Hello and welcome to the double pin it a new podcast is definitely not quitting international soccer That's right. We have so much international soccer to talk about today We are a new podcast on the howler radio network I am Michael Kayley and joining on the line is a totally separate person Mike Goodman. How's it going Mike? Pretty good.
Gally the music you heard on the way in was the wellers We've got max on the other side of the virtual glass Please subscribe on iTunes or stitcher wherever you listen to your podcasts like us read us leave a review all that fun stuff And now we have tons of soccer to get to it's not a good idea I mean we had a cup final we had an incredible set of around 16 games in the in the euros including England ice language We will don't worry we'll get to but we're a couple of yanks as we have learned from Twitter And so obviously we're gonna have to lead off with the US National team third-place game. I've been really busy I was actually moving this week and that that game I missed it But Mike you want to like really break it down give us the double pivot sort of analytics perspective on that match Yeah, they were fine. All right cool. So the Copa America final was on Sunday night And I was actually this is I was lucky enough to be there It was I was like a be there in the sense that I went to see a really really I thought what is he really good football players play a football game that came off?
Mmm, and then I got to see the incredible drama of the penalties, which was not you know, it was dramatic But not super fun. So let's just run this down very briefly what happened was not any goals It was a nil nil until 90 minutes both of Argentina strikers, especially Gonzalo Hawaiian to a lesser degree Stair Joe Guerrero had a good scoring chance that they feel they feel to put on target and It's still a meal nil through extra time at which point went to penalties Leon Fc his penalty miss was in their other penalty This is his wasn't completely decisive, but his was you know dramatically decisive in Argentina losing the Copa America final to Chile So within this game in which I summarized all of the events There wasn't a lot of it happened. There was a lot going on nonetheless. What were your takeaways in this match Mike?
It's it's hard to tell you don't like this in finals, but it's hard to talk about the game without talking about the ref Because you had two red cards and you had two extremely questionable red cards Well, it wasn't an easy game to wrap. It was a very violent game You have Chile came out and they did what they did They threw themselves all over the place high-press aggressive throwing themselves into tackles and Argentina You know met like for like and so I mean the first 20 minutes of this game They were just bodies crashing into each other both innocently and like incredibly cynically and Then messy drew two yellow cards on a defender and he was sent off and the second one was like It was a soft call messy got blocked off But the defender kind of turned and pivoted in place and messy kind of ran up his back and fell over It was a foul. I think nobody would complain about it being a foul. I think in a lot of games You would say okay for that being a yellow card, but given given that the first half hours of that game There were tons of fouls tons of physicality and very few cards It was really really hard to justify that call and then it was even harder to look at the second Red the one given out to Argentina's a lot of a rojo as anything other than a makeup call It was a straight red for a lunging sliding tackle that looked kind of bad But there was actually very little contact nobody would blink if it was a yellow card But then we were even and so that that was the talking point of the entire match was really that sort of dynamic even after the game kind of calm down a little bit in the second half and Really maybe the story should have been the fact that Argentina completely shut down like completely shut down That's really had very few storing opportunities It was hard to get to that past how much the rep affected the way that played out Yeah, I mean I will say sort of I was I was seated way way up in the stadium And I was watching the fouls and I was like I'm not and I've seen people are mad I can't quite tell but what I did appreciate the rep was I have never seen someone Just stipulate in a way that fit his crowd better.
This is a stadium of some 80,000 and every movement he made It was precise what he felt what he thought what he was trying to express He was playing to the cheap seats he was playing directly the cheap seats. I was there I was played to and I liked it. I mean there was a moment where he called over called over our tour of a doll after some like You know a little bit of pushing and shove in the box around around a free kick He pulls him over and he does this dramatic like no more for both hands forward and back forward and back And like you know if he's like suddenly picked up the doll in that moment and like body slammed him I wouldn't have been surprised that was that I felt the whole game was building up to obviously what was going on here is that me and You know just one form of baseball reference right website I was hanging out with him again We spent a lot of the game discussing the ref as well because there was not a the football There was not a ton of event in the football I think that's the other big thing along with the ref is that but is that not only did Argentina shut down Chile and this is a Impressive thing Chile it's for a number of seven goals against Mexico also Argentina didn't create that much Well, it was interesting because I you put up an expected goal map today Or yesterday or whatever day given when you're listening to this out there that seemed to show that Argentina had a decent Expected goal total, but they were concentrated in very in very few attempts. There was once again Gonzalo Igoguin earning the ire of Messi stands everywhere with a pretty bad miss Aguero had What looks like a golden opportunity?
Relatively late on but there weren't there weren't like an abundance of half chances right and this is something that you might expect when Two high-pressing teams play each other good pressing teams play each other There was a lot of getting shut down in the midfield and occasionally Argentina broke through with a really good opportunity that they just managed not to convert But it's I think we should also talk about the fact that like the dynamic of the game changed on the hour mark pretty dramatically also When Argentina subbed out and how do Maria who probably didn't have much more of an hour in him anyway? He was coming off injury, but the way they decided to do it really impacted the last hour or so of the game Yeah, the coming out of so the red card to Rojo was very near the halftime mark and Neither team had made a sob in response to the red cards Chile had it simply dropped They lost the outside of the midfielder and they had When Celia the winger drop back in the midfield a little bit what Argentina did they lost a full back They had Javier Masirano drop out of defense of midfield into the back four and moved And in this 10 v10 situation came into the end of second half She laid a bit more of the ball They is not like they were creating a lot But they were moving around in the final third more readily and they had didn't pay much all game And so because of this time of her keynote shows when he subbed off the Maria to bring in that Matias chronovator who is a True defensive midfielder who you know he came for a couple times in the shot and it was very very troubling But he brought in quite a bit her talk shut down midfield and because of this the last half hour of the match There was just not that much going forward for Argentina It was a classic problem of our for Argentina of Leo Messi being tasked with linking play from defense to attack and also being the attack to which To play is linked it's an impossible job that he's given Yeah, I mean we've talked throughout the tournament about them playing like a broken system This was the example of that right? This was the example of you focus on the defensive part of the team shutting it down and you say all right you know, you know do what you got to do Leo and make something happen and he almost did but he didn't and then he missed a penalty and Now Messi is three tournaments in a row going past regular time in a final and not winning Yeah, and I think this is sort of the key one of the keys to understand this and I think also one of the keys to understanding the Higuain thing is this context because what Argentina have done and this was this was not dissimilar to how they performed in I think this was a somewhat better match than they had in the last go but America final but it wasn't crazy dissimilar and again It was I think it was you know, definitely somewhat worse than their performance against Germany But in any case what what Argentina are trying to do is shut down the opposition the deep make sure the defense does enough that They don't concede any goals and in all three matches They concede no goals through 90 minutes in two of the three concede no goals through 100 trimes that worked And then the idea is that Leonel Messi and one or two of his friends will create just enough They'll get those two one two or three chances or one of them and so what it does It puts so much more pressure on those couple of chances if all you've got is one two or three good scoring chances a game Then if you've got four or five I can miss one or two which players do all the time and that's fine But you can've only got one or two or three suddenly There's a huge amount of sort of narrative pressure expectation on those chances Argentina's plan is that those chances will be converted and there's a very good chance that they won't and I think that That's what happened to them in each of these matches to a certain degree this last one to them This last one is exactly what happened. They got a couple of chances they didn't finish them and that was all they were gonna create in this system It's hard for me to say whether that is a fault like maybe that's just the best way Argentina should use their talent But when you have messy and defensively you have macheroana and you have good Yeah, he was phenomenal also playing a large game on a yellow card.
Yeah When you have those players Shouldn't they be aiming higher shouldn't should they be trying to play a system to play away where they have more room for error? And maybe look you look at the rest of this tournament where they blew teams out of the water Maybe they do have room for error against good teams and it's only I mean against not great teams It's only against the top opponents where they sort of shell up this way and fall back into this pattern but You'd like to think that even against Chile Argentina has such a talent gap even with the injuries that they were dealing with coming into the final that They have more room for error than what three good chances maybe only two I mean, there's there's not gonna be an easy answer to that and Leo says he's retiring anyway and that he's done with the Argentina face So we this might be an issue that we never have to deal with again I suspect it seems like everybody in the world has Been willing to just give Leo one giant messy one giant back seat on this and then like you don't really mean it You'll come around which doesn't really seem to be something that's afforded to the rest of the world But I suspect we'll see him again I suspect we'll be having this kind of conversation again, too Yeah, yeah, I mean if you look at sort of who was on the bench the Eric LaMella came into the game with ten minutes remaining and Started giving messy another runner like messy is running into packs of four five and six defenders and he has maybe one runner helping him because It's ever been a good what you see has isn't making those attacking runs out of midfield Lucas billia is not making those attacking runs out of midfield Bringing on LaMella for the last ten minutes for a bit of a day gave them someone else in front of him They had it Nicholas Gaiton as an option on the bench he ever came in You know these are players I think could have that would have been something more of a risk It would have meant that you don't have three midfielders really sitting back But I think it also would have given messy opportunity like you know pass and run which would have been nice to see Yeah, well and with that we end Copa America for another Indeterminate amount of years depending on whether we do another Copa America centenario or not Yeah, I mean I guess it wouldn't be a centenario It would just be north and south America combined for a super tournament for the heck of it They just keep calling it centenario and there are no rules They're no rules Right There were all these worries about the beginning was it gonna be great was it not gonna be it turned out to be a really entertaining I think and one that people the things that stayed in it were invested in and so I mean you can't ask for much more than that right? Yeah, and I mean it's sort of weird that this tournament that was so fantastic and like really attacking great finishing throughout is Going to be defined by a missed penalty It's true and like I like it just say for a minute like Nessie is the greatest of all time and the fact that his international team is set up weird does not change that Yeah, and it's pretty you can also very easily look at this and say messy miss the penalty and Argentina did not pick him up The dalomist a penalty and she like did pick him up and so it goes right that's how tournaments work But we have a lot more soccer to get to and we should flip over to the euros Hi, this is George Gracie from howler magazine I'm here to tell you about a new podcast mini series that we released on Monday Here's the concept in one sentence and until you set the actor who played gangster Meyer Lansky and Boardwalk Empire Tells the story of a different European championship in each episode now the gangster part doesn't really matter But this guy can narrate like you wouldn't believe it's so good. Here's a sample France was built around a midfield quartet of Luis Fernandez Jean Teganar all arms your s and platini non collectively as Lucare magic Which does lose some of its last away translated into English it means the magic square Platini's your estan Teganar were all playmakers and the task of filling them all into the same lineup would have Some many coaches luckily the manager of France knew a thing or two about attractive attacking football His name was Michelle Idalgo.
He played as a winger for the famous Rams team of the 1950s that first inspired the term champagne football That was from Michelle and magic square the story of your 84, okay, you're thinking about how do I hear the rest of it? I'm glad you asked look for how the radio wherever you're listening to this podcast just for how the radio Your 84 was our first episode and we'll be listening a new one every Monday next up Denmark 92 It's quite a story trust me You don't want to miss it because that would make a total upset if you've ever seen boardwalk empire You don't mess with those guys look for how the radio wherever you get your podcast So I was thinking that we would I think that there's enough like just sort of Coming up With some of like a football questions and move on to the sort of more theological questions of whether sort of isolating Faries and elves are real. So I think we should start with the I thought was one of the more interesting sort of It was a game. What are you looking forward to it was a game that I remember talking to someone online I think it's a journalist based in Asia who's saying that he stayed up until like 5 a.m.
To watch this game and then It was and then like the entire world is we're watching on Twitter turned against it Croatia and Portugal played a game where There was you know Portugal came out to break the game down to make their not be football happening Croatia did not respond all that well to it and we had a very slow match that was determined with an extra time winner by Ricardo Corresma for Portugal going on But it was really it was interesting to see Portugal come out with a very specific plan What did you think of it this game was basically Portugal waited for Croatia to overextend themselves and 117 minutes into the match Croatia finally overextended themselves in Portugal. Um, it was very it was a clear strategy by Portugal to not take any risks You know the game was really tough to watch right there were until the sequence where Portugal scored the goal There was not a single shot on target often times that happened well actually not having a single shot on target doesn't happen oftentimes at all Start there, but oftentimes when games are tough to watch it's because the teams are not very good That wasn't the case here this You know This was one of those games that commentators will call cagey or tactical or you know all sorts of euphemisms for boring because both sides were rightly being cautious of the other side and you saw it right at the end of the match where Croatia's best Opportunities they really started pushing right at the end of the match and they were able to push through Even a very defensively organized Portugal. Not organized defensively committed. It's more organization issues Despite their sort of emphasis on what you know the game But when Croatia really attempted to they were able to fight their way through and threatened late But at the same time, that's exactly why they can see the goal So it's almost like you can as much as you want to fall these two teams for putting us through this match for making us watch this thing The end of that match really nicely showed why they were both Why it's you can make an argument that they were both justified to approach it the way they did Yeah, and I think I think you know obviously you know Portugal one that that always helps But I think it also shows that this was a the discussed in the previous podcast You know we were very impressed with Croatia and in particular So the way that their system worked and the way that you know they had leveraged their really great central midfielders into a coherent strong team And what Portugal said out to do was to not let them not let the central midfielders beat them unless they were a lot of numbers From forward along with them Fernando brought in the made one And Silva and Silva basically sort of like for John make Luke a much Which cry yeah, he brought him in for John martini who's much more of a creator or pastor and a playmaker The other thing I think it's probably important to point out is I didn't think the game was refereeed poorly But it was definitely refereeed in a way that favored Portugal's approach The ref was willing to allow a lot of contact was willing to call fouls without breaking out the cards Especially early on which meant that Portugal was able to really nip at the ankles of Croatia's midfield and really slow them down Whereas a different ref a ref with less tolerance Portugal would have found it much harder to maintain that approach over 90 or 120 minutes I don't I don't necessarily fault the rep I certainly don't fault Portugal and I don't really necessarily fault the referee right Oh, we want to referee his consistency and he was consistent And Portugal did a very good job of taking every single darn inch that the ref will let them take Yeah, it's also interesting.
I've been you know, we've been a fan of this portugal team We both sort of spoke and highly of that it was interesting to see after a group stage Which I thought that for the most part they really just came out intact that there's sort of 442 was mostly attacking 442 We saw that they can take those those tactics make one sub a few tweaks and play a very defensive counter-tacking game I think that that is a good sign for what Portugal can do, you know into the quarterfinals of this tournament. Yeah, it's Portugal's really interesting. We now have four games of Portugal and And they would not have gone through if there were not other place teams going through and the storylines surrounding them would have been Portugal disappoints again despite both of us feeling like they played pretty well on the group stage another they're going on to the quarterfinals And we still have after the game. They just played it's still really easy to paint them as Unimpressive despite the fact that we're both sitting here talking about the amount of offense that they generated in the group stage even though That didn't turn into goals and then what we think was a really smart tactical adjustment to play conservatively and pull it off against a pretty good situation so Portugal to me is the is the anti narrative team of the tournament so far right there the team that I think they're Their performances and their ability least line up with what a casual interpretation of it might lead you to believe Yeah, and they've got a reasonably they've got a reasonably nice Quarterfinal drawles as quarter final draws go with Poland and just to let you know we will not be talking about that On this podcast but coming in two days will be a full Euro quarter final preview will break down the match ups and what to watch So you can look for that coming soon on your podcast Production listening device thing and you're sticking your ears and your hear our voices exactly Alright, so we move on to to Spain and Italy which would be the other sort of marquee matchup of the round Yeah, it really Really being a nerdy kind of sort of take anything out of Portugal and Croatia There was tons to take out of Spain Italy I think casual fans nerdy fans, you know people who follow these things closely people who just sort of tuned into the pomp and Circumstance of the euros and so two of the more story teams in the tournament going out at around 16 There's a lot in this game starting with an early goal for Italy.
Yeah, and I think one thing that is So it'll be too too nil and I think by any account deserves the win You know coming into the tournament Italy were sort of a joke Italy had brought a very unusual squad Italy were clearly planning on starting a lineup Which included a day sort of like mid-table strikers Adeira and Graziano Pele they were going to be using They were going to be using in midfield around Daniel. They're also going to be using Pirolo and Jacques Arini knows what is this team and then suddenly they and then suddenly we watch this game where we watch them beat Belgium in the first round And now we watch them really just comprehensively beat Spain and take Spain out of their game I think that Italy have shown they are so much more than the sort of simple some of their talent that we thought they were coming in Yeah, okay So I think for starters we should talk about the way that Italy's formation really mess with Spain Italy play People like to call it a back three a back slash back five. It's not it's about three They play three defenders and the two wingbacks at times are very aggressive and they press Actively right. This is not a team that sits back defensively Oftentimes when you have a back three playing institutional back four There's confusion as to what the wingbacks should be doing.
Who should they be pressing? Especially against the team like Spain whose midfielders whose players you would nominally think of as wingers The guys that the wingbacks would go stick themselves to don't stay on the wing on one side is Nolito who? operates more as a second forward wide forward but second forward and on the other side is David Silva who is a central midfielder from a wide position and The time wingbacks were not bothered if there was no midfielder for them to push up and press They just pushed right on through and press the full backs and they got and and that allowed them to have one wing back pressuring the full backs And then to have both forwards cutting off the access to Sergio Biscuits Spain had a really hard time getting into their passing game the the angles and the lines that they usually would deal with weren't there Now a few numbers on that Spain in the group stage were completing between like 600 670 passes per game against Italy complete only 468 they could only only 200 in the first half and they complete over 300 every other half of football that they played this What Italy did the pressing style that Mike is describing what it ended up doing was making sure that Spain couldn't even play their tiki Taka style David Dejaya played 16 long balls out of the back He only played 20 in the three games combined before so it was a completely different They couldn't find Biscuits was kept became a relatively minor part of their position The next games in a large part and they ended up playing long balls Which I think ended up being leading to one of the one of the more unusual and interesting substitutions of the tournament where Spain needing To win needing to get ahead needing needing to get back in the game Brought on a second center forward. Odd a race And and pulled no lead us they really had two big center forwards that they could lump the ball to and that was Spain was doing trying to beat Italy right it was it was apparent very early on that Spain was gonna have to change something that the starting basic point of Italy's approach and Spain's approach Italy was winning and they needed to and so they they won that early tactical matchup and needed to force Spain to make an adjustment So Spain brings on at a reason and it makes You can absolutely make an argument and on Twitter I actually thought I proposed this fairly early in the first half because when Italy is pushing up that high They were leaving Spain the opportunity to lump the ball long and get in three versus three situations at the back and There were flashes in the second half where that started to materialize a couple of times you would have one of their three more attacking midfielders either fabric as any as or silver with the ball at their feet with atteries and Yeah, with that area in the morata in front of them and three central defenders and you're thinking, okay This is this is a good situation developing for Spain but they didn't execute quickly in those situations and That's a product of what Spain's traditional approach is so they would get into those three versus three's and instead of looking to capitalize them they would then slow up and look to fall back into their possession game and create chances and That just allowed Italy to get nine men behind the ball and they were not able to then break those you know break Italy down from those situations and It didn't so it didn't work right code they were not able to snap into that go long go fast create shots against Italy before Italy gets settled and So then they had they had you know the other thing is we talk about bringing on atteries a second forward But that's not quite what ended up happening What ended up happening as much was morata pushed out wide into the position that Nolita was subbed off on and so Morata was playing almost again as a wide inside forward now He's more forwardy than wingery sort of on the spectrum than Nolita is so you were sort of moving in that direction But I think if you're gonna make that move you had really commit to sticking the two of those guys up front in the middle with one They're playing off of them and I don't really think I don't know whether Spain wanted to do that And they just weren't tactically in the moment able to change that drastically or if they never really conceived of that substitution Doing that to their shape in that format, but it clearly didn't make enough of a difference Yeah, and I would say the other thing that that struck me as I was going through this game and sort of Numbers is how readily Italy passed out of the back against Spain And I think someone we were talking about this and someone linked us a an article in which Shavi talked about why it was always tough For him to play against Italy and against their back three system because he said it's very hard for that forward line To press if you've got three center backs And three or four options with central midfielders and wingbacks to pass to and we saw that happen I think in this game completely that that that spains forward line There was no real forward press from Spain that they were not able to break up possession in positions Or you kind of expect a traditional sort of taking talk a pressing team to do break up those possessions in the ballback and recycle it That just wasn't happening and one thing I was thinking about a little bit because it's not the numbers You know the numbers that only have I was also about the the players that Spain are playing in their forward line you have a Real Madrid Juventus striker you have a self-to-vigo Winger or wide forward and you have a Manchester City attacking midfielder You don't have a bunch of guys who've been playing in the same system together and you don't have a bunch of guys who've been playing in pressing systems almost at all And I think that what we saw was that Italy took advantage of a weakness in that personnel as well Feel the pass through guys who they wouldn't expect to be that effective as that first pressing line for Spain Yeah, I think that's definitely part of what happened And I think that what the other part of it is that Spain just weren't able to We there's no plan B even more offensively than offensively.
There's no defensive plan B, right? And even even if Spain would have considered dropping very deep making life difficult for Italy to attack and I countertacking once at least whether the goal that in the vet approach was was out the window anyway Because Italy would have been perfectly happy to not challenge if it's been sat deep and we would have seen a very Which would call a typical Italy performance where they were perfectly happy to just sort of pass the ball around in their own half until game Was over so even even if Spain had wanted to do that was probably not an option was on the table anymore But yes, their press wasn't good. I don't know I don't know what they could have done to improve it and After the added ease of didn't work Nothing really There was nothing systemic as they pushed later in the game that made you think that they were getting closer to cracking it Right it was there were very there wasn't they weren't able to tighten a new suppressor in any real and meaningful way that you felt like There was any like five or ten or fifteen minutes to the game where you set yourself at least in trouble here that never that just never happened Despite the fact the phone had a really big save late in the game There was a punted a deflected headed clearance that just fell to the Sergio Ramos like it wasn't and You could even see you could argue that they were trying to do that if that had been what they were sort of doing for 20 minutes or whatever But it never really was and so I mean it was just it seemed to me like a pretty comprehensive tactical victory for Italy Yeah, I think what's the most I had I can't remember who it fell to they also had a set piece header that before made a save on the very Half, right and I think I think I think I think that was the center backs and And so I think only that's interesting here is the way in which randomness can affect football outcomes and it didn't one thing around the 16th the most part the teams that won either deserve to win or didn't at all clearly deserve to lose I'd say Six of the eight pretty clearly were deserved winners and Switzerland Poland wheels No, they're going away and in this match it very easily could have been that Italy put on like just a spectacular tactical performance a really fun attacking performance and Deflection didn't fall their way and speed equalize late in the game that goes extra on who knows what happens. Yeah, right Exactly.
We didn't see in his round of games any of that really Which I don't know I mean I guess that's a thing that appears to be like to unlike right like you don't have anybody standing and crawling about You know XYZ team is totally undeserved winner and shouldn't be this deep in the front I mean everything sort of went well within the realm of the performances that both teams put up The other thing I want to hit with Italy though is and we talk about this a little bit when they play against Belgium We're talking about them being tactical. We're not talking about them being defensive. This is not a closed-down defensive Italy Sinaccio here. Yeah, right exactly they press they get up and down they get bodies into the box in possession So the wide players always have numbers to aim at even if even if they're not like combining really pretty Like you know like slice teams up down the middle when the ball goes wide there are bodies forward to cross to and you have you know These games where there are they're willing to concede opportunities at their end to create opportunities going forward Which makes for good matches the fact that nobody's like taking advantage of it yet against them is interesting It'll be interesting to see if they when Germany plays if Germany will just Muddy it up against Italy and just try to pick them off Which I think is a strategy that might pay dividends, but we haven't seen anybody really try yet Yeah, it'll be interesting to see to what degree this Italian press works against Germany I think it's a really impressive against against German possession It's gonna be a fascinating match up.
Yes, which we will talk about later Yes, because now the Icelandic gods are calling us home. Yeah, they've been there They've waited, you know, they there were no peels of thunder during during our long Spain and Italy tactical breakdown They held their tongues, but we can wait no longer. Yeah Yes, basically might Iceland has smite it smite it smoked smoke Iceland has smoked England And let's be talking about this sort of joking about like you know the ridiculousness of it But again just as you know, this was not an underserved win. No, I said outplayed England over 90 minutes And I feel like there's been some sort of talk I've seen around about like, you know, don't disrespect Iceland You know, this is a good team They're 34th in the world and like they played a good football game But if you look at the players that they have they've got a couple of eyes in good European leagues and a bunch of guys who are Somewhere toward the semi-pro end of this That has a bunch of good players who play well together But this is not a team that a well coach and structured England team should lose to so what you can have then it's both true It's both through the Iceland played a really impressive game great work Really we can talk about their defensive structure, but it's also true that England were horrific Yes, all right I've the one the thing that I really want to highlight about Iceland first is that set piece throw and play that they scored their equalizer on Which was it was gorgeous Everybody looks a Kyle Walker who got beat by the runner He was the guy closest it was his guy that scored the goal and that's fine Walker should could have done better But the long throw to a knock on to a runner who was running to a spot that the ball and arrived at perfectly It was a gorgeously designed play and it was a specifically designed play for throwing because it took advantage of the fact that off of a throw in England can't play an off-side line so England's defensive line was set and Iceland had a person positioned beyond the defensive line who then had to be marked by English players so that The cigarettes and the other who scored the goal could beat the defensive line not be offside and be within the six-yard box to receive the ball It was it was just a gorgeously designed play.
Yep And you see cigarettes and start his run will before the flick on headers made like he's exactly where he's running into He runs to the spot and the ball hits him. It's exactly Yes now that said down to one the lack of any meaningful cohesive attack from England was pretty damning And look really in midfield has been a story of the entire the entire tournament Sometimes he's been okay. Sometimes he hasn't here The his lack of incisive passing for the guy that is on the ball the most is a huge problem and There was look how to recognize that there was a midfield issue at halftime clearly right he brings on Jack Wilshire But he brings him on for Eric Dyer in sort of the midfield version of the let's play all the attackers Substitutions that he made against Wales right this was just the let's bring on the more attacking midfield midfielder for the defensive midfielder And that will make us attack better. It didn't make them attack better Yeah, we'll serve like we'll serve found himself without not defended in very deep areas and play a bunch of long balls Which basically played right into what Iceland were ready to defend?
Yeah Tactically when you're doing this there needs to be a plan for progressing the ball There needs to be a plan from getting it from the defensive line through the midfield To good attacking positions whether those attacking positions are out wide whether those attacking positions are at the top of the box Whatever they are you have to know what you want them to be and you have to figure out how to get them there England's attacking possession looks mostly like worked really hard play four or five passes to get from the defensive line to Rooney or maybe Wilshire right around the halfway circle and have one of them one of the two of them play a long ball out to the wide Fullbacks who would then put on a contest across if everything went well, right? There was no there was no plan to turn Possession into meaningful chances it seemed and Iceland didn't give to them any and so they didn't score like it What's not rocket science? Yeah, and then you know, so this is this is the structure of the game for some You know 60 minutes or so where England are just sort of trying a bunch of crosses or you know having you know And they just kept also there's also just a bunch of guys misplaying the ball There's not there's a lack of tactics and you know when they did get the ball the Harry Kane He was losing it over and over and over again when when Rooney wasn't playing progressive pass He was also just like passing the ball to it to an Iceland to feel there for some reason So they also not only didn't have a plan to break things down But they kept messing up even in their non breaking down possession And then with this being a problem with clearly the issue of how to break Iceland's lines How to move their defensive line side to side and find holes to pass through this is what England need and so Roy Hodgson does is just throw on Striker after Striker, okay, it was a I thought that it was basically an Abdication of management Yeah, look you have still Henderson Barkley Lelana Milner none of whom got in the game all of whom to varying degrees either by on ball or off ball movement or good at progressing the ball forward none of them saw the field and So you're left with sort of like It is incredibly weird to shrug your shoulders and say what did you expect when Iceland to just beat England? But you watch that second half and you watch the way England didn't didn't play and the subs that how to didn't or didn't choose to use And you say well, what do you expect the outcome to be and you extrapolate backwards from that?
If Hodgson doesn't have a plan for how do we improve the midfield progression of the ball? You have to wonder How could he have imparted that plan to the players on the field, right? If he's not looking at it and saying oh clearly we need more I Don't know Henderson carrying the ball forward or clearly we need more Lelana cleverly moving into pockets of space then it's hard to look at Jack Wilshire not moving into pockets of space and say the fault is on him for not carrying out instructions when Everything about the tournament seems to indicate that There weren't instructions to carry out now I also want to make sure you don't go too far right because England were clearly good enough in the group stages They were clearly good enough against Russia against Wales and against Slovakia to create enough chances to win and be very good defensively But the moment when they really needed to desperately break down a set in organized defense They just couldn't Yeah And the whole sort of structure fell apart by the I mean there were moments in the second half where one man would be pressing the ball And other players would be off to it. There was no cohesion in the team like it was early on Oh, these guys aren't quite working together later on they just I thought they quit I don't know that I'd say they quit I would say that they fell apart.
Yeah Each individual kept trying to do stuff, but there was there was not a team Yeah, I think yeah, I think that's right. I think that You don't want to get too much into the like the historical stereotypes of national identities with these soccer teams But England's English soccer for a long time has had this reputation of when things get tough everybody tries to do it themselves This was the knock on the lamppard and jerry generation where In times of strife they would just keep dropping deeper and deeper and deeper to take the ball and then try to do everything And I think you saw a version of that against I said where Everybody you know to the extent that anything happened it was individual and you know the Small vestiges of team cohesion that might have existed just fell by the wayside completely Yeah, and again sort of the like the randomness of things, you know They did it Harry Kane did have a header later on deli Ollie just missed a header later on there were some strikes that those individual performances could have Carried England if storage or cane or one of those guys have their you know 90th percentile game instead of their you know 25th or 3rd for Pain it could there still could have been a sort of you know undeserved or lucky winner here and that didn't happen Right. There's no rule that says that in a game where you play badly You can't have a moment of brilliance right? It's this is not like a cosmic law that forces that to be the case although advanced of England may disagree But it didn't happen and if you're at the point as a team where you walk away saying well We could have had a moment of brilliance.
Yeah, then you haven't done your job And I think it's fair to look at England and say well they didn't they didn't do their job in this match Which and so they lost Iceland right which takes nothing away from Iceland Iceland did their job and they did it admirably And that's how you get this result. That's how you get this clear result Iceland did their job had verbally England didn't do their job And now England go home So that I think that that is going to be what we've got on the football There will be more of the football because there is so much football and we've been having a lot of fun with that But there's been slightly less football recently I have heard through the grapevine that Mike Goodman has done things that work football is that true? That is true. There were two days where there was not a single match to watch and I did something wild.
I left the house and I went to the cinema twice on back to back days The first night we saw my wife and I now you see me too and The second day we saw Independence Day resurgence and let me tell you those are two movies They began there were moving pictures and there were credits Now you might ask me You might ask me why would you go see these two movies with your precious few days off from watching soccer to which I'd answer you The same reason people climb out Everest. They were there Look the movies were very good. They were silly. You didn't expect them to be very good All I will say is this two movies that asked you to suspend an incredible amount of disbelief It was much more believable that perhaps aliens would invade the earth a second time 20 years after the first Then to believe that we lived in a world where magicians are such a big thing that they become viral video superstars And people are flocking to their pop-up shows on New Year's Eve You don't go to see these movies because you expect to see good movies There were some fun set pieces in magicians.
There was Magicians in a magician is a very good TV show. I highly recommend now You see me too is a movie that had a couple of fun set pieces I missed a lot of people boringly talking at each other and Independence Day was the closest thing to two hours of a movie studio saying this is our new franchise give us your money And we don't care what we put on the screen. So that was my time off from soccer So I I am recording this from a new apartment a somewhat larger apartment Which is good I think I discussed like a two and a half year old son And so the main thing is that I accomplished during that break were packing which I am not going to go into on a podcast Other than to say that one thing I have learned one piece of wisdom I can impart to you kids out there anyone who tells you money can't buy happiness never hired movers This is so incredibly true So the main thing I've been doing is dealing with the emotional reactions of a two and a half year old to moving which are which are kind of interesting at one point I've been telling him for a while we're going to move we're going to be moving any packing and At one point I'm sorry so Sam we know we're going to be moving we walked out of the apartment you have a playroom and he says but we won't move our rooms and Trying to figure out how to answer that question like well the ceilings on the walls won't move But we will move the furniture certain gets at the way which a two-year-old cannot possibly comprehend Moving from one apartment to another apartment, especially when he has no memory of ever having done that before So what we ended up doing you know he was with his cousins for the day of the move and we And we set up his room and everything as well as we could and when he comes into the door We could show him here's your kid is wow daddy. It is my crib Wow, it is my potty it is my bath man like just seeing the things that were there sort of any This is not saying this is some amazing sort of parent triumph He also spent about a half hour sitting in one of the moving boxes asking you to close the top But he would lay down in there and it would be quiet So you know he struggled emotionally But the main thing that I that I've done is parenting and so in place of Bible history corner This is rambly parent stories corner.
I'm sure they're going to be wonderful and get great reviews anyway So that is our podcast as discussed you can rate and review us on iTunes or your favorites podcast app And we will be back soon at this week to preview all of those games in the quarterfinals Which will surely be exactly as good if not better than the two matches today. So thanks for listening Mike you wanna Eventually I'll have a sign-off line, but until then see you next time. Cheers