Euro 2016

[The Lusophone]

I mean he's got a point. After Iceland got their goal they weren't exactly adventurous...

[GoN_]

Yeah, it is normal for Iceland fans to be happy for their draw, but Ronaldo is kinda right. A team that shoots twice at goal in an hour of a group stage match will hardly achieve anything. Even the 2004 Greek team would try harder to win the damn match.

[TCO]

So they're supposed to attack the better side and expose themselves to conceding again, just because super Ronaldo says so?

Fuck that. It's a game of strategy and Iceland's worked. Not every country can go attack and play good football. You make the best with what you have and Iceland did exactly that.

Achievements are relative and they've already achieved a lot last night. I'd suggest golden boy should practice his free kicks more and accept teams aren't going to roll over and expose themselves 

[GoN_]

3 minutes ago, TCO said:

So they're supposed to attack the better side and expose themselves to conceding again, just because super Ronaldo says so?

Fuck that. It's a game of strategy and Iceland's worked. Not every country can go attack and play good football. You make the best with what you have and Iceland did exactly that.

Achievements are relative and they've already achieved a lot last night. I'd suggest golden boy should practice his free kicks more and accept teams aren't going to roll over and expose themselves 

They were losing 1-0 and still parking the bus. It is not because Ronaldo said so, it is just common sense. You play like that and you lose 1 out of 10 times. I think the problem here is just with who said it, because if it was somebody else, nobody would get that worked up about it.

[Colly]

It's bullshit regardless of who said it, and should always be immediately followed by that clip of Big Sam laughing at Mourinho. I'm on a train with rubbish data so I'll let someone else do the honours.

[Baddar]

If Iceland park the bus in their remaining games and go out, then, and only then, will his point carry any kind of weight. Nothing wrong with playing negatively against the Group favourites and taking a chance in the remaining fixtures.

[Colly]

The other point to make is that it wasn't as if Portugal did anything remotely of note, in the second half they were winning corners and putting about four players in the box despite Iceland not having a single man in their half. It's not as if the keeper had much to do and Iceland had the clearest chance for a winner with about 3 minutes to go. They're now sat in second (alphabetically...) having played the strongest team in the group already.

[GoN_]

I have no problem with a team having some kind of advantage and parking the bus (I enjoyed the hell out of Inter and Chelsea wins over Barcelona in the Champions League).  I do have a problem with a team that is losing and doing jack shit to turn it around. Yes it worked, because Portugal's defense was rubbish and conceded in Iceland's first attempt to attack since Portugal scored, but if you can't see how that will be a problem if they try to replicate it against Austria and Hungary than one of us is completely missing the point of how the game works. Maybe it's me. 

[Jimmy]

It is

Their tactics worked -- they didn't expose themselves when they were 1-0 down and they equalised and made it 1-1. That's not even a small team mentality, it shows some kind of maturity to be patient and confident enough that you can get back into the game when the chance presents itself. The comments are completely disrespectful to Iceland and Ronaldo comes off as a petulant child for making them. 

 

[MDK]

Something like a tenth of Iceland's population was in the stadium. 

[Lineker]

3%.

Ronaldo really is such a cunt. He apparently refused to shake some of the  Icelandic players' hands. Awful.

[Just Joe]

1 hour ago, GoN_ said:

I have no problem with a team having some kind of advantage and parking the bus (I enjoyed the hell out of Inter and Chelsea wins over Barcelona in the Champions League).  I do have a problem with a team that is losing and doing jack shit to turn it around. Yes it worked, because Portugal's defense was rubbish and conceded in Iceland's first attempt to attack since Portugal scored, but if you can't see how that will be a problem if they try to replicate it against Austria and Hungary than one of us is completely missing the point of how the game works. Maybe it's me. 

They beat Turkey 3-0 and Czech Republic 2-1 in Qualifying, I doubt they'll approach those games the same way rhey did against Portugal.

[GoN_]

So, Ronaldo is right... They will have to have a different approach/mentality if they want to achieve anything out of this tournament other than getting a point.

[Just Joe]

And for Portugal to have any chance of achieving something at International Level he will have to actually put the effort in and not expect the "smaller" teams to just roll over for him. This isn't La Liga.

[Adam]

Ronaldo is an arsehole and anyone trying to defend him by saying Iceland shouldn't have played the way they did is plain wrong. They set out a strategy, one that worked perfectly. One of the biggest managers in world football has been known to employ this tactic at times and he is also Portuguese.

Iceland deserved their draw, they defended excellently throughout the game and nullified a lot of the Portuguese threat. Ronaldo had a poor game, behaved like a petulant twat at the end and his comments afterwards are disrespectful and unfair. He has a divine right to nothing and I hope his poxy team get knocked out sharpish.

@GoN_, on your last post, Ronaldo is not right. You set out differently to play against different sides. This isn't FIFA 16. Iceland will obviously need to employ different tactics against a skillfully superior, quick-paced team like Portugal than they will against Hungary. That is obvious, it's Football 101.

[GoN_]

Because he wasn't scoring a butt-load of goals in the Premier League before leaving...

But yes, he has been underachieving for the National Team and has been showing that he is not a good team captain. His attitude yesterday was god awful during the match. But our problem is far from being just Ronaldo. We defended really poorly through the whole match. Only Guerreiro seemed to know what he was doing, which is worrying when we see that we have two really experienced center backs like Carvalho and Pepe (Pepe really seemed lost in defense yesterday).

I believe we will go through (even if we go as one of the third placed teams), but we if don't get our shit straight we will be out before the quarter-finals.

[Moses Julep]

Instead of complaining about Iceland, Portugal should look at their own repetitive and useless tactics.

[Nerf]

No idea how anyone associated with Portugal can dare moan when their only tactic was literally "how quickly can I get the ball to Ronaldo?"

[TCO]

2 hours ago, GoN_ said:

I have no problem with a team having some kind of advantage and parking the bus (I enjoyed the hell out of Inter and Chelsea wins over Barcelona in the Champions League).  I do have a problem with a team that is losing and doing jack shit to turn it around. Yes it worked, because Portugal's defense was rubbish and conceded in Iceland's first attempt to attack since Portugal scored, but if you can't see how that will be a problem if they try to replicate it against Austria and Hungary than one of us is completely missing the point of how the game works. Maybe it's me. 

It's not just you...

Edited June 15, 2016 by TCO

[GoN_]

7 minutes ago, Adam said:

Ronaldo is an arsehole and anyone trying to defend him by saying Iceland shouldn't have played the way they did is plain wrong. They set out a strategy, one that worked perfectly. One of the biggest managers in world football has been known to employ this tactic at times and he is also Portuguese.

Iceland deserved their draw, they defended excellently throughout the game and nullified a lot of the Portuguese threat. Ronaldo had a poor game, behaved like a petulant twat at the end and his comments afterwards are disrespectful and unfair. He has a divine right to nothing and I hope his poxy team get knocked out sharpish.

@GoN_, on your last post, Ronaldo is not right. You set out differently to play against different sides. This isn't FIFA 16. Iceland will obviously need to employ different tactics against a skillfully superior, quick-paced team like Portugal than they will against Hungary. That is obvious, it's Football 101.

Either it's the language barrier or we are understanding his words in a completely different way. This is the quote I got:

 

"When they don't try to play and just defend, defend, defend this in my opinion shows a small mentality and are not going to do anything in the competition."

 

If you tell me that they will have to play differently against other teams you are completely proving his point. They can't keep playing this way or they will be out really soon.

And you can't compare a team that stayed at the back even when they were behind to what Mourinho does. That's just dishonest. He defends when he actually has something to defend. And yet, I also think that he has been overdoing his defensive approach too much. 

 

1 minute ago, Moses Julep said:

Instead of complaining about Iceland, Portugal should look at their own repetitive and useless tactics.

 

Repetitive? We just changed our tactics for our last few matches. We stopped trying to play with a clear striker (because we have no one who can do it well) and just put Ronaldo and Nani/Quaresma open up front. We are much closer to a 4-4-2 with the two upfront playing wide, rather than the 4-3-3 that we had been using for the past 15 or so years. There was a lot of underperforming on our midfield and a lack of defensive organization.