England’s Woes Stretch Into More Years of Hurt

Belgium finished second best to an impressive Italy side in Group D, but subsequent annihilations of Ireland and Hungary showed that they – and particularly star player Eden Hazard – are in potentially lethal form. The Three Lions were brilliant in the qualifying stages leading up to the Euros, winning all 10 of their matches, and they had their sights on winning a major soccer tournament 50 years after their World Cup triumph.

The coach has been found wanting when it comes to the big stage of the tournaments, and an English team which qualified unbeaten for Euro 2016, horribly struggled in France as they won just one game, scrambling a last-minute victor against Wales in their group game, drew two others group matches against Russian Federation and Slovakia and were then humbled by Iceland.

I think that was half of the celebrations was because of how well Iceland have done.

As for English players, they look dazed, embarrassed, angry and full of disbelief and self-loathing as they wander the field, not quite knowing what to do or where to go.

Here’s some of the memorable images from a game that will be remembered for some time to come. And the result was one of the biggest upsets in the competition’s history, as Iceland came through with a well-deserved 2-1 victory. The victor will take on hosts France in the quarter-finals.

Commentators calling their country’s soccer matches often leads to homerism, but English announcers Ian Darke and Steve McManaman produced the absolute opposite in their ESPN2 call of England’s shocking 2-1 loss to Iceland Monday, raining some of the harshest criticism seen during this tournament both throughout and after the match. England never looked the same.

“It’s not a conscious thing, when you see things said it can help you, we don’t need to know if we’re favourites or not for the quarter-final”.

“The pressure was always so much more on England”.

In the wake of arguably England’s most embarrassing footballing failure, Roy Hodgson has already stepped down from his role as head coach after recording just three wins in his three tournaments as England boss.

Iceland’s co-coach Heimir Hallgrimsson says French swimmer Yannick Agnel’s promise to swim around the Nordic island if the minnows win Euro 2016 would be chilly business.

Let’s get to the fans side of it now as well.

“We’ve come across them [Belgium] a few times”.

However a defiant Mr Corbyn is refusing to bow to “a corridor coup” despite losing around 40 members of his front bench team in just two days. Meanwhile, England fans will have to stew on this for two whole years before getting a chance to avenge this lackluster performance at the 2018 World Cup, if they qualify. We have a far deeper squad of players than Iceland have to select from and should be coasting through games like this.

Yet to stand any chance of getting called up to the Iceland squad, he says he must leave the Icelandic league.