WE LOST!

[Marcus]

For christ sake it's only a game.

I for one am delighted that England are out as maybe we can get back to normal schedules.

[Martin]

Removed

Let's be quite clear here.

I'm not going to tolerate blatantly bigoted remarks towards another country.

We're here to talk about the game, not slag off the winning team’s country in an unimaginative way.

[rob]

All because of that fucking referee. I hope someone skins him alive.

Fucking bastard, he should have given free kicks in places, and he did not, the goal by Sol Campbell should have been allowed, it was not, and the other goal should have been used for the penalties due to the disintegrating pitch where they were, it was not.

Absolute fucking disgrace, UEFA has better review the match and dismiss that fucking referee, and hopefully someone will put a fist through his head tonight.

Too right intheknow. Urs Meier ought to be shot for that big mistake. Fair play to England though, they did their best, and in the end, it wasn't good enough.

[johnnyboy]

Isn't football a poor excuse for "racial unity"?

I can think of a million better ways that all the races can "unite"

Find me one way as mass populist and as mass participation as the national football team.

You don't pull the legs off spiders for fun, do you?

[Neil Jones]

Yes, I am very drunk, and acting as quite a tit this evening.

In which case, I shall expect the following words in the correct order from you in a PM:

last, about, I, night, I, Neil, apologise, what, said, for, you.

Although I don't hold out much hope.

[Dr Lobster*]

dr sigmund mohammad's advice for the day:

if you have low expectations, you can never be disappointed. as far as i'm concerned, we won. we got here in the first place, which is plenty farther than many other nations, and lets face it, we're crap at most sports on an international level anyway, so this whole sequence of events should not come as a suprise.

[cdd]

Isn't football a poor excuse for "racial unity"?

I can think of a million better ways that all the races can "unite"

Find me one way as mass populist and as mass participation as the national football team.

Campaign for world peace, or something like that? Football brings people together in their most crude, almost tribal form.

You don't pull the legs off spiders for fun, do you?

I fail to connect this question with anything I have said so far. But, for the record, no.

[russnet]

What a fantastic evening. Whoever scheduled the match at that time is a genius! No bugger was on the roads, hence nobody wanted petrol ... hence I did nothing at all all evening!! YAY!

Exactly, I couldn't praise it enough when it got to extra time and penalties. It meant that it stayed quieter at work even longer!

[James Martin]

Urs Meier does need his head kicking in though. Who reckons he'll get shot dead in the street, Escobar-style?

[dvboy]

Sky News have been quite happy to give out the referee's website address, and report that Asda are offering free sight tests to all Swiss nationals.

[James Martin]

Onto the disallowed goal though. An utterly disgraceful decision. The video evidence conclusively proves that we won that goal, and therefore rightly won the game. What on earth is the point of providing cameras that can show that if they will be ignored because of the two old school rules of 'if the referee didn't see it, it didn't happen' and 'the referee's decision is final'. Those rules came about in a time when decisions were based on eyesight, and ultimately you had to decide that one person's eyesight was the ultimate authority on the game. You can't do that now in the light of modern technology being deployed at games.

If it's captured on tape, what the referee saw is irrelevant, what actually happened is what decisions should be based on.

I'm not advocating that every challenge of a ref's decision should result in the tapes being dragged out, but at full time, the manager of both teams should have the right to lodge formal complaints about decisions made during the match, and an independent, unbiased panel of judges should view the footage there and then and should make a ruling. If the finding is that the referee was wrong, then his decision should be overturned and if necessary, the score altered to reflect those findings.

It's beyond ridiculous that tonight, England scored a legal goal, the referee was standing nowhere near the area and so didn't see the alledged incident properly, the linesman allowed the goal through, the video evidence shows the goal was legal - and yet the referee decided it wasn't and so that's how it willl stand. The situation now is that in a game which would decide who would go through to the semi-finals, England are out despite winning the game, and Portugal are through despite loosing it. When this can hardly be considered an isolated occasion, the case for doing something about the prehistoric way in which decisions in footbal are made cannot be allowed to continue and viewed through rose tinted spectles as though it is in someway essential to the game.

If that won't happen, then measures to reduced biased refereeing must be introduced. It is ridiculous that the referee from that match came from a country which England beat. It's all well and good to say that he has professional detachment, there was on occasions, shall we say 'extremely controversial' rulings made against England, and equally 'extremely controversial' incidents involving Portugal for which they suffered no sanctions. Referees should either be sourced from countries who did not qualify for the said tournament, or else they should be changed every 10 minutes (with no referees from the same country) to ensure that if any biasing is taking place, then the team getting the thin end of the wedge doesn't have to suffer this for the entire match.

Video Refereeing has been used in Rugby Union for a while now. I actually think it's been very sucessful and I do actually wonder why footy does not have a Video Referee. As Cwathen says, old skool rules which just don't work in the noughties! Urs Meier was utterly discgraceful, and I'd be very interested to find out what was said between Sven and himself, but nonetheless it really is time to change the constitutions that if a game is televised or cameras are there, then controversial decisions (like the Campell goal) are checked out by a Video Referee who can watch it in slow motion.

If you watch the virtual reality reconstructions of the Campbell goal on the BBC site (which are absoloutely crac- sorry, fantastic!) then you can see that it is blatantly a legitimate goal.

I am not sure whether or not I want Sven to resign as to be fair, despite my drunken anger last night, he's turned us round from the diabolical job done by Kevin Keegan and Glenn Hoddle, notably that amazing performance against Germany in September 2001... a wonderful 5-1 caning.

What I do know is that David Beckham's time as England captain is up. He shouldn't be taking the penalties and free kicks, he is not good enough. He's really lost the whole "thing" he had about him in the late nineties/early noughties and I feel that he has been superceded by Michael Owen and more lately Wayne Rooney.

But push comes to shove, we're too average at the moment. But we should have won that game. Everyone knew Portugal would put one away in the second half.

I just think we were too complacent.