yuppie wrote:I think England have had a great tournament, one that has exceed expectations. I think Southgate has done a great job of bringing these players together and has created a team that the English public has enjoyed following.
Such a statement might be true if you were to take the pre-tournament expectations of all outcomes, and filter everything through that. Had you said a few weeks ago England would make the semis, Id probably have assumed we'd have beaten one world class team to get there. Id have been happy.
In the end, expectations were exceeded because the draw fell into place as perfectly as it probably could. We lost to Belgium in a game we did little, which actually did us a favour! If you told me at the same time that England would face Colombia without their best player, a team that had largely been outplayed by Senegal and Japan, Id have expected to win. If you told me in the Quarter Finals that we'd face Sweden, Id have expected to win. If you told me the semis was vs a Croatia team who had not beaten Denmark or Russia apart from on penalties, and who were looking to be the first team ever to win a match after too punishing 120 minute extra time performances, Id have expected to win. So did we exceed expectations when adding actual context into it? I am not sure that you can say that. I am inclined to rather harshly reflect on the fact we lost to the easiest Semi-Final opponents you could ever hope for, and became the first team to lose against a team in a major tournament asked to play that much football in so little time. And we lost in extra time, which makes it worse.
I think to reflect and re-enforce this point, I like a flutter with a bookies and currently use a Belgian one..... England were favourites with the neutral bookie in all matches. Colombia were 3/1 underdogs. Sweden the same. Croatia were 21/10 underdogs. So objectively, have we even once in this tournament beaten a team (considering penalty wins are really draws) where other neutral nations, looking at the game without bias, would expect us to lose? No.... we were underdogs v Belgium and lost. Were massive favourites in the other group games. We were favourites to beat Croatia and lost.
Can we point to any instances where we exceeded expectations in this tournament, when taking every outcome in isolation? I dont think we can.