Szczesny

van der Wiel
Hubnik
Dunne
Willems

Milner
van Bommel
Whelan
Young

Samaras
Kerzhakov

Rooney, Balotelli, Torres, Malouda, Toivonen and a lot of Irish and Dutch players were also heavily in contention.

I don't think Kerzakhov deserves to be on a "worst of" list. His movement and passing was excellent. Okay, his finishing was horrific; if you're going to pick the worst, give it to somebody totally useless, like Robbie Keane.

hey, robbie keane got a shot on target against spain. one of only 7 they conceded against sides other than italy.

kerzhakov had 14 shots, none on target. he was much more embarrassing than keane, who was just anonymous.

Keane hardly even touched the ball in Ireland's three matches. He was an utter irrelevance. Kerzhakov, conversely, was a huge handicap to his own team.

Kerzhakov's shooting was easily the worst on show, in a tournament blighted by bad shots from first to last. There's no point in displaying good movement if all you're ever going to do is balloon the ball virtually out of the stadium from eight yards out.

Hugo Almeida

The entire Irish team.
Closely followed by Arbeloa.
A player so average that Jamie Carragher wanted to kill him.

He is Djimi Traore to the power of 50.

Through hitting the post with a header that was subsequently knocked in, he contributed infinitely more than Robbie "I got a single weak shot on goal in a game my team had already flushed away" Keane.

Hahahaha -- as though he was intending to set it up for Dzagoev all along. I like it.

Look, I'm not saying he was good; just that he was better than Keane. It's not exactly a high bar (or Keane's fault, it's not like he picked the team).

Kerzakhov also made a run that opened up Poland for Arshavin to find Dzagoev in that match -- even though after the ball went past him he turned to scream at Arshavin as Dzagoev scored.

The Greek striker whose name started with V was awful, forgotten the rest. Milan Baros was almost comically bad, he can barely even run these days and that was all he was good for back in the day.

I heard an odd stat today that Baros committed 16 fouls in the tournament, the most of anyone. I am amazed he had the energy and motivation to do that, I think slightly better of him as a result.

Incidentally Andy Caroll made 8 fouls and had he played the same amount of minutes as Baros then he would have beaten the Czech's total.





Mentalist. Name a better right back at the tournament.

Torres probably performed the worst compared to his talent, but given that his talent his huge, I think he still did enough to not be in this thread.

From back to front:

Szczesny - Regarded as one of the more important players for his team, he goes on walkabout to give up an equalizer against a team playing a man down then follows that up with getting sent off shortly thereafter. Bonus points for then losing his spot to the backup that comes on and saves the penalty.

Mexes - Impressive athlete with the positional sense of a concussed ostrich. Picked up an idiotic yellow card in a match against an already eliminated opponent to be suspended for the quarterfinals.

Hubnik - Possibly even slower than me. Played one match, in which the Czechs lost 4-1, was dropped, the team responds with two straight wins and almost taking a very good Portugal side the distance.

Olsson - Lots of running, little return, allowed Yarmalenko to get in the cross for Sheva's first.

Van Der Wiel - Complained to the press about not being allowed to get forward and "play his game". Stunk on both ends of the pitch.

Whelan - Is very good at shouting at people.

Fortounis - Was hauled off after 70 minutes of the one match he played because he wasn't good enough. For Greece.

Arshavin - Did alright so long as the opposing team was starting Roman Hubnik. Aside from that, he mainly spent his time dribbling with his head down, studiously ignoring teammates making runs and getting a rest in when Russia didn't have the ball. Would take the Waste of Potential LVP if Robben wasn't in this team.

Robben - But he is.

Keane - Old, slow. Ineffective. Trap also picked Robbie Keane in all three group matches for some reason.

Baros - I'd say he managed not to do anything except that he apparently led the tournament in fouls committed. Who did the Czechs have on the bench? Stephen Hawking?

Ivan Pykthallsev wrote:


He played pretty well in the semi-final, certainly better than I've seen him play for a long time.

Scratchmonkey wrote:


Fourtounis played two matches, and in the first, he was excellent.

His first touch of the tournament provided the deft chip over the Polish defence in the opening match, that gave Szczesney no choice but to haul Salpingidis down for the penalty. His second touch saw him hit a pinpoint cross for Salpingidis to score, only for it to be ruled out for an offside in the buildup.

Playing 4-4-2, the least successful formation at the tournament:

Sifakis

Van der Wiel - McShane - Mexes - Ward

Robben - Whelan - Van Bommel - Cox

Keane(c) - Huntelaar

Huntelaar because he acted the prick and caused problems in the camp. And because he only scores goals by standing still and relying on the skill of those around him to ricochet the ball into the goal off his knee. I was going to select Elmander up front, but he's just passively useless. Huntelaar is disruptive and Keane's captaincy, Manager Staunton's eternal gift to Ireland, is the most uninspiring in the history of international football. Two strikers up front who think they are much better than they are and never bothered to improve their game.

McShane had a very good tournament, didn't put a foot wrong or give up any goals. But that's just because he wasn't given the chance.

Midfielder Cox gets in too. Not his fault really. You can't expect West Brom's fourth choice striker to suddenly become an international class midfielder in his first ever start in the position, against the defending European and World Champions in a major tournament. These things take time.

David Agnew wrote:


Absolutely correct and a massive oversight on my part. I just couldn't countenance giving the other central midfield spot to Keith Andrews as that might be viewed as piling on and I was casting about to fill the final spot.

ETA: Revised lineup



Right, then.

Malouda, a halfway decent squad player. Hard worker. When he's used on the wing. When deployed in central midfield, as he largely was here, he only serves to clog things up and make sideways passes to the fullback. In other words, the French Scott Parker.

To be either in a worst XI or a best Xi don't you need to have at least played 2 or 3 games in it?

Szczesny made one mistake and then was sent off for bringing down an opponent in a position many keepers would have. Then we never saw him again. Shay Given looked like he had won his place in a raffle in each of his three games and was at fault for what, 6 or 7 goals himself?

I thought Given was perhaps the worst player of the entire tournament. Second worst might have been that young Dutch left back Willems who looked utter, utterly out of his depth.

Arshavin was excellent against the Czechs, less so in the other games but still better than the rest of the Russian forwards.

We have to be fair: not all the teams had Trap as manager, if you stunk out the place once and were dropped as a result, you still qualify.

Given is a great choice if only because his methodology for defending corner kicks was to do star jumps while standing on the line. In the end, I went with Szczesny for similar reasons as Arshavin -- he was a "name" player of whom was expected more. You're right that it's harsh on him as he really only made one glaring error, as opposed to Arshavin, who had one good game and then hero-balled the Russians out of the tournament.

Exactly. See also Roman Hubnik.

Given fucked up very badly for two goals. The first Mario Mandzukic one, which he reacted very slowly to because he was not fit to play and shouldn't have been picked; and the fumble of a routine shot against Italy that led to a corner, which Cassano subsequently scored from.

Another one, Mandzukic's second, hit him on the back of the head after it came back off the post when he was diving full-length. That is pure bad luck rather than a goalkeeping error. It's happened in the past to everyone from Dmitri Kharin (1992 v Scotland) to Joel Bats (1987 v USSR).

He made arguably the single best save of the tournament, the instant-reaction stop from Xavi in the second half of the Spain game. He's indisputably past it, and he had a bad tournament by his standards, but it's ludicrous to claim that he was responsible for six or seven of the nine goals that Ireland let in, never mind this mental stuff about him somehow being the worst player in the competition.

Szczesny had two simple things to do in an hour of playing time -- Greece didn't have any meaningful attempts on goal while he was on the pitch, other than the equaliser, which he created -- and made a complete balls of both of them. He was wretched.



Torres has been largely bollocks for the guts of three years by now. It's long past the stage of regarding it as a lengthy blip/dip in form.



It would also be wrong. Andrews ran his guts out in all three games and made a huge number of tackles. Other than Duff and, at a very strong push, St Ledger, he was the only Ireland player not to disgrace himself.

Well, he did also get himself sent off; your point is taken though.