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Much more astonishing than the Brexit for England

SimpleDon said:
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=intl:2903424

England, the country that gave the world its most popular sport, association football, soccer to Americans, were dumped out of the European Cup by Iceland! A country of only 330,000 beat England.

This is much more upsetting to the English than the Brexit. Not just that they lost, but that they lost comprehensively. For all but the first six minutes of the 90 minute match they were out played by Iceland.

The talk of the Brexit will sink far below the English people's view as to be reduced to insignificance.

This is important. This is football...
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oh my goodness yes! Did you see that? LOL! I did feel terrible for England but wonderful for Iceland.
 
SimpleDon said:
JonA said:
Since there are only a few players per team, why would the populations of the countries matter? :confused:

(Asking sincerely as a complete sports illiterate.)
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The English have four or five tiers of full time professional footballers. Each tier, the same as a league in the US, has twenty to twenty four teams in the so that they play for thirty eight weeks out of the year. In addition the English have two cup competitions, the Football Association Cup and the various league cups. There is also the two European club team competitions and the internationals, the World Cup and the European Cup or Copa America in which the professional players play for their country. An international could easily play in fifty or more matches a year.

Iceland doesn't have a single professional team much less a professional league. About half of the team are professionals who play in different leagues around Europe, the other half are amateurs. The goalkeeper is a plumber.

The English team can pull players from a much larger pool of talent. This should result in a much better team.

However, one of the many beauties of soccer is that it is a team sport. Everyone has to work together to win. Sometimes a team of individually mediocre players can best a team of stars because they play better together as a team.
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Isn't the Icelandic coach a part-time dentist, too?
 
Tigers! said:
EricK said:
Which is precisely what England needed because of their leaky defense.
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Don't be like that. Haven't the poor dears suffered enough already?


Why is this thread in Politics?
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Sorry, I am not familar enough with the rest of the board to know where it belongs. Football is more important than politics and religion so nothing came immediately to mind.
 
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