If South Yorkshire didn't spend most of its time trying to annex Derbyshire Harry Maguire would be from the county in which he was educated and in which his brother plays.
My opinion is that outside the French England has the strongest and most exciting squad of players in this tournament. Yet, twice we've met teams in Scotland and Denmark who were far inferior in talent, but more advanced in terms of teamwork and the result was we more than struggled against both.
Goalkeeping is only our current glaring weakness. You might add not selecting our strongest team and limiting its creativity as a runner-up, but it has worked so far.
We can beat the Italians, whether we will is another matter entirely. We could even win a World Cup, specially if Spurs' new manager can resurrect Dele Alli, and our manager works out what a player like Patrick Bamford could add to a squad, so long as Nick Pope stays fit of course! Pickford on Sunday has the capacity to be either a hero, or a clown and you can't really afford that at this level.
The Italians have some very good players, but are very weak at full back. Up front Immobile is a permanent danger, Insigne must be prevented from cutting inside to fire off a shot, and my opinion is Chiesa is potentially a magic man, so we have to stop him getting the ball and limit his space throughout. And yes like the Spanish, the French and Germans, the Italians are usually bigger and better cheats than us. They'll take a dive and slot home the penalty quite happily. Doesn't make it right though, doesn't mean we should do it. And the fact we aren't as good at it as them doesn't give us the right to adopt the moral high ground.
And by the way, VAR doesn't confirm a penalty, it fails to find enough reason to overrule the original decision. So if the felled forward has actually deceptively wrapped his foot around the adjacent defender's leg as he comes in to tackle, there's contact for sure, the VAR man can't be 100% certain of the defender's innocence, so the penalty stands, because he has insufficient reason to overrule.
I want England to win, I want Chesterfield to win, I always wanted to win any game I played but I was NEVER and NEVER will be uncritical. You should be permanently seeking ways to improve, and you should never cheat the opposition, because you are then cheating yourself.
My opinion is that outside the French England has the strongest and most exciting squad of players in this tournament. Yet, twice we've met teams in Scotland and Denmark who were far inferior in talent, but more advanced in terms of teamwork and the result was we more than struggled against both.
Goalkeeping is only our current glaring weakness. You might add not selecting our strongest team and limiting its creativity as a runner-up, but it has worked so far.
We can beat the Italians, whether we will is another matter entirely. We could even win a World Cup, specially if Spurs' new manager can resurrect Dele Alli, and our manager works out what a player like Patrick Bamford could add to a squad, so long as Nick Pope stays fit of course! Pickford on Sunday has the capacity to be either a hero, or a clown and you can't really afford that at this level.
The Italians have some very good players, but are very weak at full back. Up front Immobile is a permanent danger, Insigne must be prevented from cutting inside to fire off a shot, and my opinion is Chiesa is potentially a magic man, so we have to stop him getting the ball and limit his space throughout. And yes like the Spanish, the French and Germans, the Italians are usually bigger and better cheats than us. They'll take a dive and slot home the penalty quite happily. Doesn't make it right though, doesn't mean we should do it. And the fact we aren't as good at it as them doesn't give us the right to adopt the moral high ground.
And by the way, VAR doesn't confirm a penalty, it fails to find enough reason to overrule the original decision. So if the felled forward has actually deceptively wrapped his foot around the adjacent defender's leg as he comes in to tackle, there's contact for sure, the VAR man can't be 100% certain of the defender's innocence, so the penalty stands, because he has insufficient reason to overrule.
I want England to win, I want Chesterfield to win, I always wanted to win any game I played but I was NEVER and NEVER will be uncritical. You should be permanently seeking ways to improve, and you should never cheat the opposition, because you are then cheating yourself.