Pukey

He's had a very good tournament.

He's the greatest player I've ever seen and winning the world cup cements his legacy. Not that it should require it, but it really would push him further in most people's views. That's why I, and I'm assuming a lot of others, want him to win it.

I know you probably can't say 100% but might as well have a start on the discussion while we have a few days without a game. Feels like Mbappe vs Messi at this point, but who else has impressed you? Who else has a chance of being player of the tournament?

Should have been clearer, Croatia is obviously small in terms of population, Morocco small in terms of its footballing history and that kind of thing, so both "small" but in different ways.

FFS was literally just making a thread Want Argentina to win basically for Messi. Morocco or Croatia would be cool for first time winners and just with how small they are and also with Morocco an African country winning it would be pretty seismic. France winning it for the second time in a row would be pretty big too but feels like the most boring story but wouldn't begrudge them winning it, but I'd rather any of the other 3.

I think there's definitely room for a general discussion about Southgate and his overall management and whether he's the best man to keep going, but yeah last night I'm not massively upset with him at all. Are there other changes he could have made, could have made changes earlier, should he have taken Saka off? Maybe to all those, but we've seen England play so badly in these kinds of games and really go into their shell, look at Croatia 2018 and Italy last year, and this wasn't that in the slightest. As you say, this was a game of fine margins and we came out on the wrong side unfortunately.

Even winning this and then losing to Morocco would have made it easier to predict! FA are 100% not sacking him but God knows what he'll decide personally.

That's what I mean, we're not gonna get exciting football under him which would be nice, but tbf I don't think a lot of international teams do.

Ref was **** but wasn't why we lost. RE Southgate, should he go? Er, maybe? I know this is the best generation forever and you're always gonna get the idea we should win things, and well we should really, but it's international football and it's bloody hard. Performances have been dull at times yeah but I just can't have any anger towards him after last night. I think the set up was good, we played well, but unfortunately if you play good teams you can still lose. There's probably some intricacies you can discuss and see if there's things that could have been done a bit differently but overall I'm just seeing it as one of those things. Top level sport you can do a lot of things right and still lose because you're playing opposition who are very good too. I think fresh ideas could help the group but I won't be angry if he stays on either. Would be nice if we could play a bit more exciting football at times but yeah.

Big shame. Performance was decent enough overall. Oh well.

This is terrible. And even more morbid as he was tweeting during the Netherlands/Argentina game, his last tweet being about the equaliser.

We were just a couple of red cards away from this game getting its own wikipedia page

In fairness they were never gonna stay with the "smack it up front and hope for the best" tactic, but yeah, they were absolutely turgid for 80 minutes, and throughout the whole of extra time. I don't think Argentina were amazing but they were the better team by a country mile.

Dutch comeback was ace but it took them 80 minutes to have their second shot, right result overall.

More yellows!

Lautaro Martinez ain't scoring is he

His foot was on the line as it was taken

Not sure I'd want to watch Netherlands vs Croatia tbh

You might say he was beaten to the punch?

And another perfectly acceptable save that any other keeper would make

I still have absolutely no idea if the Dutch keeper is any good or not. He's made some perfectly fine saves you'd expect any keeper to make, and the goals conceded haven't been his fault.

Nope, he genuinely said "allowed"

"Holland, or the Netherlands as we're allowed to call them now" ****ing hell Keown is so bad

****ing hell

He probably thinks "both sides think I did bad, look how neutral I am!"