Can't believe this team can get to the semis! If Roy plays the right team we can bet Italy playing rubbish football
Why on earth wouldn't we get to the quarter finals, do people still not get that 2 teams in 90% of champs league groups, euro groups, europa groups, World cup group stages are ****, somewhere between meh and complete gash. First knock out stage is the bare minimum any HALF DECENT team should expect, its as simple as that.
This "it will be a miracle to get out of the group stages" mentality is insane, it happens with every competition then people act surprised that a average England side can beat two awful sides and qualify for the knockout stages. Beating a decent side would be impressive and unexpected, we haven't faced a half decent side yet.
hell England fans express the same surprise when we get into a competition by beating some truly awful sides in the qualifiers, I'll point out that Ireland qualified for the Euro's and were rightfully battered. Sweden and Ukraine aren't far ahead of Ireland and are miles behind the top teams.
Italy are better than I would have thought, as they've been god awful for a long time now. They got battered in the first knock out stages at the last Euro's after getting 4 points in a group with Romania and that god awful France in, and they came rock bottom in the World cup behind New Zealand.
We can and maybe should beat Italy, who outside of drawing with a side with no strikers haven't done a whole hell of a lot in this competition so far.
Beating Italy would be decent but not mindblowing, beating Germany would be a freaking miracle, if Greece fluke a win against Germany I'd put money on us to beat Greece. If we then beat anyone in the final I'd be shocked.
There are only two top teams in the tournament, full stop, Spain and Germany. It's not surprising if Spurs beat Blackburn and Villa, but lose to Utd and City... that is the situation we're in right now. England are well above most teams in the world because most teams are meh, international football is no where near prem league/la liga in quality. But beating Villa doesn't make you capable of beating Utd, I fully expect in most cases for England/Spurs to be able to get to a stage and beat teams up to Czech/Everton, but look out of their depth against the top 2-3 teams.