De Gea could have saved 3 of those.
Wow
oh
my
God!
TOLD YA…
I wasn’t expecting that
Is it time to start believing?
I need a Valium.
Awful awful game of football, yet one of the best I’ve watched in years
Not until I post the Karaoke video
What did these twats know?
Well I’m not disappointed to be out as TBH Spain have been found out by a vastly inferior footballing side. Even if Spain had won the shoot-out their real chances of winning the ultimate prize had already gone.
Good luck @gavstar I think you’ll need it.
Why not. Been a fair few surprises, so Russia have as much chance as anyone.
Most surprising Russian win since the US Presidential election
The defeated team arrived as Spaniards.
Now they’re Russian. Home.
I love the Internet anagram server.
Watching Spain in this tournament, and today in particular, put me in mind of watching Saints under Puel. A better version, obviously, given the players at Spain’s disposal, but there are a whole lot of similarities. Lots of possession, nice, neat approach play, plenty of passing. But far too little actual threat. Against an obdurate and well-organised defence such as Russia’s they just couldn’t get through. On the few occasions that Spain had pacey players run at the Russian defence (Rodrigo most notably), they looked like they might get somewhere. But it happened so rarely.
One other thing that Spain had in common with Saints (though under Pellegrino this time) was the pig-headed unwillingness of the manager to change the shape and composition of the team. They started with two holding midfielders, which was one too many, and they finished the game with the same number. When Hierro belatedly decided to bring on the great Iniesta, he could and should have taken off Koke, whose role was redundant and who was also having a pretty crap game. Instead, he apparently felt a pressing need to replace like for like, so off came David Silva. Silva wasn’t having the greatest game, but with Iniesta to prompt who knows what might have happened?
A pusillanimous performance, you might say. I’ll say it because I love the word pusillanimous, and because it’s a very apt description. I do feel massively sorry for Iniesta though - if anyone deserved better than that, he did.
Yep, I thought the same thing.
The other similarity (as you touched on re DMs) was that, despite an overwhelming sense that there was little danger of conceding outside of a set-piece, there was a complete unwillingness to gamble. And here gamble is not the right word because there was so little threat that it was a no-brainer to just attack.