On Second thoughts: England 4 Holland 1

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/02/15/on_second_thoughts_england_41.html

Got to say he may have a point. Hard to remember alot of the game except the goals.

Yeah, its true. It was a good performance because of the finishing, but both sides played some good stuff.

Irony is we were better against the Dutch in qualifying at Wembley in 1993 when we drew 2-2 after being 2-0 up.

Thats football for you - as one of the comments underneath points out, England have played better in a number of other games and gone onto lose or draw, so when the dice does roll for you, you take it without complaints.

Senor Woody wrote:Yeah, its true. It was a good performance because of the finishing, but both sides played some good stuff.

Irony is we were better against the Dutch in qualifying at Wembley in 1993 when we drew 2-2 after being 2-0 up.

Thats football for you - as one of the comments underneath points out, England have played better in a number of other games and gone onto lose or draw, so when the dice does roll for you, you take it without complaints.

Your only a year older than me, how can you remember a game in detail from back then?!

Agree with you on the last point, its just lovely when the games that roll for you are important one's in tournaments or against rivals.

Interesting article. I don't remember a great deal about the match aside from the goals now. In many respects the same can be said of the whole tournament (from an English perspective). It can be easy to think of Euro 96 as a glorious tournament, where England played well and were only denied on penalties by the Germans, yet we were poor against Scotland and Switzerland and very lucky against Spain. To be honest though, there aren't many performances to savour with England, so I'd rather stick with my current, favourable impressions of the Holland game than revisit it and be disappointed.

Apart from the Germany 5-1 the best England performance I can remember is the game against Argentina at the 2002 World cup (I know we beat them more recently and played well but that was a friendly). Really thought we played well that day.

There's no games from Euro 2000, 2004 or World cup 2006 I can remember with much pride to be honest.

Parks lives wrote:

Senor Woody wrote:Yeah, its true. It was a good performance because of the finishing, but both sides played some good stuff.

Irony is we were better against the Dutch in qualifying at Wembley in 1993 when we drew 2-2 after being 2-0 up.

Thats football for you - as one of the comments underneath points out, England have played better in a number of other games and gone onto lose or draw, so when the dice does roll for you, you take it without complaints.

Your only a year older than me, how can you remember a game in detail from back then?!

Agree with you on the last point, its just lovely when the games that roll for you are important one's in tournaments or against rivals.

I was 13, football mad, so hardly like dredging up a forgotten memory. I still remember it pretty well. We were very unlucky that day. Maybe over time the rose tinted glasses have come on slightly, but as far as I can remember we deserved to win that game fairly comfortably. Des Walker had a 'mare.

We certainly played better against the Argies in 1998 than we did against the Dutch in 1996 and still lost

Parks lives wrote:Apart from the Germany 5-1 the best England performance I can remember is the game against Argentina at the 2002 World cup (I know we beat them more recently and played well but that was a friendly). Really thought we played well that day.

There's no games from Euro 2000, 2004 or World cup 2006 I can remember with much pride to be honest.

Croatia game in 2004 was a good one - we made them look ordinary after a disastrous start. 4-2 it was that day. We played very well. Rooney was on another level

Senor Woody wrote:

Parks lives wrote:Apart from the Germany 5-1 the best England performance I can remember is the game against Argentina at the 2002 World cup (I know we beat them more recently and played well but that was a friendly). Really thought we played well that day.

There's no games from Euro 2000, 2004 or World cup 2006 I can remember with much pride to be honest.

Croatia game in 2004 was a good one - we made them look ordinary after a disastrous start. 4-2 it was that day. We played very well. Rooney was on another level

Yeah, we did play well, Is that not more Croatia being a bad side at the time though?

Argentina in 2002 were the heavy favourites.

Parks lives wrote:

Senor Woody wrote:

Parks lives wrote:Apart from the Germany 5-1 the best England performance I can remember is the game against Argentina at the 2002 World cup (I know we beat them more recently and played well but that was a friendly). Really thought we played well that day.

There's no games from Euro 2000, 2004 or World cup 2006 I can remember with much pride to be honest.

Croatia game in 2004 was a good one - we made them look ordinary after a disastrous start. 4-2 it was that day. We played very well. Rooney was on another level

Yeah, we did play well, Is that not more Croatia being a bad side at the time though?

Argentina in 2002 were the heavy favourites.

Croatia were only bad because us and France made them look bad in that group.

Argentina result was more impressive due to their status, but then again they had a dreadful World Cup so could equally be pessimistic about that result.

It is quite possible to pick holes in every past result if we try hard enough.

Perhaps we should ask which has been the most EXCITING. For me, the 2-2 in 1998 outdoes them all. An incredible game of footballl; I almost wee'd a little at a number of points

Senor Woody wrote:the 2-2 in 1998 outdoes them all. An incredible game of footballl; I almost wee'd a little at a number of points

that game had it all - a microcosm of the England football fan experience, nerves, excitement, controversy, grit, determination, team and individual excellence and ultimately bitter, bitter disappointment

Senor Woody wrote:
Perhaps we should ask which has been the most EXCITING. For me, the 2-2 in 1998 outdoes them all. An incredible game of footballl; I almost wee'd a little at a number of points

In terms of excitement, the Portugal game in 2004 comes close. I really thought I was about to have a heart attack at one point.

My hate for Lampard is well known but when his goal went in I completely lost it.

Same as I did when Campbell's was ruled out.

When Campbell Scored against the Argies I started crying with joy. Thats how emotionally charged that game was by that point. A frenzy of emotion. When it was ruled out I just carried on crying for all the wrong reasons.

Best game of football I've ever seen internationally for me personally.

Portugal game- I knew from the start we were going to lose so whilst it was an exciting game, I had resigned myself to the fate of losing once Rooney had gone off.

I firmly believed we could, and should, have beaten the Argies in 1998. Games vs Argentina >> Germany in my opinion; we always play well against them, even in '86

I was very young at WC 1990. The most exciting WC I've seen from an English perspective was certainly 1998. We had a very good group and scored some cracking goals - remember Darren Anderton's and Beckham's - as well as Owen's first goal.

The Argentina - England game was an adsolute classic though - it had everything

One thing you can never accuse England of is being boring.

Shite, one dimensional and lacking in technique, maybe. Boring, never.

giving the inventors of Total Football a lesson in their own concept.

No offence but even the Dutch team that won Euro 88 did not play Total Football infact since the mid 70's no team has. The inventors were Ajax not Holland. Even though Michel’s introduced some aspects of the game into his 1974 team. Seriously.

Tweedle wrote:
The Argentina - England game was an adsolute classic though - it had everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06AkZvjgxU

Ronaldo's free kick doesn't even come close to the simple brilliance of the Argentine goal on half time.

Think it's a really, really good piece from the smug self-congratulatory git that is Mr Smyth. I remember being bewildered at the scoreline and thinking "were England REALLY that good, were Holland bad, bit of both?" – it was certainly a bit of a freak.

Agree totally with everyone about the 2-2 Argentina game. Missed the first half and made sure I could watch it again in a sober setting, but did conclude Argentina shaded it in footballing terms. Beckham and Owen were England's best players in the first half, impressive rearguard action by the English (Ince lucky not to get sent off for a second yellow I remember) but the result was no more unfair than it was cruel. Owen's and Zanetti's goals – amazing.

Dwarf wrote:

Tweedle wrote:
The Argentina - England game was an adsolute classic though - it had everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06AkZvjgxU

Ronaldo's free kick doesn't even come close to the simple brilliance of the Argentine goal on half time.

I raise you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnRRw5Lko2E

How can you write an article about that match and *still fail* to mention a very important factor for the outcome :

Holland could afford to lose that match by three goals and still go through...we never took that match seriously (and in typical Dutch style almost came to rue it).

Nickyd should get a medal for most brilliant comment btw :

Why would you decide now to go back to a game that happened nearly 12 years ago and try and squash one of my precious few (if slightly distorted) England memory highlights??

Why?? WHY???

I want to be the one who tells your kids there's no Santa!!!

Axeslammer wrote:
Nickyd should get a medal for most brilliant comment btw :

Why would you decide now to go back to a game that happened nearly 12 years ago and try and squash one of my precious few (if slightly distorted) England memory highlights??

Why?? WHY???

I want to be the one who tells your kids there's no Santa!!!

Parks lives wrote:One thing you can never accuse England of is being boring.

Shite, one dimensional and lacking in technique, maybe. Boring, never.

er, world cup 2006?

debaser wrote:

Parks lives wrote:One thing you can never accuse England of is being boring.

Shite, one dimensional and lacking in technique, maybe. Boring, never.

er, world cup 2006?

They managed to convince the whole world Cristiano Ronaldo was the worst person alive. In 2004 they managed convince the tabloid media that Urs Meier was the sole reason we went out.

2002 was the real bore, we went out to the team everybody expected us to lose to while every other major european nation, other than Germany, was contriving to out do each other when it came to odd losses.

There's loads of brilliant comments on that article :

Next week why Brazil '70 were actualy shite!

=====

hang on a sec let's get this straight. when england miss chances and go on to lose a game its down to england's lack of quality and when another team misses chances and go's on to lose its down to...erm...england's lack of quality!

as a proud welshman i never thought id say this but do u not think ur being a little too harsh on yourselves??

Dwarf wrote:

They managed to convince the whole world Cristiano Ronaldo was the worst person alive.

The cheating diving c**t did that all by himself, he didn't need any English help at all for that

debaser wrote:

Parks lives wrote:One thing you can never accuse England of is being boring.

Shite, one dimensional and lacking in technique, maybe. Boring, never.

er, world cup 2006?

You don't think the game vs Portugal was enthralling?