DID WE PERFORM THAT WELL AGAINST ITALY?

NO ..."glorious defeat" syndrome

taken apart by Italian tacticians probrably weeks before the game

talking up England hides their deficiencies.

Pundits are raving about the best england performance in years but the truth is they still lost and didnt create that many chances

heard gary neville today call the italy game the best that england have played in 15 years

im sick of hard luck stories and glorious defeats. ive bet let down for the last forty eieght years.I want wins even if we play sh@t.

Truth is Italy are not that good. Typical media BS about England performance. Sterling outstanding, etc LOL

that's the thing teams like argentina don't play well and still win we play "good" and still lose

We played ok at least we played attacking football. As for it been the best performance in 15 years, well I remember a Germany1 England 5 scoreline and we were good that night.

We may still qualify but and getb to the final 8 but I don't think we are in the top 16 countries. In my opinion we need to be looking at semi finals at least for Euro 2016 to confirm progression with these youngsters

England will be ok as long as they learn from the poor errors of the first game and Roy makes a few changes, if they do get 2nd in the group they're likely to meet Brazil in the last 8 and they don't look unbeatable.
One thing we have seen at this world cup is pace is king and England have plenty of that.

Have a feeling the media pundits were given a party-line to big us up whatever happened.

if england play the same way against uruguay and lose then we'll see whether it's the best english performance for 15 years or whether the managers and the players are all types of vegetables and should be too ashamed to come home.

Have to laugh that the 'best performance in 15 years' is supposed to be a 2-1 LOSS! Silly talk basically.

247 lol   , I thin k you've summed it up  pretty much spot on.eng deffo have more attacking pace than most other sides and brazil look very average, most of this brzil side wouldn't have got a look in  previously.

Have to remember that the England guys have not played together much and gave a good team a hard time and on another day would win that match so there is a lot of room for improvement, some teams there are just awful like Honduras who just want to kick lumps out of you because they have very little technical ability or the Aussies who tactically just don't get it , the Nigeria v Iran game was just dire and if Argentina come to play than those two are going to get their ar**es severely kicked.
Belgium are lucky they are in a p**s easy group because for all the talent in their squad they didn't appear to more than 3 or 4 brain cells between them, Algeria are organised to a degree but are generally pants and made Belgium look ordinary and I cannot get to excited about Russia or South Korea, Belgium will most likely win the group but won't go much further.
If England cannot see off a modest Uruguay with an unfit Suarez then its time to get the rope out, the trickier game will be Costa Rica but England should have to much technical ability for them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUTSvEX9PDM

Pirlo

agree with 247lol, Uruguay are slow and have to win, everything in England's favour (famous last words)

Well even though Chile surprised me a little tonight with their non stop tempo I read that Spain situation right, past their best and manager played Costa again who wasn't fit that was a poor decision.
Just can't see Uruguay having the firepower to bother England and need to hope England have their scoring boots on and Italy beat Costa Rica to make the last game one they don't have to win to qualify.

surely if italy beat costa rica then costa rica must win their final group game to qualify.

If England beat Italy 2-0 it would have been a good performance.
They lost 1-2, and had the game controlled by a 35 year old midfielder ...
... the only good thing England did was put a PR spin on the defeat.

England have to match Costa Rica score and hope Italy win by more than 1 to give England the advantage going into the last game there's plenty of permutations but just hope England win first, Suarez is playing but he cannot be 100% match fit I don't care what he says and their captains out injured.

Match Costa Rica's 3-1win from first game

judging by italys fullbacks and the past it de rossi dont think costa rica should be fearing italy.

same tactics as they used v costa rica and italy ont be able to stop their counter attack

v uraguay that should be lol

I think Italy are being over-rated and are no shoe-in v Costa Rica.

Although the personnel and 'attacking intent' may have changed since the 4-1 debacle versus Germany in 2010, the same old problems persisted.

The worst was the ongoing 'player out of position' issue. From Gerrard having to play left midfield, or Scoles for that matter, to Terry and Upson both wanting to play in the same CB role to now Rooney played as a left sided player, England have continually allowed imbalances, and therefore exploitable weaknesses, to remain in the side.

In a critical game, there was plenty of evidence that the left side was likely to leak goal scoring opportunities yet it remained unresolved and only 5 minutes after the re-start Italy scored the winner.

The 'we are gonna score one more than you' approach to football is fine if your front three are free scoring hot shots like Messi, Ronaldo and Suarez but when they aren't you need to be solid. And England are not solid, are they?

I would seriously be interested in the 3 CB, 2 WB, 2 DM, 3F approach as without the ball it would be much tighter and when winning the ball back the WBs can bomb forward to support the forwards. Whatever they do, playing 2 in midfield with 3 centre forwards is not working and we are exposed

think we proved that we didn't really play well vs italy

judging by italys fullbacks and the past it de rossi dont think costa

He was great last season and in that game against England. England don't have a player remotely close to his all round ability.

"I think Italy are being over-rated and are no shoe-in v Costa Rica." 

Italy awful.  That shows that either the Costa Rican manager is far superior tactically to the woeful Hodgson, or that Italy aren't as good as people think they are and England losing was a poor result.

Probably a bit of both.

Also shows Costa Rica were massively under-rated.

Indeed.  But player for player compared to the others their manager has played a stormer.  Created a proper team.