England vs Croatia

[Airborn Pie]

I don't know if it is just me nit picking but the Croatian chap that scored the winner, wasn't his foot a little high.
I'm sure that anywhere else on the pitch and he would have been penalised for dangerous play.
His boot was head high, and I have seen players sent off for similar offences.
i'm not using this as an excuse because I thought we lacked creativity in the final third anyway.
The ref was consistent throughout.....consistently awful. Books a player for holding on to a ball that he thought was his, and then lets GBH pass him by. Crazy

Agree totally, was watching on an Iphone in Vienna airport so not the best view but it looked a 'foot up' challenge to me for sure.

[seriouspie]

I reckon he's been carrying an injury for a while, and they've kept quiet about it.

The plain truth is he's not a good enough footballer to trouble the better teams. He's probably the best we've got and deserves his pick - but true world class ...........never in a month of Sunday's as yet.

[the_anticlough]

We know Croatia bossed it from the second half on, but for me there was a clear turning point that influenced the result - Kyle Walker losing his mind time-wasting and getting booked. The way he did it! Like a macaque scarpering off after nicking a kid's ice-cream. It just didn't look right. He seemed to go to pieces after that, and it sent a bad message to everyone on the pitch - England are scared, nervous as hell and want the game to be over.

Maybe everyone else watching was thinking take him off now and bring on Jones so not to risk a sending off. But oh no. one player's feelings were more important than the country's one and only chance of making the WCFinal. And he seemed to lose it completely after that, everything he was involved in was a potential disaster including some terrible back passes. Jones would have got his head to Perisic's goal and done better at clearing in the run up to the winner. Croatia were the better team, but I think this was the point when a winning position turned into a losing one.

[Elite_Pie]

We know Croatia bossed it from the second half on, but for me there was a clear turning point that influenced the result - Kyle Walker losing his mind time-wasting and getting booked. The way he did it! Like a macaque scarpering off after nicking a kid's ice-cream. It just didn't look right. He seemed to go to pieces after that, and it sent a bad message to everyone on the pitch - England are scared, nervous as hell and want the game to be over.

I think you're probably close to the mark there. I was asking as soon as Walker was quite correctly booked how anyone could be naive enough to put a possible World Cup final appearance in doubt through such an incredibly stupid and pointless booking. It meant he was one slightly mistimed tackle away from a ban, and I don't suppose we'll ever know if it affected his thinking afterwards.

[the_anticlough]

I think you're probably close to the mark there. I was asking as soon as Walker was quite correctly booked how anyone could be naive enough to put a possible World Cup final appearance in doubt through such an incredibly stupid and pointless booking. It meant he was one slightly mistimed tackle away from a ban, and I don't suppose we'll ever know if it affected his thinking afterwards.

Yes, but we can guess that it didn't help. He had a good world cup overall, but both in the opening game and later in the semi he seemed to be jittery and suffering from nerves. No shame in that, but it tends to be infectious. I doubt the yellow card helped. That's where I like managers such as Mourinho, who have no qualms about subbing anyone anytime. Wish Southgate had taken him off soon after the yellow. Wonders of hindsight...

[LaxtonLad]

Just to shove my view forward and somebody else might have said this before but I can't be bothered to plough through over 100 other posts to check.

In my opinion both Kane and Ali were carrying knocks and should not have started the game.

Several of the others who played were frightened.

That's it.