In Response to Re: England loss to Uruguay is not so bad... : +1 to that, obv... Anyway, everyone seems to have their one favourite bug-bear that is "responsible" for England not winning. There isn't one single reason, there are lots of them. Here are a few: i) England has far fewer properly trained coaches than most of their European rivals. Kids are coached mainly by P.E. teachers and untrained volunteers. ii) Too many 'old school' folks still hold sway. Running with the ball is "selfish play" and flair is considered a "luxury" in too many teams. We train kids out of having good technique and making adventurous decisions, in favour of playing it safe. iii) We have our kids playing competitive football at a very young age. Winning is too important and developing your ability is not the prime concern. In the great scheme of things, do we want kids to care only about winning at 11 years old, or is improving themselves more important? iv) Kids still play on full size pitches, with full size balls. Why? If you want them to develop close control, don't put them on a pitch where they can't get near each other to put real pressure on. The first touch of English players doesn't touch some of the better players in the world. v) We have a population of around 3 million British Asians but only a handful of British Asian players. This is a huge 5% of the population that seem to have no interest or prospect in football. The brains trust of the latest FA commission included nobody with any history or expertise of reaching this group. If football wants to exploit and encourage this section of the population, it needs to learn lessons from cricket. The commission panel was made up entirely of football insiders. vi) English players command a huge premium, as has been mentioned. The example of Wilfried Zaha is a very good one: Manchester United paid £15 million for a player who had never played in the top fight, who wasn't even the top performer in the Championship. That price was so high because he was English. Perhaps a better example is a lad called Dean Bowditch. He was wanted by Liverpool in his late teens and Ipswich were apparently asking for £6-8 million. Bowditch was not the finished article and Liverpool were looking to bring him to the club in the hope that they could aid his development. Ipwich stood in the way of that and the last I heard of Bowditch, he was playing for Yeovil or MK Dons. Young kids being signed to long-term contracts in the hopes that their clubs might get a big fee for them one day is good news for the club involved but dreadful news for the individual players. Agents and the PFA need to be more responsible in the advice they give to their young clients. I could go on and on with other points including the standard of playing fields, the availability of funding for youth clubs, the relative wealth of our people compared to those countries where a ball is the primary source of entertainment and many, many other issues... Needless to say, the presence of a high number of foreign players in the professional leagues is not a significant cause of England's long-term problems. It's more of a symptom. Blaming the foreigners and the Premier League's power is en vogue. It's not such a narrow issue. With that said, I maintain that England did not play too badly at all, lost to two good teams by narrow margins and, if they'd taken their chances or not been a bit dim at the back, they could already have booked their place in the last sixteen. It's not been all that bad and the team is better than they have been for a long time. The problems aren't all that bad in English football, in reality. They are one of the top 20 - perhaps top 10 - teams in the world and will still be in twenty years time. There are marginal improvements that can be made in many, many areas to close the gap on the top 5, but it's not something that requires a major revolution in this country. Only one team can actually win each tournament. Posted by BorinLoner
Brilliant post.
It's so true that we're actually playing better now than at the last world cup, but the media is spurting nonsense like "worst world cup since 1958".
No, the 70's and 1994 were worse because we were too c rap to even qualify!
The games vs Ita and Uru just highlighted the high varience of tournament football (and as you mentioned, the one area where we have got worse, at the back).
But I'd much rather see us have a go and lose, instead of the utter dirge we produced in 2010 and 2012.
I also don't think Roy is capable of taking us any further so expect more disappointment in 2016. However, if we can bring in a top class boss and continue playing with an attacking ethos, the future's bright.
competetive football on full sized pitches is a hugle millstone around thius country's neck.
follow the logic:
why do we segregate into age groups: U11, U13, U18 etc?
because the physical differences between an U14 and U11 side on a full pitch would make it unfair.
bigger, stronger lads have an edge.
well even within an age group there are massive differences in physical development. a mate of mine was drinking in pubs and fighting with men at the age of 15. he wasn't the best footballer in the world, but could boss any game with players of his age from about the age of 12+ as he had enough testosterone to produce a reasonable beard and pass for 20 when he was 13, hence he was stronger and fitter than the prepubescent alter boys that made up the non-outlier population.
if youth football is focused on results then coaches pick the lads that get results. a decent big-un gets in ahead of a good little-un. on bigger pitches this is magnified.
all is fine and dandy for the 13 year old man-hulk as he gets a pass right through the youth system until he hits the senior game when he goes from having a huge size and strength advantage to having a mild size and strength disadvantage. his skill set cannot make up this difference.
the very talented late-developers who are left out of youth teams cannot get into the game at all.
it's why we are very good at produing john terry, tony adams, ryan shawcroft type players, and a bit rubbish at producing iniesta's.
scholes, joe cole, micheal owen all got through inspite of the system and not because of it.
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our climate doesnt help either. you ever tried training on an average winter's day / night?
most of the session is running to either get warmed up or stay warm. little chance for 'on the ball' coaching in our climate. spain, italy, france etc have the luxury of warmer climbs. nothern europe produces a different type of player than warmer regions.
Donald, England have been woeful for years. Not a bean since '66. It's just too easy to blame foreign players these days.....there were hardly any foreign players in the 70's and 80's, and yet we won nothing in those decades. Ditto early 90's. The sooner that people realise (media, general population etc) that this is our level these days the better IE; getting beat by Uruguay, getting beat by a decent but not amazing Italian team, getting beat by Chile in that friendly. We have zero world class players. We have zero real game changers. Not at international level. Rooney/Gerrard etc might be able to do that at club level, but it's a different ball game at World Cups when you're facing well organised, well drilled international teams. Our tactical nous is years behind the WC favourites. The premium that comes with English players doesn't help. If we wanted to sign Barkley, probably looking at a package close to, if not more than, £30m.....we signed David Silva for £24m. Oh and Don, Scotland haven't qualified for a tournament since '98 because they're cr@p Posted by hhyftrftdr
While i agree we're poor now we haven't always been. Under-achieved playing appauling v worse teams.
The Premium that comes with English players is part of the problem. Too many forgieners can be bought for cheap. Why buy the English guy.
Theres a reason why you don't have world class players now. Even in the era's where you mentioned you did have world class players. Ok maybe not the 70's but i can't comment for that. Certainly in the 90's you had Gazza. Absolute world class. And the best thing is i felt he played better when he had one or two egos along side him.
Comments
follow the logic:
why do we segregate into age groups: U11, U13, U18 etc?
because the physical differences between an U14 and U11 side on a full pitch would make it unfair.
bigger, stronger lads have an edge.
well even within an age group there are massive differences in physical development. a mate of mine was drinking in pubs and fighting with men at the age of 15. he wasn't the best footballer in the world, but could boss any game with players of his age from about the age of 12+ as he had enough testosterone to produce a reasonable beard and pass for 20 when he was 13, hence he was stronger and fitter than the prepubescent alter boys that made up the non-outlier population.
if youth football is focused on results then coaches pick the lads that get results. a decent big-un gets in ahead of a good little-un. on bigger pitches this is magnified.
all is fine and dandy for the 13 year old man-hulk as he gets a pass right through the youth system until he hits the senior game when he goes from having a huge size and strength advantage to having a mild size and strength disadvantage. his skill set cannot make up this difference.
the very talented late-developers who are left out of youth teams cannot get into the game at all.
it's why we are very good at produing john terry, tony adams, ryan shawcroft type players, and a bit rubbish at producing iniesta's.
scholes, joe cole, micheal owen all got through inspite of the system and not because of it.
-----
our climate doesnt help either. you ever tried training on an average winter's day / night?
most of the session is running to either get warmed up or stay warm. little chance for 'on the ball' coaching in our climate. spain, italy, france etc have the luxury of warmer climbs. nothern europe produces a different type of player than warmer regions.