England National football team thread

[War]

FA's Dan Ashworth says England have fallen behind the best teams - ESPN FC

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FFP will be a "thing" then?

Not sure yet to be fair.

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Do we know if Hoddle's in the running? Personally, I'd like to see him stay with U21s for a while and then return as the senior England manager; he did a great job last time.

Well the media is certainly pushing his case, don't know what the inner FA circle is thinking really.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

FA's Dan Ashworth says England have fallen behind the best teams - ESPN FC.

No - really? The evidence is there for all to see - not too long ago we'd let a 'top' team know they'd been in a game before they knocked us out on penalties after being jammy bastards in 90mins and ET (Germany 1990, Germany 1996, Argentina 1998, Portugal 2004 and 2006 to name a few). Now when we get drawn against a Germany/Italy/Spain, I just get worried unless it's a friendly; seems we have a chance then - y'know when it doesn't mean anything. In the meantime, we're still just as mediocre against the smaller teams as we've ever been.

 

[Skater]

The England Under 20s, after big talk about how they were going to restore pride after the U21s debacle, managed to throw away a 2 goal lead to draw 2-2 with Iraq yesterday. Yes, Iraq.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

The England Under 20s, after big talk about how they were going to restore pride after the U21s debacle, managed to throw away a 2 goal lead to draw 2-2 with Iraq yesterday. Yes, Iraq.

Gawd!

Where's that tournament being televised - if at all?

 

[Skater]

Gawd!

Where's that tournament being televised - if at all?

Eurosport.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Eurosport.

Thanks; doesn't sound as though this one's worth tuning in for highlights. Disastrous result taking the opposition into account, but a draw in itself isn't a disaster. We obviously need to play tons better of course.

I hope they're showing all the matches; let's see if Spain's conveyor belt of talented players is coming to a shuddering halt any time soon (I am not holding my breath...).

Fortunately the group doesn't look that hard to escape from so hopefully we'll be OK.

Still... a draw with Iraq... bloody hell.

 

[Skater]

Thanks; doesn't sound as though this one's worth tuning in for highlights. Disastrous result taking the opposition into account, but a draw in itself isn't a disaster. We obviously need to play tons better of course.

I hope they're showing all the matches; let's see if Spain's conveyor belt of talented players is coming to a shuddering halt any time soon (I am not holding my breath...).

Fortunately the group doesn't look that hard to escape from so hopefully we'll be OK.

Still... a draw with Iraq... bloody hell.

Eurosport are showing every game I think. They were showing the USA v France earlier today.

Spain beat the USA 4-1 in their opening group game.

 

[War]

FA director of elite development Dan Ashworth takes long-term approach to England team revival - Telegraph

 

[Bevab]

BBC Sport - Under-20 World Cup: England knocked out after Egypt defeat

Losing to Egypt, wow, just wow!

 

[MasterBlaster76]

BBC Sport - Under-20 World Cup: England knocked out after Egypt defeat

Losing to Egypt, wow, just wow!

Words don't do it justice. doesn't do it justice.

Even the Vader facepalm doesn't do it justice.

England's International dreams lie in Intensive Care.

Meanwhile, not a day goes by without another foreigner arriving in our league. Is it any wonder the England teams are getting worse and worse? And of course the situation won't change because the show is run by the Premiership and not the FA; the Premiership care as much about the England team as the increasing number of foreign owners.

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FA director of elite development Dan Ashworth takes long-term approach to England team revival - Telegraph

Long term - how many centuries: one or two? Because unless something is done about the lack of English players getting out there on the pitch we'll probably be strolling around on Mars before England win anything.

FA chairman David Bernstein says Premier League needs more English players | Sky Sports



30% English players. Please - someone tell me I've completely misread that article. How long since it was 38% - two years? Three? How long before it's 20%, 10%, 0%?

 

[Skater]

Yes the under 20s were absolutely crap last night. But I still would rather have a strong Premier League and a crap England team than the other way round.

 

[Lee1981]

If your good enough you will be given a chance, simple as

We just don't bring any decent players through the ranks,

You can't tell me the top teams in England don't put any time or money in developing young English players?

They just are not good enough, and that boils down to our coaching methods, my little boy who is 6 and is in a team I see it already, just awful,awful coaching,

So from next week I'm running his team, I'm no coach, but played enough good level football to see what the hell the problem is.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

If your good enough you will be given a chance, simple as

We just don't bring any decent players through the ranks,

You can't tell me the top teams in England don't put any time or money in developing young English players?

They just are not good enough, and that boils down to our coaching methods, my little boy who is 6 and is in a team I see it already, just awful,awful coaching,

So from next week I'm running his team, I'm no coach, but played enough good level football to see what the hell the problem is.

Well yeah, the coaching at grass roots is a pile of crap as well; let's hope you can get it turned around for your boy and he crashes one in the top left corner past a German keeper one day to win England the World Cup. (Well, you never know. )

I'm not sure if it's down to whether they're not good enough: what has changed since we brought through the Fergie Fledglings, for example? What has changed since the 90s when we were generally knocking loudly on the door (let's gloss over the '94 disaster, eh)?

The fact that we've now only got 30% English players in the Premiership can't help though, can it? Look at the situation in Germany: 60% native players; Spain, probably fairly similar.

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Yes the under 20s were absolutely crap last night. But I still would rather have a strong Premier League and a crap England team than the other way round.

There's no reason we can't have both. Look at France; they were rubbish - absolutely hopeless. They looked at what was wrong, fixed it and won the World Cup ten years later. And of course, look at Spain. Coaching must be addressed, but there also needs to be room in the teams for the players coming through. Germany - they'll be next.

It's good to see Glen Hoddle being so outspoken - he's a real football man and the sort of bloke who should be involved with coaching at a very deep level. Didn't he have some sort of academy in Spain a while back where players who didn't make it over here (because they weren't 'athletic' enough) were given another chance? And remember the job he did as England manager (forget the faith healer nonsense - if you focus on the football he did a very good job). I'd love to see him as U21 manager and I fully agree with his view that we should use Brazil next year (if we get there) as a learning experience instead of going there believing we can win. We can't. We won't. Getting to the quarter finals would be a magnificent result.

 

[War]

England's delusion exposed by dire results of Under-21s, U20s and U19s | Paul Wilson | Football | The Observer

 

[MasterBlaster76]

That's a good article, but I don't agree with this bit:

though if the players have not got the necessary toughness and technique they will ultimately be found out in tournaments by teams and players who have. That, by and large, has been England's story for the past 40 years, and on this summer's evidence the pattern is going to be repeated for several generations to come.

That hasn't been the story by and large for the past forty years. When I've seen England come up against a 'bigger' team, we always seemed to raise our game - really give it a go, often outplay the bigger team - but get knocked out on penalties. There was nothing wrong with the way England played against Germany 1990, 1996 (I fully believe that had we got past them we would've won both tournaments) Holland 1996 - we destroyed a top Dutch team that night, Argentina 1998 (lived with them even when down to ten men - and had a goal disallowed) etc, etc; you've all seen the list before. No, the problem for me is very recently the above statement has been true. We come up against a better team, we get badly found out - Germany 2010; Italy 2012.

Things have taken a worryingly bad turn for the worse over the past six or seven years; the last time we had a decent tournament was 2004 - when Rooney terrorised everyone until picking up that damn injury. Even in 2006 we were mediocre - we raised our game against Portugal; they didn't know what to do with Hargreaves, while Ashley Cole kept Ronaldo in his back pocket - but before that, we were very ordinary. Since then, we haven't given a top International team a decent game when it truly matters - forget friendlies. Germany thrashed us, and Italy thrashed us 0-0; they had so many chances it could've been even worse than the Germany game.

Increasingly, one has to wonder whether the Premier League itself is part of the problem. Not simply because it imports so many foreign players and managers and makes the overall English standard look higher than it actually is, but because the riches on offer to the relatively small band of homegrown players talented enough to make it tend to skew their perspective.

Agreed; 1,000,000% agreed.

As Sol Campbell recently pointed out, many young English players at Premier League clubs seem to think they have already made it, that they are the finished article without any need for further learning or the discipline required to make a team more than the sum of its parts. He might have a point, and Paul Scholes was equally telling when he complained that in his experience too many England players played for themselves, seeking the spotlight instead of knuckling down and accepting the responsibility of working as a team.

That's also a very big part of the problem - if Scholesy was complaining about that, then it most definitely was going on; Scholes isn't the sort of player to rock the boat unnecessarily.

For the first time in ages, our Fifa ranking accurately represents where we are; in fact it could be said that fifteenth best in the world flatters us.