England have been knocked out of the Euro 2016 tournament by a country that has more volcanoes than professional football players. It was definitely a shock victory by the Icelandic national team, but I think they were well worth the win; they contained the English and defended their lead like warriors.
In the immediate aftermath of the defeat in Nice, France; England manager Roy Hodgson tendered his resignation. I guess Hodgson chose to walk before he was pushed, his position was untenable after the defeat by the Icelandic national team and was sure to be fired as soon as he landed back in England.
So the performance, it was lackluster at best, England’s only goal came from the penalty spot after a silly mistake from Iceland’s goalkeeper, Hannes Halldórsson. Iceland, almost immediately equalized and frankly caught England napping, I said before the match England will be punished if they underestimate the Icelandic team. Then a calamitous fumble from Joe Hart gave the lead to Iceland in the 18th minute.
England never really looked like scoring an equalizer; Iceland looked comfortable in defence of their lead. Infact Iceland looked more likely to score a third or even fourth goal than England equalizing, but England keeper Joe Hart redeemed himself somewhat making a couple of impressive saves to deny Iceland.
All credit to Iceland, for a country with just 330,000 people and only a handful of professional footballers, defeating England in such a convincing manner is a testament to their players work ethic and ability. England on the otehr hand, looked like a bunch of amateurs who had no clue of how to attack a team 23 places below them in the world rankings; a truly sad day for English football as a whole.
Where do England go from here? obviously a new manager is needed; we’ve tried foreign managers, we’ve tried English managers, all have failed. Time for an inquest into English football as a whole, the Premier League is the richest league in the world and this performance is what we have to show for it?
Clearly, it’s not just management; the players have been poor, Wayne Rooney could not hit a good cross or pass for shit. Harry Kane looked more likely to hit the corner flag than the goal. The only shining light I could see was Marcus Rashford, who only got to play a few minutes at the end of the game. He actually ran at the Icelandic defence and caused problems; you have to question why he was not on earlier.
