunts not watched England play at a major tournament in the past 12 years? have they forgotten the 0-0 draw with Algeria? 1-1 USA? 1-0 win scraped against Ukraine in 2012? the 0-0 and penalty exit against Italy? so we were naive last night and we didn't put away our chances against obviously vulnerable opposition. so fucking what really? what's that set against a decade or more of uninterrupted tournament tedium? constant fuckin tedium.

how long have these guys been saying hang the results, all we want is for an England team to turn up at a major tournament and just show a bit of passion, a bit of enterprise, just try to actually play some attacking football? some cunts will never be fucking happy.

Yeah, you could quite easily score 3 or 4 in one of your games if you keep playing like that. Just hope it's not Thursday

first half was as good as i can remember watching England play in a tournament, maybe going to back to beating the Netherlands in 1996, which i don't exactly recall with clarity.

this reaction is the real problem with England - i can't believe every other country responds to a 1-1 draw in the first match of a group as if it's a national disaster. that was real progress for the team last night, and for the first time in i don't know how long i wished them well, mostly.

defence was an accident waiting to happen but that's all about the available players. Rooney mostly acquitted himself well but is still completely unnecessary. some of the attacking players had better games than others but nobody was out of their depth. some tweaking necessary and some tactical acknowledgement that this squad isn't built for holding onto narrow leads.

no big deal. probably get thrown out of the tournament anyway. journalists and hoolies deserve each other.

Windsor Davies 100% OTM

Yep. Also the youngest team at the tournament so expecting flawless performances rather than a base to build from is ridiculous.

All very positive but worth bearing in mind that Russia are pish.

england were decent, although i'm not as sold on them as WD. The control in midfield was promising helped by the 2 wide forwards, unfortunately this positive is countered by the fact that the control they help foster means england play 2 wide frwds one of which lallana pretty much never scores and the other sterling can't finish which means they're relying on kane to score and he looked a little off it last night.

looking frwd to seeing croatia this afternoon

Drop sterling and kane, play rashford and students instead. Problem solved. Looking forward to Croatia too, my each way bet for the tournament.

Studge not students

After my sterling predictive work of wins for Slovakia and England yesterday i think Turkey could get at least a point here.

got this as a 2-2

Excited for this. 1-3.

england were decent, although i'm not as sold on them as WD. The control in midfield was promising helped by the 2 wide forwards, unfortunately this positive is countered by the fact that the control they help foster means england play 2 wide frwds one of which lallana pretty much never scores and the other sterling can't finish which means they're relying on kane to score and he looked a little off it last night.

should be noted that I rowed back my admittedly overzealous comments on the quality of the England performance; it's more the spirit of the thing that I admire, even when we weren't playing that well we were at least trying to.

more than praising the performance i was trying to express my disgust that after how many years of ppl begging for exactly this ("we don't care about the results! it's the turgid style of play!" etc., you wake up the next morning after a performance that was at worst encouraging (and at times positively thrilling) and it's still the same old shit in the newspapers / fb feed /w.e. bunch of moaning wankers

really excited about this one, i've got money on the score draw so i'm hoping to see something from Turkey here

Friend of mine predicts Turkey to win the competition. Highly doubtful but she did predict Leicester to win the league.

That was a yellow if I ever saw one, but you could see the ref indicating w/ three fingers that he thought it's too early in the game smh

England were ok against a poor outfit last night but the inability to make good use of possession and time out wide is something thats been a big trend in english football the past few years and showed last night. Sterling is exciting but pretty useless. Walker is the kind of player youd be happy to let cross all night as an opposition manager. Without incision through the middle its very easy to lock kane down.

Tbink wilshere and sturridge provide a little more of that than was evident in last night's lineup but without true width its just too compact in the centre.

Croatia otoh plenty of quality crossing but wasted so far

Oh my word luka

ooooh luka