UEFA Euro 2016 Thread

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Ronaldo has a major international tournament win and Messi doesn't, the later going an incredible 0-3 over the last three years.

 

All of Messi's losses were in extra time or penalties, so you can only extract so much -- mainly that soccer is really hard and goals are difficult to come by in championship matches.

 

He'll always have that free kick against the US though.  That was special.

[Berlin Wall]

Griezmann was awarded player of the tournament. Here's the best team of the Euro by the UEFA:

 

The team (4-2-3-1): Rui Patrício (Portugal); Joshua Kimmich (Germany), Jérôme Boateng (Germany), Pepe (Portugal), Raphaël Guerreiro (Portugal); Toni Kroos (Germany), Joe Allen (Wales); Antoine Griezmann (France), Aaron Ramsey (Wales), Dimitri Payet (France); Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal).

[Axe]

I don't think the Final represented how great the tournament was overall. Stocking up to 24 teams in the tournament was such a great idea, and we saw more underdogs than ever before, especially with Wales, both Irelands, Hungary and my personal favourite, Iceland. 

 

I was disappointed when my Germany lost the semi-final, but when you make mistakes (Schweini...), they're going to cost you. But I was happy with how they did overall. Who knows, maybe they'll defend their world title in two years.

 

Any favourite moments for you guys?

[Crabcake]

7 hours ago, Axe said:

I don't think the Final represented how great the tournament was overall. Stocking up to 24 teams in the tournament was such a great idea, and we saw more underdogs than ever before, especially with Wales, both Irelands, Hungary and my personal favourite, Iceland. 

 

I was disappointed when my Germany lost the semi-final, but when you make mistakes (Schweini...), they're going to cost you. But I was happy with how they did overall. Who knows, maybe they'll defend their world title in two years.

 

Any favourite moments for you guys?

In all seriousness, my favorite moment may have been the Germany-Italy shootout, at least what I saw. I didn't get to watch Portugal-Hungary, unfortunately. Iceland was a great story, and Payet's goal against Romania was insane. 

[The Giant Pacific Octopus]

8 hours ago, Axe said:

Any favourite moments for you guys?

 

Watching Portugal wear those awesome minty uniforms.

 

It made me crave Chocolate-Mint ice cream.

 

I must have eaten about 20 tubs of that stuff during the tournament.

[WelshSteeler]

On 12/07/2016 at 7:05 AM, Axe said:

Any favourite moments for you guys?

As a Welshman every win was a highlight,the way we played in most games and showing that we belonged on this stage.Ramsey,Bale,Allen and Chester were outstanding and nobody will forget beating Belgium .

[Nyk33]

5 hours ago, WelshSteeler said:

As a Welshman every win was a highlight,the way we played in most games and showing that we belonged on this stage.Ramsey,Bale,Allen and Chester were outstanding and nobody will forget beating Belgium .

 

I thought you were going to say getting farther than England. 

[WelshSteeler]

18 hours ago, Nyk33 said:

 

I thought you were going to say getting farther than England. 

Nah!Even Iceland managed that!

[MJWalker45]

And somehow Belgium is still #2 in the FIFA ranking while Argentina is #1. Proof they are absolutely bogus because the top 5 stayed the same. Wales is in 11th and England is 13th so that's correct. 

[Seadragon76]

Does anyone even give a damn about the FIFA rankings? They don't mean squat!!

[Crabcake]

On July 14, 2016 at 3:44 PM, Seadragon76 said:

Does anyone even give a damn about the FIFA rankings? They don't mean squat!!

Yeah but it's fun to point and laugh at them

[MJWalker45]

http://www.newsweek.com/russias-national-football-team-disbanded-after-dismal-euro-2016-481276

 

Dubious piece of click bait, but interesting how Russia's sports minister say it's "technically" disbanded because there is no coach to pick the team yet. Get ready for 2018 England! Hahahahahaha!!!!!!

[crashcarson15]

 

On 7/14/2016 at 3:44 PM, Seadragon76 said:

Does anyone even give a damn about the FIFA rankings? They don't mean squat!!

 

When they determine seeding for qualifying groups, as they do in Europe, they mean quite a bit… see Romania being a Pot 1 side this year.

 

Because of the FIFA rankings, we have these two groups for WC qualifying…

• Romania, Denmark, Poland, Montenegro, Armenia, Kazakhstan
• Wales, Austria, Serbia, Republic of Ireland, Moldova, Georgia

While on the other end of the spectrum, we have both France and Italy as Pot 2 sides — meaning the Dutch and the French are together in one qualifying group, while the Spanish and Italians are together in another.

 

So let’s recap: Either the 2014 World Cup third-place side or the Euro 2016 runners-up will have to play a playoff to even qualify in 2018, while one team from each of those groups will qualify automatically, having never faced a world-class international side.

 

Especially in Europe, the FIFA World Rankings are far too influential, given how terrible of a measure of success they are.

[WelshSteeler]

That 3rd place team who couldn't get past Iceland,Czech Republic and Turkey in qualifying?Forgive my lack of sympathy but rankings had nothing to do with it, just being crap did! If I had my way it would be a free draw ,so what if Germany,France,Spain and Italy got drawn together?Tough! The best cup competition in the world(FA Cup) has no seeding whilst the worst (Champions League) is weighted in favour of so-called better leagues and rich teams.

[2001mark]

via FIFA:

'The basic logic of these calculations is simple: any team that does well in world football wins points which enable it to climb the world ranking. A team’s total number of points over a four-year period is determined by adding the average number of points gained from matches during the past 12 months and the average number of points gained from matches older than 12 months (depreciates yearly).'

 

Portugal didn't exactly barnstorm its way to the trophy.  

[MJWalker45]

5 hours ago, WelshSteeler said:

That 3rd place team who couldn't get past Iceland,Czech Republic and Turkey in qualifying?Forgive my lack of sympathy but rankings had nothing to do with it, just being crap did! If I had my way it would be a free draw ,so what if Germany,France,Spain and Italy got drawn together?Tough! The best cup competition in the world(FA Cup) has no seeding whilst the two worst (CONCACAF and UEFA Champions League) is weighted in favour of so-called better leagues and rich teams.

This is why I preferred the older system that looked at how teams did over a set period of time rather than a small window of games.  The Netherlands were horrendous, but I can't believe that if they were in a group with  Montenegro, Armenia, Kazakhstan or Georgia that they wouldn't absolutely dominate it. Then again, England won every game in their Euro 2016 qualifier group and only won once at Euro 2016. 

[crashcarson15]

6 hours ago, WelshSteeler said:

That 3rd place team who couldn't get past Iceland,Czech Republic and Turkey in qualifying?Forgive my lack of sympathy but rankings had nothing to do with it, just being crap did! If I had my way it would be a free draw ,so what if Germany,France,Spain and Italy got drawn together?Tough! The best cup competition in the world(FA Cup) has no seeding whilst the worst (Champions League) is weighted in favour of so-called better leagues and rich teams.

With that qualifying, absolutely! We obviously don’t play football on paper, and part of what makes it so great is when the Netherlands can’t get past Iceland, Czechia and Turkey. But it’s worth remembering that the Netherlands were the Pot 1 side, with France the Pot 2 side.

 

Anyway, I just can’t get behind your “free draw” idea. It’s one thing in a knockout tournament to decide one winner like in the FA Cup — hell, the European Cup format was better than the CL though, I’ll give you that — but when you’re trying to find the 13 best teams to send to Russia in a couple summers, the current qualifying format in UEFA is not ideal. The World Cup should feature the best 32 teams in the world (I’d prefer to see more inter-confederation playoffs, and an increase in the amount of berths CONMEBOL gets. Seriously, a top-15 team in the world rankings right now is guaranteed to miss the World Cup), which is kind of absurd, really.

 

Clearly, I’m not saying we should just send the top 10 teams automatically to Russia without making them qualifying. But when we’re trying to figure out who’ll qualify for a World Cup, the path to the final should be as equitable as it can be. That, of course, is something the current format tries to do, but because the world rankings are so miserably designed, it typically doesn’t actually turn out that way.

 

As for UEFA, I’d rather see a format that looks more like this, with the Nations League eliminated…

 

A final stage consisting of 4 groups of 8 teams. Top 16 teams qualify automatically for the final stage, 17-42 enter needing to win one home-and-home playoff, 43-54 enter needing to win two. Top three teams from each group advance to the World Cup, while there’s a single-elimination, neutral-site playoff between the four fourth-place teams to determine UEFA’s 13th place.

 

More teams per group, and more qualifying slots per group, increases the chances you get the 13 best teams. I like that.

[WelshSteeler]

For the actual amount of members it has CONMEBOL is massively over represented as it is.Maybe it's time for a Pan-American Confederation.As for this year's Euro, can anybody say with any certainty the Netherlands or any other so called "big" nation would have bettered Iceland let alone Wales?

[2001mark]

9 hours ago, crashcarson15 said:

 

Anyway, I just can’t get behind your “free draw” idea. It’s one thing in a knockout tournament to decide one winner like in the FA Cup — hell, the European Cup format was better than the CL though, I’ll give you that — but when you’re trying to find the 13 best teams to send to Russia in a couple summers, the current qualifying format in UEFA is not ideal. The World Cup should feature the best 32 teams in the world (I’d prefer to see more inter-confederation playoffs, and an increase in the amount of berths CONMEBOL gets. Seriously, a top-15 team in the world rankings right now is guaranteed to miss the World Cup), which is kind of absurd, really.

 

I'm not down for that free for all either.  Countries who perform well at tournaments &/or qualifying, should be rewarded for it.  If a minnow earns a WC top 4 for the first time ever, they should be rewarded with an easier path to the next event yes?  FIFA rankings btw are as objective as we'll ever get.  

Especially when we're talking about such a small sample size of yearly matches for each nation.

[crashcarson15]

7 hours ago, WelshSteeler said:

For the actual amount of members it has CONMEBOL is massively over represented as it is.

So you’d say Oceania should get the same number of World Cup berths as South America?

 

As it sits, we’re either missing out on Ecuador or a world-class team in Russia. There’s a significant chance Brazil won’t qualify, and it wouldn’t be because they hadn’t been one of the best 31 teams in qualifying. 

 

And I don’t get your point about this year’s Euro. The point isn’t that the Netherlands should have been guaranteed a place at the championships — clearly, they couldn’t better Iceland, that’s why they weren’t there in the first place. It’s that the FIFA World Rankings are a poorly-designed measure of team quality (the simple ELO is a better measure, which says something), and that the current qualifying format in UEFA does a subpar job of providing equitable qualifying opportunities for all member nations.