Ok, I was the sad person who went to check this out. In fact the only match they won in 90 minutes was the semi-final against Wales. Three group matches were all drawn. Round of 16 (a.e.t.), Quarter final (penalties) and Final (a.e.t.).
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Any predictions?
Oh dear.
There going home, England's going home.
No real shame in it.... hopefully the press and the general population won't go looking for a scapegoat... it's just the first game (aside from the farce that was the Belgium game) that we've come up against a superior side, and it showed in the end.
Good match. Croatia came back into it after the break (good manager - changed things up). England should have scored another with the many chances they had in the first half. Nice to see a team avoid penalties and win in extra time by going for it.
I don't fancy them against France.
Only saw extra time due to marshalling club fell race and England were useless.
Same old over hyping of average players, by the pundits and media, who were found out the first time they met a decent team.
But never mind they will still be paraded as heroes on their return in that strange British way of celebrating losers
FiFA rankings.... the rankings that have Wales above Croatia... Poland, peru & Denmark above us... and Germany ranked no. 1.....? Weren't England top 3 at some point in the rankings recently? I wouldn't pay too much notice to the rankings.
Croatia were undoubtedly superior to us. Look at their players, particularly up front and midfield. Sprinkled around the best clubs in Europe... Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Inter Milan... they just had quality over and above us.... and once they figured out that putting a bit of pressure on our midfield, we passed it back to the defence or keeper, and a long ball up, and they could win the ball without too much effort.
Certainly no lack of 'bottle' or effort... just a bit of quality.
But football is won and lost on such small margins. Let's not forget that for the width of a crossbar in the penalty shoot-out against Colombia, we would likely have been out in the 2nd round, it would have been another "disaster" and everyone would be slating the team and manager. And on the other hand, had we gone 2-0 up last night we'd probably now be in a world cup final. It's the nature of cup football.