Euro 2024

[Letters]

As for your opinion that England shouldn’t be considered favourites for any given tournament be it the one just gone or the World Cup. Well I think it depends who is brought in and how they are able to make best use of the players they have.

The thing for me is though while I'd agree we should be contenders, I don't think it's clear that we are favourites. As I said above when you mentioned Cricket and Rugby world cups, there's more depth of quality in football. And there's more depth in international tournaments than at club level. Who is going to win <insert top European league here> this coming season? You could probably narrow that down to two clubs with reasonable certainty in most of the top leagues. There's a very clear gap in quality between the top few and "the rest" in most leagues. It's less clear in international football. There are a group of countries who are more credible winners and I'd agree we have the quality to be in that group. But the last 6 World Cups have seen 6 different winners, there isn't a "City" who are clear favourites. And in Cup football where it's knockout after the group stage, it's harder to predict. We were a penalty shootout away from winning in '96.

[Letters]

People compare it to what Nayim did for Real Zaragoza against Seaman, now that was both fortunate and intended….fortunate in that Seaman could and should have kept it out

In the wake of that I was on what was an early version of an Arsenal messageboard, the web technology didn't then really exist to do something like this site, so it was literally just an email address which you wrote to and it relayed the message to everyone on the list. Someone could then reply to the email and that's how you had a sort of conversation.
Anyway...I got into quite a heated argument about this with the owner of a website called ArseWeb (run by this guy, looks like it doesn't still exist http://www.rupertward.co.uk/)
The conclusion I remember was it was both luck and skill.
The skill part is if I tried a shot like that then it would be a one in a million shot, Nayim being a professional footballer drastically lowers those odds, but it was still a bit of a fluke and I bet he couldn't do it again. And as you say Seaman probably shouldn't have been caught out from that distance

[HCZ_Reborn]

The thing for me is though while I'd agree we should be contenders, I don't think it's clear that we are favourites. As I said above when you mentioned Cricket and Rugby world cups, there's more depth of quality in football. And there's more depth in international tournaments than at club level. Who is going to win <insert top European league here> this coming season? You could probably narrow that down to two clubs with reasonable certainty in most of the top leagues. There's a very clear gap in quality between the top few and "the rest" in most leagues. It's less clear in international football. There are a group of countries who are more credible winners and I'd agree we have the quality to be in that group. But the last 6 World Cups have seen 6 different winners, there isn't a "City" who are clear favourites. And in Cup football where it's knockout after the group stage, it's harder to predict. We were a penalty shootout away from winning in '96.

A penalty shootout against Germany from going into the final, a team that hasn’t lost a penalty shootout since 1996. We also needed a penalty shootout to beat Spain who should have had a penalty and who also scored a goal that was wrongly ruled out for offside.

But my point was with Euro 96 is that it was still hope rather than expectation. We definitely didn’t let ourselves down in that tournament, our penalties against Germany were good in the main….Southgate’s penalty wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible it was a good save by Kopke.

Would we have beaten the Czech Republic had we done what no other team since Czechoslovakia in 1976 had done and beaten them on penalties? Quite probably.


I understand fine margins, being favourites doesn’t guarantee you the World Cup. But in all honesty the strength in depth is not there in international football.
Plus Since we won in 1966, and with the exception of 2010 the competition has been passed around the same five teams (France, Germany, Italy, Brazil and Argentina). The next World Cup is two years away and we know most likely the winner will come from a pool of four to six teams and that’s being generous. It’s not the European championship where you get wildcard winners (Denmark, Greece and Portugal)

The reason I’m saying there’s a good chance we will be favourites is because it’s likely or at least highly possible that we will have the strongest squad in 2026. We will have world class players who are still relatively young, players that were very young and who have become world class and we will have good strength in depth. Now unless there are a lot of players coming through for other teams that im unaware of I don’t think that’s necessarily the case for other teams. I think Germany could become contenders but I think it may be a World Cup too early for them.

[Mac76]

Southgate's gone!

[Letters]

Have you seriously only just seen that news?

[HCZ_Reborn]

Southgate's gone!

Only six hours ago

[Letters]

But my point was with Euro 96 is that it was still hope rather than expectation.

My memory is different. Maybe it was hope before the tournament. But that game against the Dutch, that Gazza goal vs Scotland. It just felt like it was our year and, to coin a phrase, coming home. The nation was swept up in a wave of optimism. I am certain (again, unprovable) that we would have won the tournament had the penalty shootout gone for us.

But in all honesty the strength in depth is not there in international football.

It's deeper than in club football though where as I said in most of the top leagues you could be fairly confident that it will be one of two teams winning it. Club football didn't used to be like that but money.
You cite 4 to 6 - that's probably right, I'm not saying anyone can win it. But it's not 1 or 2 teams, and we've not won it since '66 so I'd raise an eyebrow at us being in that group at all let alone installed as favourites. Your reasoning for this is squad quality and depth. I'm just sceptical that ours is enough better than the rest that we'd be clear favourites. Contenders maybe. I guess we'll see in 2 years time at which point when we fail I'll be saying "we'd have won it had Southgate still been in charge"

[Mac76]

Have you seriously only just seen that news?

Yes, no-one had posted here, this is where I get all my news

[HCZ_Reborn]

My memory is different. Maybe it was hope before the tournament. But that game against the Dutch, that Gazza goal vs Scotland. It just felt like it was our year and, to coin a phrase, coming home. The nation was swept up in a wave of optimism. I am certain (again, unprovable) that we would have won the tournament had the penalty shootout gone for us.


It's deeper than in club football though where as I said in most of the top leagues you could be fairly confident that it will be one of two teams winning it. Club football didn't used to be like that but money.
You cite 4 to 6 - that's probably right, I'm not saying anyone can win it. But it's not 1 or 2 teams, and we've not won it since '66 so I'd raise an eyebrow at us being in that group at all let alone installed as favourites. Your reasoning for this is squad quality and depth. I'm just sceptical that ours is enough better than the rest that we'd be clear favourites. Contenders maybe. I guess we'll see in 2 years time at which point when we fail I'll be saying "we'd have won it had Southgate still been in charge"

Most of the time it really is just one or two teams…..the sports media will always default to saying Brazil will win which I think is mostly because the last time they didn’t make Brazil the favourites they did win it.

Bookmakers take a slightly more methodical approach

Brazil and Argentina were the two teams spoken about as likely winners last time (as even in winter the assumption was the climate would favour a South American team). France were I think the bookies favourites (just about) in 2018 and 2014 it was a three way toss up between Germany, Brazil and Argentina.


The Bookmakers made us favourites for the Euros because they felt we had the strongest team, now that differed from my appraisal but that was the consideration it was based on. It’s likely they will consider we have the strongest team in two years time….i think the two other most likely contenders will be Brazil or Germany…but Brazil are in a bit of a funk at the moment….but they would I suspect be our nearest challengers (if they get their act together, and of course we get our act together…Southgate going by itself solves nothing but it’s definitely a positive step in the right direction)

[HCZ_Reborn]

Yes, no-one had posted here, this is where I get all my news

I know you’re being sarcastic but that would explain a lot