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Hagbard Celine

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What Sterling is doing so far in this match should be part of the strategy for the USA. Absurd athletes threatening the defensive line immediately upon possession changing. Croatia's back line can't e

Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10866

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World Cup 2018: Jurgen Klinsmann's message to England: 'Be who you are'

When I watch England at this World Cup I see a team that is very determined and plays in a straightforward style.

There is nothing complicated about the way you play. Some might say it is predictable, and it may not be the most beautiful approach sometimes - but there is nothing wrong with that as long as it is effective.

You don't need to play like Brazil or other teams who have a different football heritage and approach to the game. Be who you are - and be proud of that.

When I took over as Germany boss in 2004, after we had failed at that summer's European Championship, I began by trying to give our national team an identity, and a clear way of playing. That included our attitude as well.

Two years later, our young team had an amazing run to the semi-finals of the World Cup that captured the imagination of our people.

It was a beautiful moment because it seemed everyone suddenly saw themselves as part of our team. It was a kind of surge of identity and pride that was wonderful to watch.

I can definitely see similarities with this England team, and the connection they have made with your public, and not just because they are a similar age.

What will decide the semi-final? Energy and belief

I wanted England to be decisive and assertive in your quarter-final against Sweden, and the same goes against Croatia, although they are a very different team.

Gareth Southgate might tweak some things tactically, but I don't think that will prove to be that important in deciding the outcome.

What will be important is the energy your players can bring, and their belief they can get to the final.

Mentally, I think you are ready, whatever happens. England have not gone behind in a game that matters in this tournament but, if it happens on Wednesday, you have the resilience to deal with it.

The England players will not panic, they have proved that. I want to see you go for it, and seize this opportunity.

If you do go on to win the tournament - and I hope you do - it would have an indescribable effect.

Winning a World Cup can almost reboot a whole nation. I am not talking politically, because you have a lot going on there at the moment, but it will definitely restore some pride.

It did exactly that for Germany in 2014, when the public saw themselves in the faces of all the players, and I would love to see the same thing happen for England too.

Southgate's spirit has carried England game to game

First and foremost, it seems Gareth's side are enjoying themselves in Russia, like my team did. He seems to have a group of players that take things very seriously, but with a light touch.

When you are in a tournament like the World Cup, then how you handle pressure is as important as how much ability you have got, and whatever situation England have been in, the weight on their shoulders seems to be just fine.

You also need the ability to take one step at a time, no matter how excited everyone else is getting.

Just like in England now, during the 2006 World Cup everyone began to feel something special was happening with the Germany team, but the difference was we were the hosts and we were right in the middle of it.

Finding the correct way to deal with that starts with the coach, and Gareth and his staff have done outstanding work with the way their players present themselves.

They are down to earth, approachable, focused and very open. He has created that team spirit and atmosphere around the squad, probably over the course of several weeks, and it has carried you from game to game.

It has been wonderful to watch from the outside, and I think every player in Gareth's team right now is just thrilled to be a part of it, and it is clear every player also puts the team 100% first.

I just hope you keep that positivity and focus in Wednesday's semi-final against Croatia, and beyond.

I want England to have that feeling of staying grounded - until you have hold of the trophy.

The future is bright, but the time is now

You need to have a special group to be able to create a successful side at this level, but the challenge will never stop for England, whether or not you do win this World Cup.

Things move on right away, which has maybe kind of haunted Germany since we became world champions in 2014. Maybe we thought they had everything under control but no, it is not that simple.

Every team's circumstances can change very quickly. If we played this same tournament again in maybe two months, then you might have three or four different semi-finalists.

What I am trying to say is you have to capture the moment. You might not get the chance again.

Of course, this could just be the start for this England team, like 2006 was for Germany.

In the next eight years, we reached three more semi-finals at Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012 - and of course became world champions in 2014.

I know there is a wave of young English players coming through - the under-17s are European champions and the under-20s won their World Cup last year. I was there in South Korea to watch them because my son was playing for the United States.

So it looks like the system is in place to bring more and more players through the pipeline, that can continue this surge.

But at this moment you should not get ahead of yourself and think about what will happen in two or four years' time, because you are in the semi-finals of the World Cup.

Right now it only matters what happens this week.

Jurgen Klinsmann was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan in Moscow.

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10866

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England's players and their manager have an opportunity to achieve sporting immortality on Wednesday as they aim to reach the 2018 Fifa World Cup final.

The Three Lions are just one game away from their first final since 1966, with Croatia standing between them and a showpiece against France, who beat Belgium on Tuesday.

The names of Sir Alf Ramsey and his players - still the only 11 Englishmen to play in a World Cup final - will be recalled forever and their stories told whenever the nation's landmark moments in sport are revisited.

This is the level of prize and prestige on offer in Moscow for a team given little hope of progressing past the quarter-finals before the tournament began.

It is England's most significant World Cup game since the semi-final loss to West Germany on penalties at Italia '90 - with the prospect of matching that famous occasion from 52 years ago if they win.

And it is even more remarkable when placed in the context of the shambles of Euro 2016, when England were deservedly humbled in the last 16 by underdogs Iceland.

When Gareth Southgate took charge of England amid the chaos and confusion of Roy Hodgson's resignation after the embarrassment in France and Sam Allardyce's one-game reign, the notion of him potentially putting his name alongside the great Ramsey would have been regarded as plucked from the realms of fantasy.

Ramsey, reserved but tactically brilliant, took the job after winning the title at Ipswich Town. Southgate's only venture into club management ended in the sack at Middlesbrough.

But he has rebuilt his reputation within the Football Association's framework with such success he now has the chance to make history.

And there are certain things about Southgate that the legendary Ramsey might just have admired, namely his fierce loyalty to his players - Raheem Sterling and Dele Alli are prime examples - and the loyalty he is given in return.

It has all come together brilliantly in a campaign that has gathered momentum as it moved around Russia.

Now England's manager and his players can earn the chance to make themselves immortals.

Southgate word perfect in Moscow

If Southgate was feeling the weight of history on his shoulders in Moscow on Tuesday, it was a burden he carried so lightly it was barely detectable.

His relaxed demeanour, quiet determination and sense of humour have won England friends on their travels in Russia - and for a man carrying the hopes of a nation and speaking on the night before the biggest moment of his career, he cut a remarkably calm figure.

Sitting alongside midfielder Jordan Henderson in a packed media centre, the attendance a reflection of this game's significance, Southgate was once again pitch perfect.

Plastic chickens at training. Waistcoat Wednesday. Football's Coming Home. And the World Cup semi-final.

The lighter subjects were handled with humour and the deadly serious matters treated with gravitas.

If Southgate's team have grown and matured in this momentous month in Russia, then so has their manager.

England's "identity" has not simply been a buzzword. It has become a byword, both in the style of play Southgate demands and the manner in which his players have conducted themselves.

Southgate would not be human if he was not feeling a modicum of tension about such an occasion - but he spoke with confidence and belief about what England have achieved and can achieve.

Whatever unfolds in Moscow on Wednesday, the manager's reputation inside and outside the global game has been enhanced.

England must prepare for battle

Croatia coach Zlatko Dalic was the model of defiance and confidence as he and Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren faced the media after Southgate.

This is a proud nation and a proud football team, and to reach a World Cup final would represent a truly remarkable story.

England will be made to fight all the way in the face of Croatian passion on and off the field, but Lovren was not short of reminders of his harrowing experience against Three Lions captain Harry Kane when Spurs beat Liverpool 4-1 at Wembley last October.

Lovren cut a humiliated figure when he was substituted after only 31 minutes - but rebuilt his season to the extent he was first-choice alongside £75m signing Virgil van Dijk.

England will hope Kane can rekindle those ghosts and haunt Lovren again. Kane will have memories as well as Lovren.

Henderson refused, understandably, to reveal England's game plan but much will centre on subduing the brilliant Luka Modric, who got the better of Liverpool's captain in Real Madrid's Champions League final win in Kiev in May.

If England can find a way to subdue Modric and Barcelona's Ivan Rakitic they will take a large step towards the final.

Fail and it will be fatal for their ambitions in Russia.

The stage was set at this magnificent football theatre on Tuesday. The fates of Croatia and England will be decided on Wednesday.

History and immortality await if Southgate and England can reach out and grab them.

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10866

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Croatia v England: 'Maybe, just maybe, this time it will be different'

By Tom Fordyce

Chief sports writer

Football is sold to the world as fun. As colour, as sunshine, as joy. Football is sold as winning.

Football is experienced as doubt. Football is watched feeling sick. It is wishing matches finished, wanting to walk out of a stadium even as you've been desperate to be there, being convinced that the most heartbreaking possible scenario is the most likely thing to pass.

And usually it does. Football is about losing. Only one team can win a league. Thirty two teams went to the World Cup; thirty one will go home wondering what if.

The idea England might be the exception both to that rule and to a torturous history of defeat, pain and regrets still feels extraordinary. It also feels dangerous, because while football is also about being powerless to prevent something awful happening to something that matters to you so much, it is equally about being convinced that even a thought or stray sentence could instantly summon disaster.

Any neutral watching England 2-0 up against Sweden could tell they were not going to lose. Many England fans were convinced that remarking "we're the better team here" to the person next to them would be to guarantee an immediate Swedish goal.

It is why being 1-0 down can often be more relaxing than being 1-0 up. What's the worst that can happen now the worst thing is already happening?

And so you lie to yourself. We're just going to enjoy the occasion. It's only sport. I didn't expect us to win anyway.

You tuck yourself behind established beliefs. England are an embarrassment at big tournaments. England don't win penalty shootouts. English footballers are spoiled, selfish and out of touch with those who help fund their crazy wages.

Hope is a delusion. Dreaming is for night-time. Football is disappointment.

You know all this is true. You also know what football can do for you. It makes you leap around and grab your friends around the neck and roar at each other's faces from inches away. It makes you jump on the back of strangers. It makes you feel the same way at exactly the same time as millions of people you will never meet.

You stay with football because of the possibility of all this. You keep daydreaming because of the little part of you that doesn't consider this a dream at all. You tell other people not to look beyond the next game and then do exactly that.

Because football can change. You miss a penalty and then the other team miss two. You go further into a tournament than you have in more than a quarter of a century and look up to see the big boys all gone. You listen to the players and read their social media and you find yourself seeing shared characteristics and people you like.

And when football changes, we change with it. From shouting at defenders to get rid of it, to lump it long when the press comes on, to contentedly watching them keep hold and play it out. From worrying which unheralded opposition player will be the bogeyman this time to relishing the world waking up to Kieran Trippier and Harry Maguire. From avoiding deathless England friendlies and their endless substitutions and meaningless results to wishing the next game was here now and being able to name Gareth Southgate's first-choice team in a single breath.

One of the few lasting bequests of London 2012, a sporting carnival where too many big races now have asterisks next to them, was that sense - for a nation that spends so much time reflexively looking backwards - of a vision of modern Britain that felt simultaneously new and familiar to every one of us.

It was there in the stories of the three stars of Super Saturday: Jessica Ennis-Hill, a mixed-race girl from Sheffield; Greg Rutherford, a lad whose great-grandfather played football for England over a century ago; Mo Farah, a boy who arrived in west London aged eight from east Africa to make the capital his home.

This is an England team that represents the England of 2018. The pale kid from Sunderland in goal, a midfielder from Milton Keynes with a Nigerian dad and English mum. Three big lads from south Yorkshire in defence, a striker born in Jamaica and raised in the scruffy part of west London. Another midfielder schooled in Lisbon, a superstar captain who learned on loan at Orient and Millwall.

There is an unreality to it all. A frozen, sodden winter when the rain never stopped, a summer that started early and lit up everything for weeks. Sunlit mornings, evenings watching football with the windows and doors open and daylight in the sky until all the celebrating is done. A team beaten by a nation of 330,000 at their last big tournament, gone after the group stages at the previous World Cup, careering into the semi-finals and enjoying every moment of it.

There are limitless reasons to fall out of love with football. The idiots you know even in the home end at your own club, the jingoism that snarls in the slipstream of national success. The price of shirts, the price of tickets, the booking fee for something bought in a microsecond from an automated page. The multiple satellite packages, the kick-offs before lunch and after Sunday tea-time, the money going to middlemen in a deal that didn't need them.

Then you think of the adrenalised peaks and emotional releases of the past three weeks, the scenes in front of big screens around the country, the pleasure of seeing your happiness reflected in the faces and moods of people you have almost nothing else in common with.

Only football can do this. England winning the rugby union World Cup brought enormous pleasure to vast numbers, the home Ashes triumph of 2005 giddy disbelief to those who had long grown used to Australian domination.

Yet neither touched as many distant corners as this World Cup. The peak television audience for the deeds of Michael Vaughan's team was 8.4 million; 15 million saw Jonny Wilkinson drop his goal. Andy Murray's first Wimbledon victory brought in 17.3m, and that was a win for Great Britain.

England's last-16 win over Colombia peaked at 23.6 million. Wednesday night's semi-final is likely to draw in yet more.

And you don't want any of it to end. Football is going to revert to type for two of the teams still left in this World Cup. It will go back to being about regret and dejection and what might have been.

For one team it will be something else. Colour, sunshine, joy.

Maybe it will all end here. Maybe, this once, it will not.

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InkaUtexas

InkaUtexas 25950

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12 hours ago, RamjetFDO said:

Ruuuuuule, Britannia!
Britannia, rule the waves.
And Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
 

holy+grail+4.jpg

 

Edited by InkaUtexas
I am a dumbass and could not get the gif to embed. Fuck that asshole who stole the Shag.
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alincoln

alincoln 2372

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----------------Monaco---------------

-------Liverpool----Besiktas---

Atletico----------------------Milan

------Barcelona------Inter----------

Frankfurt-----Madrid-------Inter

-------------------Juventus------------

 

---------------Tottenham-------------

-------------------City----------------------

---------United-----Tottenham-------

United----Liverpool----Tottenham

-----Leicester----City----City----------

-------------------Everton------------------

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10866

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World Cup 2018: 'This is Harry Maguire's moment' - Rio Ferdinand column

Harry Maguire's emergence as an integral part of the England team has been one of the stories of this World Cup, but I am not surprised it has happened for him here in Russia.

Sometimes, the penny just drops for a player at a tournament, and it is the right time for you, in the right team.

For me, that moment came at the 2002 World Cup. That was when I found my way, and developed a total and clear understanding of my position.

It seems like Maguire, a ball-playing defender like me, is doing something similar.

I had my reservations about his mobility at this level, because there have been times I have seen him exposed in the Premier League for Leicester.

But some people are just made for the slower pace of international football and, on top of that, Maguire is thriving on the kind of football England play.

We are a possession-based team now, who look to dictate play and hold on to the ball for long periods.

That is completely different to how his club side play, but it gives him the chance to bring the ball out of defence, and he plays a vital role in the way England boss Gareth Southgate has set his side up.

I had a frank discussion with Gareth about England's defence before this World Cup, when he laid out what he was trying to do.

Gareth told me he did not have two centre-halves who had proved to him they were good enough to play together in a four, so he was going to go with three at the back.

He also made it clear about how he wanted to play. He wanted England to set the pace and tempo of every game, and for that to happen he needed defenders whose main attribute is to be good on the ball.

They need to be able to defend too, obviously, but they have to be comfortable in possession.

The three he has gone with at the back - Maguire, John Stones and Kyle Walker - all fit that template, but they also all offer something a bit different, which gives us a bit of balance that is great to see.

Stones will pass it through the lines into the attacking players, Maguire likes to come out with the ball, and Walker can run with it too.

Walker has also got the pace to act as cover behind if we lose possession. I was sceptical about playing a full-back there, but it has turned out to be a great thing.

What I like is that Gareth has not looked at the negatives of any of his centre-halves, and asked: 'What are they lacking?' Instead it is: 'What are they bringing to my team?'

His thinking is, 'well, we are going to have to defend sometimes but, the majority of the time, we are going to have the ball, and I want players who can use it'.

That is why Gareth left Chris Smalling out of his squad, and why Gary Cahill has not been starting games, and he has been proved right.

He has switched the whole mindset of the defence, in terms of the role they play for the team - we are forward-thinking now, in every position on the pitch.

If we had just one defender who could bring the ball out, then England would be easy to stop. The opposition could just sit on him, and stop him playing out from the back.

But all three of our defenders are near the top of the rankings at this tournament for passes, passing accuracy and passes per minute, and they all take their turn in their own way.

2018 World Cup (rank)

PlayerMost passesPasses per minutePassing accuracy

John Stones339 (8th)70.1 (25th)94.2 (2nd)

Harry Maguire322 (10th)66.6 (30th)87.3% (33rd)

Kyle Walker317 (12th)74.5 (16th)91.8 % (14th)

They know their role, individually and collectively, and so does everyone else.

It's been a long time since we have been able to say that - probably since the time Glenn Hoddle was in charge - and it means no-one panics when things go wrong.

Midfield movement is key to making Southgate's system work

The whole point of bringing the ball out of defence is to draw the opposition players out. It's vital when you've got teams that are so well organised like at this World Cup.

At previous tournaments, the opposition have been quite happy for us to have the ball, because we did not seem to know what to do with it.

Now, we have a plan.

If, say, Maguire comes out with the ball then Jordan Henderson drops in behind him

There are opposition midfielders marking Jesse Lingard and Dele Alli but, at some point, one of them has to engage Maguire, and he will leave a lot of space behind him.

That is the trigger for movement from Lingard or Alli, depending on which side of the pitch Maguire is on.

They can find space, and create an overload with one of the full-backs where we have a two-versus-one situation, then suddenly they are free and facing the opposition defence.

You need that initial movement, though, to make it work - because you have to give the defender options. You cannot just rely on him being good on the ball - that is not enough on its own.

Far too often in my England career, I would look up and have one or maybe two options to pass the ball - or just go long.

In this England team, though, our centre-halves have got four or five players to look for.

Our full-backs are always looking for the ball, and either Raheem Sterling or Harry Kane are dropping deep too. So at any one time we have got four players in that central area who are looking to get on the ball.

We have a gameplan and we are going to stick with it, and we will do the same against Croatia in Wednesday's semi-final as we did in our win over Sweden on Saturday.

All the successful sides I played for believed in the system the manager had implemented and this is what I see when I look at England - the players completely trust the way Southgate is asking them to play.

Rewards outweigh risks of playing out from the back

There are going to be times when a mistake is made, but it's been from England trying to do the right thing.

Every time you see someone get in on our goal at this World Cup, it has stemmed from us trying to play.

Walker made a mistake on the ball against Colombia. Maguire did it a couple of times in the group games and Stones has been caught out too.

But I would never berate them for it, or change the way we are playing because of it.

Of course, it might cost us a goal at this World Cup or in the future, but it will lead to us scoring many more than that.

This is the way I want to see England play in the future, and the rewards far outweigh the risks.

If we go on and win this World Cup then the roof will come off - it will be brilliant.

But even if we don't, we will come out of this tournament now with a genuine philosophy of playing and an identity of our own. That is a massive achievement in itself.

If I was a young player watching England now, I would be excited. Not just because I think we are going to win this World Cup, but simply because of the way we are playing. Long may it continue.

 

 

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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I hope Crotia wins and I hope the asshole that scheduled our board conference call for 1:30p develops English teeth for the rest of his life.  

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