Tragic Football Stories - Let us Kick Around the misshapen Jabulani that is English football right here

This is the most repulsive development of this decade, all this insidious Help For Heroes at football matches shit. Go shove a fucking depleted uranium tip up your fucking arsehole Wrighty!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa2EplzQ7xA

Wilkins demonstrating the sort of hard man shit he used to pull, testing the referee's knee

England don't have the players to play dirty even if they wanted to.

cattermole?

"Roy Hodgson is a likeable man who's very good with the press. But if this was Fabio Capello he'd be getting pelters."

Scholesey otm

appointment of hodgson in itself was a good way of normalising expectations

like

"We're shit. We're likely to remain so. We'd better get a shit manager."

?

Seems to me that a moderation of the absurdly high expectations of England fans and the English press is to be welcomed; while we could decide that it's just little-Englandism finding another outlet it doesn't feel that way to me.

Having said that, it would only take a few convincing victories to re-kindle the fire of unrealism, I'm sure.

what Tim said.

hodgson isn't a shit manager and England aren't shit. they get to most tournaments and lack the ability/cuteness to perform at those.

appointing a manager above and beyond that level wasn't rly fair on him.

hodgson isn't a shit manager and England aren't shit.

Given what you've seen of the other three teams in that group would you say one barely contested point from nine is an indicator of not being shit?

Would you say the manager's insistence that if he had the same games over there's nothing he would do differently as an indicator of not being shit?

Waddle was going off about a lack of interest in ball skills at the junior level yesterday and Shearer / Lineker were nodding furiously but idk how you go about changing the mentality of a nation of coaches and kids.

Hodgson may or may not have reasons for what he said about not changing anything - most likely he means that given what he knew at any given point he stands by the decisions he made, I don't suppose he means "oh if I'd known how the game was going to go I wouldn't have told Glen Johnson to get in the way of that cross."

Also, taking what football people say in interviews seriously is madness, judging their quality on what they say in interviews even more so.

i hear that a lot - "a lack of interest in ball skills"

the ball is the only piece of equipment in the fucking game, what other skills are there

tackling iirc

also running and jumping

and positional awareness

xpost Running up and down skills, falling over skills, being too honest skills, refereee intimidation skills. Oh and positional skills but we're less interested in those than we are in ball skills, so ignore those for now.

idk, like is capello shit? Sven?

Shouting and pointing skills! How could I forget? The main attribute of any great captain.

emoting skills

emote control?

Also, taking what football people say in interviews seriously is madness, judging their quality on what they say in interviews even more so.

It's evidenced in his team selection too. A couple of weaving but unproductive runs from Sterling and a Sturridge tap in convinced him he'd picked such a good team to play Italy he shouldn't change a single player for Uruguay.

idk, like is capello shit? Sven?

Capello seemed unable for the most part to get tournament performances out of decent England players. Sven I think did mostly ok with what was at his disposal.

There's a whole load of expectation management issues in how a manager's success is judged. I personally think losing in the last 8-16 is a reasonable expectation for a nation of England's size and talent pool. Losing in the groups is a failure.

to me Hodgson didn't look fully comfortable adopting the style of play needed to get the most out of his better players i.e. the younger forwards, so he ended up with a kind of bad faith mish-mash that didn't work particularly in any area.

plus saddled with the usual bottlers/showboaters etc

the sturridge tap in was an excellent move tbf

xxp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28122235

The senior players sense it if you doubt yourself and, if they sense a weakness, their natural instinct is to see if you can push a player down now and again to see if they can come back up.

There was not a chance of that happening with Pogba. I remember Paul Scholes kicking the living daylights out of him in every single training session, every day.

But he earned our respect by never moaning, never shouting and never making a fuss.

But he earned our respect by never moaning, never shouting and never making a fuss......and getting the fuck out and away to Juventus soon as he possibly could

Capello is pretty obviously not right for international management.

I mean I pity him for having to take over a load of flakes like England and Russia but the sort of characters who work at club level don't always work at international level.

tournament management maybe, but he qualifies like a MF

Would cost Russia $25m to sack him so they might have to stick with him for the foreseeable.

Owen on 2002 -That is how they beat England. It wasn’t much of a game and we certainly did not play to our potential, but it was Rivaldo’s brilliance turning the tie Brazil’s way before Ronaldinho’s fluke winner.

Love the way England players never deviate from this assertion that the goal was lucky.

pigshit thick

imagine living in a world where despite having the talent to beat every team at the highest level you seem to be undone by flukes over and over and over again

England = Sisyphus

“Embarrassing to see dinosaur Hodgson questioning the fitness regime of the forward-thinking manager Brendan Rodgers. Roy Hodgson’s incompetence must be frustrating for educated managers like Brendan Rodgers who travelled the world.”

so this is what dj martian's up to

got visions of a Roy Hodgson version of Fighting Round the World now

chiellini wingplay merks phil jones

England
01 Hart
02 Clyne (Walker - 45' )
05 Smalling (Carrick - 44' )
06 Jagielka
03 Gibbs (Bertrand - 88' )
04 Henderson (Mason - 74' )
08 Jones
11 Delph (Townsend - 70' )
10 Rooney
07 Walcott (Barkley - 55' )
09 Kane

didnt see any of the game but fucking christ this xi is some 1983 dogshit

how bout if I told u delph was best

i'd say you didn't see any of it then, because delph was fucking rank and couldn't pass the ball, england looked a damn sight better when he came off. his replacement scored the goal even

carrick england's motm

rly what was the point of any of this, lol at the media even halfheartedly calling it an experimental side

assessing jack cork should have been the first thing on hodgson's friendly agenda imo

Is this better, or have a few better coaches at clubs just under top-class with a mandate to string a few English lads into a coherent system made this look better, is there a difference?

"navas taking sterling's place, another example of a foreigner playing hurting english football" is what i thought i heard glenn hoddle just say

Dinho berbatov √√√√√
<3

that's an almost indiscreet number of legends in one post, deems

Jack whitehall √

Youd think damian lewis could at least act like a footballer

On evidence whitehall is a better winger than son

Daniel Busch ‏@dan_bu 9h
Leipzig manager Hasenhüttl says Burke has great potential, but his "harddrive is completely empty", regarding how to work against the ball

lol

This match