Euro 2016 - hype, anticipation and general excitement

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

Modric <333

God. Just the greatest little player.

Well that woke me up

hmm keeper poor on replay, still luka is lovely

Disagree. The dip and pace on that gave him another dimension to worry about.

think modric is the most obviously fantastic player whom i resisted recognising said fantasticness for the longest time.

lot of shit keeping so far

don't even have a dodgy ball to blame either

don't think i rated him till his last season at spurs iirc, shamefully belated on my part.
xp

Don't think this was shit keeping. It was an unexpected strike and fast as a cannonball.

Think if youre criticising the keeper there youre looking for reasons not to love football there i said it

turned on the radio, Lawrenson blaming the keeper, i'll go with the opposite of whatever Lawrenson says

Sterling really reminds me of when Gervinho played for us, they are best and fastest players to run into the opposition and give away the ball, achieving absolutely nothing

Lennon

Walcott actually better than them, which from me yknow

turned on the radio, Lawrenson blaming the keeper, i'll go with the opposite of whatever Lawrenson says

Oh, he always blames the keeper and if a keeper makes a spectacularly good save, it's "One for the cameras there". Twat.

Again- hates football

Definitely.

Hoddle blaming the keeper there on ITV. Again, tempted to go against him just because, y'know, twat. Bilic basically telling him to shut up.

TV3 has a female analyst and she is exactly as bad as anyone else in the role, viva progress

looking at it again the keeper seemed woefully unprepared to me. but it's true i do hate football tbf.

luka's technique was exemplary from an insanely difficult ball

Croatia Turkey definitely the best kit pairing so far fwiw.

She blamed the gk but in the nicest way possible

British ex-players should be banned from punditry for the duration of this tournament.