BBC's montage of England at Euro 2004 after getting knocked out in the Quarter Finals by Portugal. The song is Unwritten Natasha BedingfieldJames Neville Col...
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This showed up in my feed today. And I've always said this was the tournament England's "Golden Generation"
should have won. I say this because I think this was the only tournament Wayne Rooney entered without injuries(2006), private life stuff(2010) or suspended for the first 2 games(2012). Paul Scholes was still around and actually did quite well on that infamous left side position. Michael Owen still had something about him before he became injured all the time. England also surprisingly scored a lot in a tournament as well, which wasn't the case in other tournaments around this time when it was a lot of 1-0s and relying almost exclusively on setpieces from Beckham. That last minute Sol Campbell disallowed goal vs Portugal is still odd I think, Wayne Rooney of course gets injured in that game(does he ever play this well for England again after that?) so maybe they wouldn't be able to beat Netherlands or Greece later.
I guess things that were always faults that meant they never were gonna win this tournament:
- David James as the goalkeeper maybe isn't the reliable rock at the back you want. But I think he still was superior to some of the keepers later like Robinson, Green etc.
- Eriksson's tactics often gets blamed for not taking this team further in tournaments. His obsession with 4-4-2 and craming in the best players into that system perhaps wasn't the best. But I think his biggest fault was sitting back on leads and subbing strikers for midfielders and midfielders for defenders in quite negative moves.
- No Rio Ferdinand because of his ban. But I still think Terry-Campbell is a good enough CB partnership to go all the way