Day 5: Hungary vs Portugal | France vs Germany

Germany 2014 was a very practical team, their tiki-taka was only in group stage, nowhere near to be seen against Algeria, France and Argentina.
And they should have lost against Argentina(that was the worst match they played in the whole tournament,) if it wasn't because Higuaín became Higuaín and Palacios choked.

But that's what football is about for big teams : Winning.
Germany won : got praised

Argentina lost (despite playing better than Germany in the final) : people called them chokers.
The only time I heard that mentioned was either by zealots of Messi (who blamed Higuain) or Ronaldo (who blamed Messi).

I think most sane people realised that Argentina showed plenty of mettle and defensive bottle to get to the final in the first place where they came up against a slightly stronger German side.
 
Are you Dutch ? In this case how can you want the germans to win ?
I have no idea about his situation, but actually at least in the border region German and Dutch people get along quite well and it is not uncommon to see signs for shops etc in both languages around the border. Supporting your good neighbours therefore is quite an easy thing, especially if you speak the same/quite similar dialects and are ethnically quite close. For example afaik the best Frisian player is Arjen Robben from Groningen / West Frisia / Netherlands, which makes me as an East Frisian German feel closer to him than to some Bavarian players. The cultural and linguistical difference (at least in regard to the traditional dialects, not to modern standard language) is much smaller despite being part of two different states.
 
I have no idea about his situation, but actually at least in the border region German and Dutch people get along quite well and it is not uncommon to see signs for shops etc in both languages around the border. Supporting your good neighbours therefore is quite an easy thing, especially if you speak the same/quite similar dialects and are ethnically quite close (for example afaik the best Frisian player is Arjen Robben from Groningen / West Frisia / Netherlands, which makes me as an East Frisian German feel closer to him than to some Bavarian players)

One of my German cousins is married to a dutch fella. Everyone calls him the Netherlander :lol:
 
I have no idea about his situation, but actually at least in the border region German and Dutch people get along quite well and it is not uncommon to see signs for shops etc in both languages around the border. Supporting your good neighbours therefore is quite an easy thing, especially if you speak the same/quite similar dialects and are ethnically quite close (for example afaik the best Frisian player is Arjen Robben from Groningen / West Frisia / Netherlands, which makes me as an East Frisian German feel closer to him than to some Bavarian players)
That’s probably why the Scots are such fervent supporters of the English National Team.
 
Does Griezmann still take penalties for France? I'm rather hoping he wins the golden boot (I picked him of Benzema...hope I don't regret this)
 
Does Griezmann still take penalties for France? I'm rather hoping he wins the golden boot (I picked him of Benzema...hope I don't regret this)
Benzema took (and missed) one in their pre-tournament friendlies if I'm not mistaken - not sure if they had any other after that or whether that miss changed the order for pens.
 
Does Griezmann still take penalties for France? I'm rather hoping he wins the golden boot (I picked him of Benzema...hope I don't regret this)

Griezmann is supposed to be the taker and kind of decides if someone else take it.
 
^thanks both. I'm hoping his Barca form doesn't continue on an international level
 
Subtracting one from eighteen or twenty-one isn't particularly challenging past the age of seven.
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^thanks both. I'm hoping his Barca form doesn't continue on an international level

You want his Barca form to continue, he has been pretty good for Barcelona in 2021. Unless you bet against France? :(
 
You want his Barca form to continue, he has been pretty good for Barcelona in 2021. Unless you bet against France? :(
I looked up his stats and they're pretty decent for Barca, but-on the admittedly small sample of games I've seen him play for them-he doesn't look the same player to me for them. I don't really know why. He was electric at the world cup a few years so I'm hoping he's back to that kind of form. I have Italy to win the tournament and Griezmann and Immobile (long shot) to be top scorer :D
 
I have no idea about his situation, but actually at least in the border region German and Dutch people get along quite well and it is not uncommon to see signs for shops etc in both languages around the border. Supporting your good neighbours therefore is quite an easy thing, especially if you speak the same/quite similar dialects and are ethnically quite close. For example afaik the best Frisian player is Arjen Robben from Groningen / West Frisia / Netherlands, which makes me as an East Frisian German feel closer to him than to some Bavarian players. The cultural and linguistical difference (at least in regard to the traditional dialects, not to modern standard language) is much smaller despite being part of two different states.

I think part of it is also that the Dutch don't feel like much of sporting rival anymore.
 
Portugals manager is too negative... William and Danilo against Hungary? Come on... excellent attacking fullbacks and front 4 through. Cancelo will be a big loss though.
 
Is this Portugal team more positive and goal scoring than previous ones? Especially now that it has world class players in attack?
 
Where's Joao Felix?

Is he injured? Or has he got Covid too?
 
Why not Neves?

Because he's not very good. We have no box to box midfielders that are good enough, Moutinho got too old so William is playing as a number 8. Despite having had a terrible season he usually performs in the national team.
 
Getting the impression Portugal have a lot of similarities to England. Great generation of players but a manager a little too negative to get the most out of them.
 
Getting the impression Portugal have a lot of similarities to England. Great generation of players but a manager a little too negative to get the most out of them.

His idea is to be defensively solid and then let the forwards do their thing without much support or control of the game rather than get the most out of the forwards. It has worked for us in the past despite all the criticism.
 
Getting the impression Portugal have a lot of similarities to England. Great generation of players but a manager a little too negative to get the most out of them.
I'm not sure about that. We will see how much the FB are allowed to move forward. Having two defensive minded midfielders might not be a problem if they focus on attacking the wings.
 
Well, we have every reason to be pessimistic.

- 2018 the worst performance in world cup history for Germany.
- Struggling against any opponent ever since.
- 0:6 to a young Spain (biggest loss in german history) a few months ago.
- we even lost to Macedonia
- and due to Covid our starting 11 never could play together (Kroos for instance)

However, we are a classic tournament team (hopefully we didn't lose this magic in 2018 though) and our squad is still stacked with class players.

I just thought about it, France has probably one of the greatest squads ever seen in modern history. But if i compare their first eleven to ours, the difference is not that huge. Only the front 3 is a big advantage on their side, in midfield i think we are slightly better (Kroos, Gündogan, Goretzka, Kimmich, Havertz, ...) and in defense it might be even or a slight advantage on their side. However our GK is much better than theirs. So it's basically a 2:2 for that matter. We just need to keep their front 3 in check, then we can succeed.

If Löw tries his best not to feck up our team, i think we have a chance to beat any team in the world. Especially at home (which I still believe is stupid :lol: ).

In my opinion we need to try to dominate possession in midfield and isolate their strikers for the most part of the game. However, i fear Löw will try to "play it quick & safe", sitting back and try to play on the counter. But that would be a huge mistake, as our defense is not good enough to shut their strikers down. If we do that, i see us losing comfortably.

This just makes it seem like Germany will win it. 2002 they reached the final after losing 5-1 at home to England. They’ll lose today but pretty sure they’ll go far again
 
I think part of it is also that the Dutch don't feel like much of sporting rival anymore.

That's gotta sting the Oranje. From Frank Rijkaard spitting at Rudi Voller to: 'They're kinda like a cute little cousin.' :lol:

As for Portugal. That midfield of theirs is basically the international equivalent to McFred.
 
This just makes it seem like Germany will win it. 2002 they reached the final after losing 5-1 at home to England. They’ll lose today but pretty sure they’ll go far again
Just out of interest: I see that 5-1 quite often mentioned in English media and this forum, is that game something that is seen as an important result to be remembered in England?

My impression in Germany usually is that no one cares about that because everyone knows we were just aweful in those years and still got better results in the actual World Cup than England.
 
That's gotta sting the Oranje. From Frank Rijkaard spitting at Rudi Voller to: 'They're kinda like a cute little cousin.' :lol:

As for Portugal. That midfield of theirs is basically the international equivalent to McFred.

The thing is that this was basically the last big match between the two nations. With the financial gap getting wider and wider you don't really get big club matches on a club level either, aside from some group stage matches against Ajax, but most people probably respect them and they try to play good football, so that's not a source for controversy either.

Just out of interest: I see that 5-1 quite often mentioned in English media and this forum, is that game something that is seen as an important result to be remembered in England?

My impression in Germany usually is that no one cares about that because everyone knows we were just aweful in those years and still got better results in the actual World Cup than England.

The English are more concerned with friendlies than the Germans.
 
This Hungary side is going to get tanked aren’t they.. 5-0 Portugal..