Michael Cox (or @Zonal_Marking to use the Twitter nomenclature) is a popular individual on the old twittersphere. 167,000 followers gives you quite the audience to have your say on the game and, having built such a following, Cox is absolutely within his right to have a dig at Ireland after that second half performance against France.
Obviously enough though, if you do have a dig of this magnitude while we're all down in the dumps, then you'd better be prepared to defend your opinion to nth degree.
Ireland were poor at this tournament. Technically and physically inadequate, very fortunate to face half-arsed Italy in final group game.
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) June 26, 2016
Also their defensive organisation for the two goals here was really poor, in two completely different ways. Nice finishes but cheap goals.
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) June 26, 2016
Yeah, the praise they get for being crap is hilarious.
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) June 26, 2016
Before we start on the indignation, he absolutely has a point with that second tweet. There's no hiding away from the fact that we fell asleep for the second goal in particular. It simply wasn't good enough defending at this level but the level of disgust at the fact that we were even there seemed to be a bit too much for a lot of Irish fans' and fellow journalists liking.
A decent spell v Sweden and then panicked at 1-0 up. Awful v Belgium. Terrible in second half here.
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) June 26, 2016
I think what I like about this Irish team is that some of the pseudo-academic hipsters dislike them so much.
— Daniel McDonnell (@McDonnellDan) June 26, 2016
Panicked when 1-0 up v Sweden. Conceded cheap goals here. Did the job v Italy against a side barely trying.
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) June 26, 2016
While we may not agree with Cox, we would like to say that it's impressive to what extent he's willing to engage with everyone who's disagreeing with him.
At what stage did they play above that?
— Michael Cox (@Zonal_Marking) June 26, 2016
Whatever you think about the overarching point of Irish fans being a tad overly complimentary of our side, I'd like to think that we can all agree that this short exchange is just delightful.
