TOPIC: International failure

What do you think is wrong with our continuing failure at international level. For the country who invented the beautiful game to only have one major trophy to its name is abysmal. Is.it down to the way we coach players maybe, it seems we are more interested in producing fit players who can run all day but shy away from players having the skills that only foreign players seem to have.

Nowt wrong were just shite!

Because sterling, Sturridge and Rooney didn't play in a tournament against the likes of us, Port Vale and Accrington when they were a bit younger.

Technically we are are just not good enough. We kid our selves that we are as we see our players doing well in the premier league... the issue with that is that they always have a foreign player they can give the ball to and they will retain possession, they have a foreign player to thread balls through to the strikers.... and basically the Premier league is a crap league really. We kid ourselves into thinking it's the best in the world because it is entertaining and close... really that is just because the defences are crap and all of the teams are pretty mediocre.

Of course there's something wrong. The players in that team last night were more than capable of comfortably beating Iceland, regardless of selection, tactics, manager or whatever.

We have a massive fear of tournament football, our players turn into shaking dogs and tactics and technical ability both go out of the window.

In front of an International crowd they are exposed and are mentally weak.

We cannot deal with the pressure, therefore we are like rabbits in headlights looking for the next man to do something.

Hodgson's loyalty to Rooney and Wiltshire cost this Country. Putting in a shift at training is one thing, delivering on the pitch is another.

Definitely a mental thing in my eyes. There's a big fear factor when we reach major tournaments, players who can usually do things with their eyes shut at club level struggle to do even the simplest of things for England. Not sure how it compares with other countries but there's a huge amount of expectation and pressure on our players every 2 years and many of them struggle to handle it.

The teams we assembled in tournaments such as euro 96 and euro 2004 was easily good enough to compete with the best but we once again were beaten by inferior teams on pens. Compare this to the mentality of nations like the Italians and Germans, they always seem to find a way to continually reach the latter stages of tournaments even when they appear not to have the best of teams. The German side in 2002 was the worst German side I've ever seen play yet they reached the WC final, even our best teams in recent memory have been nowhere near!

The problem is that there is no obvious solution.

We employed two very expensive foreign managers to try and shake that mentality, and they were both massive failures.
We have built a very expensive training facility which hasn't exactly proven successful.
The FA want both a hugely successful and money spinning Premier League, but they want glory for England. Because they don't want to p!ss everyone else off, they can't introduce a serious quota whereby you have to play a minimum number of English players every game.
So they're obviously trying to find a way to shove these players in at a lower level, like the JPT, which will infuriate pretty much everybody.
We copy everyone else's cultures and styles and forget about our own. But we can't employ English managers with English footballing values because they never get a chance of managing the top teams.

It just has to be a change of mentality. Get our youth teams to take the tournaments far more seriously is the first step for me. We're producing loads of talent, but not getting them into the mindset of winning games at tournaments. And say balls to loyalty. We don't owe anybody anything. Just because a player plays 50% of the games in the U21s qualifying, we don't have to take him to the tournament if we get there. That kind of thinking is going to give us Gareth Southgate the England manager's job, which would be an absolute shan.

Would like to know if the FA have ever approached or been in contact with Paul Clement about a coaching role. Probably one of the most successful coaches we've produced.

It boils down to intelligence and attitude.

Go and watch any non-league mildly competitive Sunday game, the only way people can express themselves (supporters or players) is by f''ing and blinding at the referee or each other. It is a disgrace and is being allowed to go on.

Let's get back to rewarding for success and praising winners, we have adopted the we are 'all equal ' in competitive sports. Mediocrity rules..........

FA Press Conf just now in short...

Roy Hodgson doesn't think he should be there but didn't want to be accused of shirking.

Martin Glenn said he's not a football man?!

Jesus f**king wept...

The talent aint being produced at all to me, all I need to know is not a single English player would get in a top 5 Club side in Europe right now and I would say it has been like that for about three years. Talking top class players here and we aint got a single one.

sirjimmyglass wrote:
I wouldn't say Sven was a massive failure, two WC QFs and one Euros QF - lost two of those on penalties. It looks like a golden era after mclaren and fabio and woy. He had better players though.

How many English players are playing outside the UK in the top division of any country (except USA)?

How many of the England squad play outside England?

Richard Archer wrote:
This has been evident for a good few years now, Ashley Cole probably being the last world class player we had. The question is why though?

For me it's got to be down to the foreign influence in our game. Foreign owners employing foreign managers who are buying foreign players. Even youth teams are stacked with foreign kids these days. The thing is though, due to the premium fees being asked for English players can you blame a manager for looking for value and going abroad?

Money, that's why. Players are now classed as brands (and some managers) what a load of s..ite.

The money thrown at the Premier League has created a lazy non-competitive league, when the MU players had Fergie kicking them up the jeer, and bullying them. hey presto....no secret formula.

thesilentone wrote:

What would a ferguson side have got if they'd performed like that? Would those players have treat that game so seemingly casually if ferguson had been in charge? What do you think Woy did at half time? Gave 'em all a hug and told 'em how fantastic they are? I suspect so. Alan Shearer was pretty suucinct and in my opinion spot on in his assessment on the highlights show.

I thought back to the team/squad we had in Euro 96 and asked myself would they have beaten Iceland? I think they would have and they would have done a professional job of it too!

One of the most telling things for me is when you look at the England squad ,every single one of them play in England. That's not a one off either, it happens at most tournaments. That can't be healthy for a countries footballing development that none of it's players are prepared to try a different league. The Belgium side play in 8 different leagues, the French in 6 and the Germans 5. It brings with it a different understanding of the way football is played that we just don't have.
We've had supposed quality players like Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard who have been happy to take the cushy option and spend their whole careers in the Premier league - if Rooney had gone abroad at 25 for a few years it could really have lifted him to the next level but it's clearly not something he wanted to do. Of course they come across these other players in the Premier league or European competitions but it isn't the same as playing week in week out in the Bundersliga or La Liga.
Lineker, Gazza, Waddle, Platt, Hoddle, Paul Ince, McManaman, Des Walker were all part of England's semi final teams and all got oversees league experience at some point.

Quiz question: Since Euro 96 just 3 players have had pitch time for England at a major tournament whilst playing outside England. Who are they?

Hargreaves, Beckham and eerm i'm not sure.


Gazza?

In my lifetime, we have got to two semi-finals.
In both cases, history has distorted how good we were in those tournaments.
In Euro 96, we played pretty well, but we were at home.
In Italia 90 we scraped past Belgium and Cameroon, neither of which were brilliant teams.

We have always been shit. This was a new low, but we know the players aren't as bad as they played last night, something went very wrong.

Just because we have the Premier League doesn't mean the national team will do well.
The Premier League is just like a 'super league' these days.

I thought that we could get to the semis this time, but that is not because I am delusional.
I don't think it was an impossible task to beat Iceland and then expect us to be able to give the likes of France a game.

This was a new low that doesn't compare to previous 'humiliations' of losing to the likes of Italy, Portugal and Germany on penalties.

It does grate on me listening to the likes of Shearer, Ian Wright, Chris Waddle, talking as if we were really good back in their day. We weren't.

It doesn't compare to the Olympics where we have bought gold medals in obscure sports, or rugby and cricket where we are only competing with a handful of nations. [censored] like Greg Dyke sitting round a table is completely pointless. No 'blue sky thinking' or 'pushing the envelope' would have helped Joe Hart be competent last night.

It's a game, a game we are not very good at.

McManaman at Real Madrid during Euro2000, did he get on the pitch?

Edit, yeah he scored v Portugal!

Assume the question meant outside of Britain as I am sure my 3 are correct.

Maybe all our young players should come through the Futsal system of playing as they do in Brazil and other countries, then maybe they will learn about skill on the ball.

Gazza never played for England again after Hoddke discarded him prior to France 98.

There's a book called Every Boy's Dream that goes into detail the issues of clubs producing young talent that goes on to have a pro career and play at the top level. Well worth a read if you're interested in grassroots football and this subject area. If I remember correctly it states that 90 odd percent of players in youth football don't go on to h e any kind of pro career. Really interesting read.

Learning basics of being able to use both feet to play the ball with is essential.. that goes for everyone.. Never seen such abunch of one footed players in the england team and inability to use both feet competently.... especially if out on the wing...check back after check back. We need to go back to simplicity. 4-4-2 with decent wingers. We have had no decent crosser of the ball and true dribbling off wingers since the days of chris waddle. Watching sterling just makes me think how overated he is when i compare him to players of yesteryear

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CCU, I didn't say he did.

I've had to resort to Google as my memory is not what it once was. Wiki says he was at Rangers '95-98.

markredfox73 wrote:
Totally agree, was never a great fan of the hype around Beckham, but fair play to him, he made himself a better player by lots of hard work on the training ground.

I wonder how many of players stop behind, just to practise ball skills?

Champions95 wrote:
On the whole I'd agree with you but Sampdoria absolutely ruined Des Walker and he was never the same player again.Gordon Cowans played for Bari with Platt but I don't think he got capped not with Bryan Robson around.

*Just checked Cowans got 10 Caps, I must have missed them.

We don't get many top English players moving to Europe for two reasons ,the first technically Europen football is a higher standard, secondly the Premier league financially is the top league in the World.
The premier league has huge talent from all over the world,we have enough quality English players to compete with any other national team. The majority of our top performing players in the Premier league this season did not perform in the Euros, balance that with Hodgsons poor tactics ,poor playing systems adopted and squad selection cost us dearly. There has to be a reason why we cannot perform in tournement football.Kane ,Ali,Rooney,Vardy,Stirling,Sturidge all match winners , not one performed to any sort level required for International football yet most of those players would get into any other European Squads in the Euros.

Yeah Beckham, McManaman and Hargreaves. Gazza was a Rangers player during Euro 96 but I'm not really counting that (plus the question was post Euro 96). By France 98 it was an entire squad full of English based players. There has to be something in that.

I missed the tournament bit. Balls.

Owen at Real Madrid would be one surely?

Edit - only during qualifying for 2006 World Cup.

seabird wrote:
Third: Language

We're shit at learning foreign languages. A lot of the rest of europe learn english as a 2nd language at school. We get some "ou est la plage" level french, so the players, like the rest of us, are fish out of water going abroad, especially to live there. I only read of McManaman being really able to hack the language barrier.

Agree . Does anything else think it's really embarrassing when the BBC put Thierry Henry next to Rio Ferdinand. The bloke who is supposed to be speaking his second language is eloquent and coherent and the other one just mumbles incomprehensively like some weird footballing Rowley Birkin.

Dentonholmersimpson wrote:
None of them going on last night!!

We're shite at tournament football.

Why not abandon international friendlies and play four team mini tournaments.We could also bring back the home internationals. At least it would bring back a bit of competitive spirit.

Flatcap wrote:
Friendlies are to be competitive when UEFA's Nation's League starts after the next World Cup...

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Nations_League

Flatcap wrote:
Just a slight change to that post and I agree completely.

Just simply not very good. Reason not many play abroad is nobody really wants them, it's not because they don't want to go - most would struggle mind as we are very different to the rest of the world, you can't beat the English/Brits for having a laugh - wears you down a bit when you are around foreigners constantly after a while. I don't blame aspiring English players for not rushing to move abroad in all honesty, especially when the wages are so good on their doorstep. There is more to football than what is on offer in England mind despite what many people think.

Foreign players are the key men in many leagues, spend five minutes thinking about the main men in each big league in Europe and very few are from that nation at the end of the day.

Simply not very good and also pretty arrogant on and off the pitch about how good we are. The atmospheres are crap now around England and as for the prices, Jesus wept. Time to bloody accept it and do something about it or we will be in the same position in ten years and for a lot longer than that but now people are more concerned about the EU than Football in England it would appear.

I have a feeling we're going to cock up the qualifying for the world cup if we're going to have Gareth Southgate as interim manager this season then either Wenger or Brendan Rodgers in May. Very tricky match up first in Slovakia away. With the negative mood within the squad I have a feeling it could be a demoralising defeat and with a Scotland team desperate to qualify in the group as well we could struggle if we don't get the right man in soon.

Richard Archer wrote:
Are you saying that this is a bad thing?!

chesterviabothel wrote:
Ha, I'm saying I would rather go back to the days when Football dominated conversation amongst lads and not bloody politics in all honesty! If they showed the passion they have for politics recently on the football front we might start getting somewhere regarding change.

Tonyhemmings wrote:
No chance, we got the weakest qualifying group going and I wouldn't be surprised if we won every game again.

Wukkie wrote:
Lots of people were saying exactly that 3 weeks ago.