UCD’S EUROPEAN ADVENTURE continued this evening as they faced Slovan Bratislava in Slovakia and the League of Ireland side held their own in an entertaining contest.
Unfortunately a late goal eventually broke the Students’ resistance but it’s still all to play for.
The hosts were reduced to 10 men in the first-half when Nicolas Gorosito attempted to retrieve a ball that just got away from him and, as is so often the case, overstretched and committed a horrendous tackle.
The midfielder came flying into the challenge and caught Robbie Benson so high that thankfully there was no lasting damage.
We’re not sure the referee had too much choice with this one:
I live in England. Watched the game in a packed pub. They cheered and sung football’s coming home and then went about their business. I can honestly say the fans are not getting carried away. The media, they just can’t help themselves.
Also possible that they’ve just had a very kind run of fixtures.
@Sean Moore: they have had a nice run of fixtures but why would anyone care.
@Sean Moore: hasn’t stopped England getting knocked out in the past which is kind of the point.
Like them or not the the English football league is arguably the best football league in the world what’s surprising is that it’s been 28 years since their last semi final on the world cup
@Jim: it’s still a technically inferior and grossly overated domestic league in my opinion, but a very well drilled and organised current national team.
@Jim: It is a good league but its not down to English players, italian; spanish, dutch, french etc, make it the league it is
j
No way they’ll beat Croatia
@Cathal: Ir France. Or Belgium.
Its not coming home. Finito.
Everyone seems to know he score we’ve seen this all before England gonna throw it away.
Good luck to them- playing as a team no egos.
Unlike Slippy, Rio, Carra, JT et al. They are all the experts now. No wonder Scholes walked away .
Englands golden generation failed due to previous coaches believing they could play other teams off the park with attacking football. This was a huge mistake. The likes of Beckham, Gerrard and Lampard were all amazing players but never had the technical ability to to play the tika taka of Spain or the disciplined attacking tactics of say Germany. Southgate has been brilliant as he has done a Mourinho where he has made them ultra defensive while also picking lesser names based on their speed, energy and work rate over their reputation so you have players like Lingard, Delph, Loftus-Cheek, Pickford getting chosen ahead of Jack Wilshire, Rooney, Walcott, Hart etc.
I’ve no doubt England’s golden generation would have cruised to WC semi finals also had a manager like Mourinho been in charge.