SEE YOU! A brand spanking new modern fitba thread 2025-2026

Urgh. The only answer is more pints, games of pool and a decent scran before bed. Useless bastards.

MTF

 

I genuinely feel sorry. 10 years ago I might have revelled in this. I go walking on these very warm nights and it's been so nice to see the flags and the people. Argentina is a shithouse with a shit house president. Things aren't too much better here but they're better. I backed England with £50. Not the £100 I said I would but I still back them.

Never dreamed of cashing it out. Was sure they wouldnt blow it but it was there in my mind from the Mexico game.

 

Couldn't agree more



MTF

 

Yup



MTF

 

It might work with Bellingham and younger guys but not older guys.

 

Sutton is right. England dropped Argentina then went to the ropes. Madness. They were badly lead.

 

Awful. Literally, don't think they had a shot on target up to Gordon scoring, then they emptied the bench of defenders and hid around the 18 yrd line. Absolute madness - they had the match by the balls then had a wank in the toilets.

MTF

 

Then bin them. Serial losers and bottlers to a man.

MTF

 

Yes but you can send a guy out to lose. Why did Arteta get a turn out of Rice?

 

Rice is a decent player, but at Arse he isn't sat with another five-yard-pass merchant outside the edge of his own box pinging eight yard balls to John Stones.

MTF

 

Baddiel is correct. If you treat a Grand National winner like a donkey he'll bray and kick like a donkey.

 

10 years ago I'd have been scouring the net for opinion and revelling in the post mortems

But today it's all so fucking familiar.

 

What is Bellingham doing smacking people in the head after the game? What does this achieve? Who is learning these guys?

 

After the Croatia group stage match, the one thing I thought was "if we go out of this thing we are going to throw everything at it and we will not be left wondering what might have been".

Now I'm left wondering what might have been and I feel like a cunt.

 

It's all so familiar. You lurch from being anxious that somebody on the titanic might be eating off better plates to realising that you're all gonna fucking freeze to death in an hour.

One minute it's like Bellingham getting too much credit, the next you're feeling sorry for him.

I think there's something wrong at a fundamental level with the place. It's like failure is expected and almost welcomed.

Sutton, Baddiel, Feebles can't all be saying the same thing by accident.

Rots from the head down as it were.

 

Yes. I really think that had England played Argentina in the group that England would have won. Or not been beaten.

There's something very very wrong in the nations mindset. I think self-belief is gone. Fatalism has set in.

I don't want to be too melodramatic. But it's beyond mere "substitutions" etc..

 

Each setback begets the next. There needs to be some sort of moment of reckoning. Line in the sand. "Henceforth we win or lose by 5 trying". I don't know. I'm not Nelson.

 

The look on Bellingham's face after Fernandez's goal toldya everything you need to know. They knew right there and then it was over. The mentality wasnt "Its 1-1, now we gotta fuckin game." The body language of the entire squad was immediate capitulation.

 

I said it before. In 1996, in the era of Keegan etc, we were 3-5-2 in extra time status a very good German side and near won it (Anderton FFS), near lost it (soft foul from a corner) then near won it (Gazza, too pissed to move properly), then lost it.

We went for it. No regrets, no shite... Everything on the line.

We've not done it since. Every time since 1996 we've shrivelled into our foreskin and waited to get beat. And we've gotten beat.

I don't mind losing. I hate it, but you can accept it. But we're footballs greatest cowards. And I'm sick of it. Go out on your shield, fine, but shit your pants and hide... Fuck off.

MTF

 

Welcome to Ingerland.

MTF

 

Glorious failure in England is fine. I remember Dietmar Harman taking about Gazza in 1990, saying that in Germany, if they'd a player crying and bottling a penalty like he did, they'd crucify him. We made him a national hero.

Levels.

MTF

 

Guardian rating for Bellingham? 6/10.

 

Gazza didn't miss though. Waddle did. You're confusing bad Geordies.

 

Anyways, please, Spain, win this fucking thing now.

 

I trace it all back to 1996. I've said it before and say it again: Keegan's Newcastle were a fanny hair away from changing the way the England played football. Venebales went 3-5-2 in the Euros that same year. They both failed, gloriously, and that style was considered a failure.

That's the English way, and it's been lost.

MTF

 

Gazza was one of the designated penalty takers (put two in Euro 96) but his head was so fucked that Waddle ended up taking one while Gazza sat in the centre circle, crying like a daft cunt. That was the point - in any other country who are serious about things, he man's up for the team and puts the ball in the hole (see Keane, Turin, 1999).

MTF

 

Aye was gonna say, I think Gazza was 100% from the spot for England.

 

Same. I'm so glad the broadcasts i've watched throughout this one have had none.

Just go back to the Norway goal that was disallowed. If England scored and it was Kane who did the push the narrative would have been "never a pen" followed by something about how it's commonplace in the EPL and no ref calls it.

 

A German sabotaged England so that Latin Germany could win. Color me shocked.

 

If it makes you feel any better Germany lost only for the second time on penalties against fucking Paraguay. Talk about a shithouse team.

What's much worse is I heard that some players refused to take a penalty. Fuck that kind of cowardice. Kicking a ball into a net? Isn't that what you get paid to do?

With that mentality they were never going to win anything even if they edged that game.