Likely Italy will rest a few of their players as they have won the group, gives the Irish a glimmer...
Another piss-poor match tonight, France v Swiss. So many games seem to be teams scared to have a go, perhaps the third place qualifiers have made teams scared to lose although these two should go through 1st and 2nd...
That's the problem when you have a group game at this stage of the competition when both teams are happy with the status quo
All we can gather from the France Swiss game is that the Swiss shirt material is rather flimsy, the pitch is a bit iffy due to the amount of rain in Northern France and they don't make balls like they used too!!!!!
They certainly don't Thank God, I remember the old pigskin balls with the lace when I was at school, in the wet it was like heading a lump of concrete...
The headaches after if you caught one wrong.... No stand out team in the tournament so far but France have been poor.
The all knowing panel praising Switzerland, the same team England beat twice in qualification. Spain and Italy look the form teams, though England have shown some decent intent and dominated games.
Hardly a vintage tournament so far, probably the best thing has been the performance of the smaller nations like Iceland, Albania who beat Romania tonight and Northern Ireland....... Italy, France of the sides that have qualified look like they can progress towards the semi's and hopefully England can equal them.....
I watched Albania. I bet it was far more entertaining! A very deserved win & they played some decent stuff. Like many a side though, they lack a natural goalscorer.
I watched first half hour if France game, which had 0-0 written all over it, so turned over to the Albania game.....although nowhere near the levrl if skill, a far more entertaining game. Albania defended as if their lives depended on it, and work as a team unit - hope they get one of the third slots, and that result does NI a big favour as barring a big defeat, they should have a good enough goal difference to get thtough now.
I only half watched the last 15 minutes, but Pogba's strong fast and skillful run down the right, and his excellent far post cross sweetly volleyed onto the bar by Payet was well worth turning on the TV for. Rumanias move in their wrongly disallowed for offside effort was excellent too.
Run and cross was by Sissoko. The panel were saying how he really needs to show people that level of skill more often. Pogba was brilliant in the first half, and utterly ineffective second half. I think the commentators mentioned him once on the second period.
This is similar to the Champions League group stage. It should get much more exciting at the knock-out stage commencing Saturday.
Italy have 1st place sewn up. Thus, they will rest key players, especially those on yellow cards. Despite a reserve team, they will remain a tough team to beat.
Apparently Roy is doing the same, resting Rooney, Walker, Rose, (Kane and Sterling too, but dropped might be more accurate than rested for them) even though we haven't got the group sewn up.........FFS Roy, play your best team, let them get used to being on the pitch together.
Any team he puts out ought to be good enough - else why take them? I do agree though, that if he makes too many changes, it's likely to be counter-productive
Just so that you can join in with all the confusion... The following Uefa criteria will be applied to third placed teams, in this order: Points tally Goal difference Goals scored Fair play ranking in the group stage Uefa national team coefficient rankings (These are based on all competitive results since September 2010. England are ranked third overall but Republic of Ireland are 20th of the 24 finalists, Wales are 22nd and Northern Ireland 24th) please log in to view this image As it stands, this is the table (before tonight's games) please log in to view this image In a nutshell, Northern Ireland will definitely qualify if Czech Republic and Sweden both fail to win their final games. They will also finish above Albania if they don't lose to Germany by more than three goals, and if Ronaldo has another nightmare, who knows what might happen