Game 39 : England vs Slovakia

It was a free-kick not open play, there is no threat of being caught because of pressing if Walker and Stones are switched on. You want the keeper where Pickford was because in that situation it helps beat the press by giving you an extra passing option.

And it debatable if Foden was better than Mainoo. The stats certainly don't suggest so, Mainoo had more touches, more passes, more successful passes (96% to 83%), more shots, more duels, more duels won, lost possession less, had more dribbles and more successful dribbles. The only thing Foden has done better in was number of crosses but only 2 of his 11 were successful so thats hardly a great stat. Mainoo was also always showing for the ball and most importantly in the position's that worked for the system, when Foden was showing for the ball it was in narrow positions which largely allowed Slovakias wide players to tuck in which took away all the space made it easier for Slovakia to press when Foden (or anyone else) got the ball there are there was very little outlet. I like Foden as a player but Pep turns players into somewhat Robots and as such he doesn't fit this system as England don't play pepball, we don't really have the players or the time to drill them even if Southgate wanted to. You might be able to get a game out of him if you play him in Bellinghams role but you are wasting Bellingham who is our best player as he isn't really a number 8

 

@Euro24

 

Yeah you are right. I don't get enough chance to test the extra time code as obviously most games don't goto extra time and there was a small error. Has been updated correctly and will show up in the overall table when its published after the pain game

 

Was the combo of extra time and how late Bellingham scored. It thought a 95th min goal was scored in extra time so treated the full-time score as it as 0-1 rather than 1-1. I've had to add some extra validation checks so it shouldn't be an issue in future

 

The result and score are based on 90mins only. You went for an England 3-0 win so you got zero points for that. Goal scorers in extra time do get points but half of what they get in normal time. So you got 0.5 points for Kane scoring.

Hope that clears it up

 

It's something he has done a few times for Real so his 'in joke with friends' makes sense rather than it being a disrespectful gesture to the Slovakian bench as some are claiming

 

I didn't say you were but social media certainly was when it happened which caused it to blow up and for the media to jump on it