Why is Mbappe disliked? Xhaka, Pogba and England…

Keep your thoughts on Mbappe, Pogba, Xhaka, England and anything else coming to theeditor@football365.com…

Why don’t people like Mbappe?
One of the questions in this mornings mailbox was why did no one console Mbappe?

Perhaps it is because despite being clearly talented he has become an arrogant diver who has had a terrible tournament? Maybe his teammates just don’t like him?

It was suggested he shouldn’t have taken a penalty because he pulled up earlier in the game? I remember that it was when he missed a great opportunity and then seemed to feign a hamstring injury …

If anything summed up the current Mbappe vs the one from a few seasons ago it was the penalty incident. The Swiss player tried his best to stay on his feet and couldn’t keep hold of the ball. No diving, no play acting just trying to honestly score despite being fouled. The ball broke to the other end and Mbappe went into the box before instantly diving. My highlight of the tournament so far was watching the ref decline this and then go over to the monitor to give the Swiss penalty.
Andrew (maybe he should stop hanging around with Neymar).

A note on Xhaka
Given Liam’s question, and the inevitble snarky ‘banter’ on other social media about Xhaka and Arsenal, it’s probably worth getting out there the following points:

1. Xhaka has never been Arsenal’s worst player during our most recent decline and indeed sometimes has been our best. When you say this to non-Arsenal fans, they just laugh, as if you who has watched ever game has no sense but they who have seen two ‘highlights’ of him against Burnley know. So yeh, he is really good on occasion and we have seen it.

2. That being said, the Prem is a much different case to international football. The French press was non-existent and that is why in the league Xhaka is often exposed whereas yesterday he had all the time in the world to pick progressive passes into space. He’s not quick, he doesn’t get his head up really quickly when in short spaces and he plays safe first. He’s a very system-oriented player and Switzerland have built one to showcase him – this would not work for Arsenal.

My understanding of Serie A (potentially unfairly) is that it is still played at a slower pace on the whole than Prem and with midfield in particular having more time on the ball. It wouldn’t surprise me if Xhaka left and was a bigger star there, but in England at least, he has a clear ceiling and if Arsenal are to ever get back in top 4 they need a more dynamic player, hence him going.

Expecting that performance to add £10m equally daft, for a 29 year old.
Tom (what a game though, Jesus) Walthamstow

Xhaka can
Writing as a Liverpool fan who has been living within a stone’s throw of the Arsenal ground for the last 2 decades, I have the dubious honour of having a chunk of Arsenal fans as close friends. Many an alcohol fuelled chat has been around the quality of our respective teams and I have consistently said that Xhaka was not good enough as a central midfield cog for the Gunners if they wanted to win stuff.

Time for me to eat a little bit of humble pie on that front. I thought he was phenomenal last night.

What a great day yesterday was for football and sport in general – a screaming reminder of everything that is great about competition of this type.

Somehow the second game managed to outshine the first.

What sits clear and centre in my mind is how deserving Switzerland were to go through. Sure, France walked on water for 25 minutes but the rest of the game they were the lesser team to some extent.

Switzerland outplayed the world champions.

I can’t give enough credit for the drive that was at the centre of their performance – brilliantly coached and brilliantly executed across the team.

The ability to pick themselves back up off the floor after what was thought to be the knock-out blow from a heavy weight was brilliant (Fury / Wilder first fight, anyone ?).

There were great performances across the pitch from the Swiss but it was Xhaka that was the oil to it all – the one that made the other parts work together effectively – doing so against the most effective central midfielder in world football .. and Paul Pogba (who did some brilliant things coupled with some brain burps)

Xhaka’s range of passing and poise when doing so were really impressive, my favourite moment being the last minute equaliser where he could have played a simple ball out to the left after the ball broke to him but he delayed slightly, evaluated and played a beautiful straight ball up to Gavranovic to finish brilliantly.

I think Xhaka will likely be afforded more time on the ball at Roma than he would standardly get in the premiership, so I suspect it will prove to be a wise signing for Jose.

So now we are on the countdown to the games later on today – I only hope that England play with the sort of positive drive that we saw oozing from the Swiss last night.

Let’s show Europe and the world what we are capable of as a team rather than just a performance from highly talented individuals that sometimes struggle to gel together.

We live in hope.
Sparky, LFC (lucky pants are on … work laptop will be drop-kicked into the bin shortly … this is what it’s all about boys !)

Corr bloody hell
I’m sat here supposed to be working, but it’s just not happening. Just sent this to a pal:

“can’t concentrate
football was too good
can’t stop thinking about football
morning”

That was honestly the best 5 hours or so of football I’ve ever seen in one day. Just stunning. A few off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts:

– So happy for Morata scoring that absolute worldy!
– The look on Dave’s face when he scored his first goal for Spain (can we just take a moment to appreciate first the pass to him, then the takedown and run from RWB, and to stay up there for the finish…lovely stuff).
– Pogba looked amazing going forward, see: his goal, and passing in the final third, but forgot to defend – Ngolo can’t do it all you know.
– Did someone replace Xhaka with some kind of Xavi/Pirlo/Scholes hybrid? He was brilliant!
– Don’t think this says anything for England’s chances other than pretty much no game at this tournament can be predicted….god knows what the scoreline will be tonight.
– Benzema’s touch for his first French goal was absolute unadulterated filth.

Now off to try and do some work, as well as cancelling that last meeting so I can be done in time for kick off….
Robbo Robson (CFC)

England vs Germany
“Enjoy the game” some lunatic said to me cheerily today.

I guess not everyone understands football.
Jeremy Aves

Dear Gareth,

After an amazing evening of Football last night I hope England do there very best to take an early lead and be boring as f@$& to win 1-0

Please ignore everyone who says we have to be fantastic and exciting

I don’t think my TV would survive England throwing away a 3-1 lead in an exciting match

My daughters school probably wouldn’t be impressed with the “new words” she has learnt either
Liam (Xhaka surely worth an extra £10 mill from last night’s performance)

I was going to write a stringent retort to Judi Dench and her pompous hipster nonsense from this morning but then I remembered its England vs Germany today and I dont give a toss about anything else.

Come on lads, break the narrative, be calm, controlled, and ruthless.
Dave, Manchester

Early trip home…
Two of the ‘giants’ in the ‘group of death’ are already having an early trip home. What you want is sometimes not what is best for you, Switzerland produced a good display against France, but France had to shoot themselves in the legs first, who is to say England couldn’t have emerged victorious in such a pleasing situation. A quick note, Pogba did not want to lose the ball, so don’t blame him, Fernandez does that far more, just because he is usually higher up the pitch, take the match against Leicester for example. He connected defence and attack so well, and for those calling him a defensive liability, I can’t believe you guys, this was the same guy who had recovered the most amount of balls for France along with Kante just before this match, disinterested without the ball? I don’t think so.

Portugal played scrappy against Belgium but largely outplayed in the second half, I don’t think they took more than 2 shots in the second, but Portugal have looked somewhat shaky at some point in all their matches in the tournament, maybe Deschamps and Santos wanted to attack more eh! Anyway England could certainly have beaten Portugal.

That leaves the giant English fans were willing to take on, Germany. Let us see how it goes, win and all the Giants from the group are out in the last 16, lose and this is more likely, and we go on to the next phase, ‘he should have played (insert creative player not started) over him’, ‘sack him, he is clueless, imagine what this team will look like under (insert a manager who let’s his team express themselves or one who played attacking football or one with an established system).
Sa’ad

Wind your necks in
International Tournament football always has, and always will be the pinnacle of football but, let’s not get that confused with the boring grind of international football qualifying games which always has been, and always will be 10 shades of s***.
Andrew, Swindon

Paul Pogba
Daniel, I think you completely miss the point on people’s opinion on Paul Pogba. It really has nothing to do with race and you can’t cherry pick 3 white guys and say no one criticises them so it must be about race. This does a disservice to genuine race issues in football, the media and the world when you twist it for your argument.

First off, if any of those aforementioned white players played badly they were criticised. Totally spurious argument. Torres was criticised plenty (and laughed at). But bad games or not, they were all trying or at least appeared to.

Secondly, there was another black Muslim playing right next to Pogba who also had a pretty bad game by his standards but is universally loved and applauded. It will be noted that he had a bad game but he has so much goodwill it will not be the be all. His name is Kate.

One of the key differences is that Kante is humble and busts a gut for the team every single day. Versus Pogba, so unbelievably arrogant and barely breaks a sweat, barely tracks back (see equaliser) and really gives the impression he only cares about himself and his YouTube reel. Including celebrations…

He may actually be a nice guy off camera and in the dressing room, but this is not the persona on the field or in interviews.

Now, it is only football and he shouldn’t be scapegoated a la Beckham 98 but I think people are justified in thinking quite negatively about him. No one denies his talent but puts no effort in and expects everyone to bow down.

This does not inspire people.
K

So we’re debating Paul Pogba, the world’s most debatable footballer. I’d like to prefix this by saying there’s zero racism involved in my judgement of Pogba (as was said in the morning mailbox) and while it may be true of others, you can’t say that it’s wrong to critique a footballer and have being a racist thrown in your face, unless it was every black or non-white ethnic footballer you criticised.

I can see both sides of the coin, as do most people. No denying Pogba’s talent, no denying he’s better for France than United. Will Ford’s stipulation that he was used on the left of a three as United and Ole’s failing is an unjust argument when every United fan has seen Pogba play under two managers in positions ranging from midfield two, right of a front three, number ten, left of a midfield three and left of a front three and not nail any or consistently perform in any; how many positions is there to go through?

Blaming Fred for not being Kante, and then blaming Kante for not being full Kante last night sounds prejudiced in the extreme to me. So no matter what version of Paul Pogba turns up, it’s actually more important that his partner be world-class and constantly world class in order to placate Pogba’s swings in form (during seasons and during games)? Are you messing with me? Pogba has no responsibility there himself on what he does?

For me, I do think Kante makes a difference as he would to anyone, but I think the main thing is that Pogba is a human and we are all different. He’s mercurial, for various reasons he seems to be able to concentrate and exert extra effort for France and not over a 60 game season for United. Other top level footballers made a living doing that, I know local teams that have players that are the same. It could be that playing with France is much more of a short objective thing: play well for two games here, play well for 7 games there. Whether he wants to change that part of his personality or is unable to is irrelevant, he’s like that. I think that and a big difference is in the style of football of international football.

For international football, the team you play against doesn’t have as strongly defined defensive tactics and plans – less time together and all that. Pogba is often targeted with a press for United, the defensive shapes are much better drilled and changed depending on the team you’re playing against. He has more time and space on the ball for international football, the attackers he plays with have more time and space to make runs. It’s suited to his creative mind. I think most of the games I watch him in for club football he seems bored, doesn’t concentrate; that’s it to me. But blaming United for all of that is ridiculous, if Pogba is a midfielder and not an attacker then he has responsibilities that can’t be shirked from, it’s not a position that allows that, no matter how talented. Saying he had no warning that he might be tackled in a game of football, whatever the level, is prejudice. If Pogba is an attacker and not a midfielder, then he can have less defensive responsibility but needs to do more at the other end. It can’t be possible to be a midfielder with no defensive responsibilities.
James, Galway

We get everything wrong…
Jumping the gun- eg Football365 telling us the premier league title race was over and Liverpool would easily win it, or the time they told us that this was a France national team without equal and no weaknesses.

Now we get a third example. An article expounding the greatness of Mason Mount– an energetic player who runs and harries a lot, but arguably lacks the composure, natural talent and football brain to ever enter the elite of world football. I am happy to admit if I get this wrong, but in five years’ time I doubt he will be anywhere near the first team at Chelsea. To paraphrase Roy Keane, to enter the elite of world football you need to affect games more regularly. Whilst he had his moment in the Champions League final, he was given acres of space and time to think as a result of Guardiola’s failure to protect his defenders whilst playing a high back line. Compare his performance against Aston Villa in what seemed like a must win game, where there was much less space and any chance he had he fluffed his lines. Over the course of this season, in one of the most expensively assembled teams in premier league history that mostly dominates possession and chances, Mount has mostly been playing in an attacking role. His contribution of 6 goals and 5 assists is pretty middling. If Mount was playing for any team outside of the supposed ‘top six’ he wouldn’t even be in the national squad.

I could possibly understand him being in a more central role for England, but I cannot understand Southgate’s obsession with playing him so far forward. He’s not only done little of note in attack, he’s also not really done much in the way of pressing and tracking back so far (eg in the Scotland game where Mings was calling him out for failing to help the defenders). I just don’t get it- I think England fans will look back in a few years time and be surprised he was anywhere near the squad whilst other more capable players were left out. If we limp out to Germany tonight, the best football we have played will have been without Mount in the team. As much as I appreciate what Southgate has done for this team, he is a safety first manager- fine if you win something, but not so much if the team does not even make it to the quarter finals and especially if you have starved fans of any real excitement and put the shackles on your attacking talent. We pretty much have a poor man’s Mourinho in charge of the national team, and yet for some reason Southgate will get a free ride by Football365…
Dave S