Howay

Same, so I'm glad they got through as it's given me someone to sort of root for in the final. Hope they smash the boring Spaniards so that this whole playing without a striker thing doesn't gain popularity. The Italians winning the whole thing would make me feel a lot less bad about England's performance in all.

Quality goal by Balotelli there.

Aye they've been really dull most the tournament tbh, someone said it best earlier in the thread when they mentioned they look more like Swansea than Barca.

Aye I want Portugal to win like.

So would Shola.

What a fucking mug.

Aye that looks canny on actually.

It must make it tough trying to make themselves look good when foreign signings have to fly into Newcastle airport to get there.

Match made in heaven tbh.

They're getting £3m a season apparently, it's not a charity funding it it's Tullow oil who are paying them to advertise this 'Invest in Africa' thing. Not sure why they think they're suddenly going to be really popular in Africa mind, just because the word Africa appears on the shirt . Edit: Didn't see the link Fish posted. Still it's bizarre how they think they'll be so popular considering their only African player is Sessegnon who's from a country with a population of under 10m. The usual suspects are bound to be the most popular as they are the best sides, why would an African pick Sunderland? when they could just pick Man utd/City

Aye I never thought Young had any chance at scoring but Cole telegraphed exactly where he was going, may as well of pointed at that corner tbh.

Aye it was ridiculous tbh, any time we'd get the ball the 1st thing was to hump the ball up the middle it hadn't worked for 90 minutes so why were they persisting in extra time.

He's canny special for someone so young to be fair, a 1 in 3 record at Inter and almost a 1 in 2 record at Man City for a 21 year old.

Ashley young is a fucking embarrassment, it was obvious the cocky bellend would take one and equally obvious he'd miss. Doesn't really make much difference both sides are shite, Germany should tear the Italians a new one.

Can't believe he's only 29!

Agreed, player of the tournament so far for England.

Aye I had a look and the 1st 4 or something were all penalties in all, suppose it means he's canny at pens.

Canny goal record when he was on loan at Feyenoord like.

Is that a profit on him? we paid £1m didn't we? I'd heard a rumour that it was Best out and Luuk De Jong in is what's intended, would be better than losing Ba by a long way.

It'll be interesting to see how Pardew fits Ben Arfa in if we hang onto Ba and get De Jong.

Walcott best start over Milner tbh, Milner's been total dogshit all tournament I guess he's being selected for his defensive attributes but he almost cost us a goal with a mental back pass to Hart (against France iirc) and he's too negative in general as Johnson offers more going forward a lot of the time. Young has been gash all Tournament too which is a surprise considering his form leading up to the tournament. Gerrard has looked like the player that used to play for Liverpool at times this tournament, Parker has been decent in spells but sometimes very frustrating with his almost complete refusal to pass the ball forward. Lescott and Terry have been solid for most of the tournament. We've also really struck lucky coming top of the group as I don't think there's much between us and Italy, we just need to put someone on Pirlo all game and try and limit his touches as when he starts controlling the games Italy look very capable of goals.

I watched the game on a yank channel and Michael Ballack brought this up (he's actually a very good pundit btw) saying it was clearly offside so they can't feel hard done by, to which the American host replied "if you just put the miscalled offside down to simply something that happens in the flow of the game, then the goal changes the game right?" Ballack looked as confused as me How are people just icing over the fact the guy that set the 'goal' up was blatantly in an offside position, not forgetting that they also had a header go narrowly over the bar when the bloke was in an offside position which the lineman also ignored about 2 minutes prior to the incident.

Utter dross so far, this is Ukraine playing well in all we should be humping these. Why can we not play a higher tempo like we did after we went 2-1 down against Sweden, I'm still not convinced that Milner is a footballer it looks like a lad that's won a raffle to take part in the game.

Think he was on about Colchester mate.

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeAZrfQnCuo[/media] I know it's only a youtube compilation, lots of his goals seem to be headers.