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

is this mentality tied to over-competitiveness at youth level?

Yes, I think so. The excellent article on Ajax stressed the focus on individuals rather than team results- often to the extreme of entire youth teams really only existing to support the development of the one or two potential stars in it.

Almost scared to bore people with passing.

i'd say nearly 50% of the problem could broadly be aligned with this tbh.

scared to bore people != successfully completing 5 yards passes

English lumpish big strong we'll-worry-about-technique-and-possession-when-we-see-what-height-you-finish-up-son youth development has obviously been a thing for a long long time.

A long long time, like the entire history of English football basically?

In some ways it'll probably be a small country doing a Hungary 7-1 score at Wembley that might get the FA or someone to wake up.

That was 1953 remember.

Yeah but I think Ramsey's 60s team were tactically innovative and modern. Problem is we've had nobody forward-thinking in charge since then- Venables perhaps, but I hear the "Theme from Flash Harry" in my head whenever I think of the dude.

Not that that's got anything to do with his tactical nous.

was gonna say ask me would i swap arry for straight man curbishley or whoever

Dodgy geezers make the best managers, look how shit Italian football went when they tried to clean it up.

Yeah but I think Ramsey's 60s team were tactically innovative and modern

At the time, yes - but you've been playing the same way ever since! Also, Ramsey was all about hard work + organisation + fitness not flair

http://www.tvcream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/cole.jpg

"Awight lads, vis is called ver Chwistmas Twee"

Also, Ramsey was all about hard work + organisation + fitness not flair

one out of the first three present at the WC

Hard work + organisation + fitness = Catenaccio? Works for me.

Also, Ramsey was all about hard work + organisation + fitness not flair

one out of the first three present at the WC

― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 23 July 2010 12:42 (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I can't even figure out which one you are suggesting.

lol that's whay yer shit

(I was granting them hard work, tbh)

Hard work + organisation + fitness = Catenaccio? Works for me.

Fuck yer Catenaccio

http://www.rankopedia.com/CandidatePix/32860.gif

Thinking about Spain this World Cup a lot of the outright flair players didn't really produce the results tho. Iniesta for example did a lot of that mazy ball-on-a-string shit to little effect, mostly. It was the organisation and work ethic that won them the tournament.

no....

I'm biased because I grew up watching the England vs. Scotland game every year... which was always the same... five foot nothing Scottish forwards trying to dribble their way past nine foot tall English defenders, ball playing Scottish midifeld trying to do the unfashionable thing and pass the ball run off their feet by English duracell bunnies, comedy Scottish goalkeeper, some poaching bastard like Lineker scores the only goal of the game

the truism about tiki-taka as defensive strategy kinda proved itself in the world cup.....the other side seldom wins the ball, and when they do it's largely in their own half w/ almost the entire spain team in front of them ready to recover possession

xp watching some old highlights the other day, didn't realise at the time just how good Lineker was

I'm totally a fan of tiki-taka but it seems to me that as a system it doesn't require outright flair players. Strong technique and positional sense, yeah. Jesus I would settle for (excuse pun) passable technique from an England team at the moment.

xp watching some old highlights the other day, didn't realise at the time just how good Lineker was

... great at diving, just ask Cameroon.

Germany turned things round pretty quickly, didn't they?

When did England beat them 5-1? They were fucking rubbish then.

Gay guys more open-minded, innit?

Also perhaps it had reached the point where Ballack was the albatross dragging them down. Felt the same way about Bryan Robson's entire international career tbh.

Yes. And Lamps/Stevie G?

I'm totally a fan of tiki-taka but it seems to me that as a system it doesn't require outright flair players. Strong technique and positional sense, yeah. Jesus I would settle for (excuse pun) passable technique from an England team at the moment.

xavi, iniesta, silva and villa may not be ~flair~ players in that they seldom go in for meretricious tricks, but their close control and core skills are of a rarified level that other sides can't match (except for argentina w/ messi and aguero)

there aren't really any lessons for england in their success because england will never play that football, and will be lucky to develop a single player in a generation who gets near their level of technique and football-sense

hence the abortive efforts to include 35 yr old scholes

Do you think, in theory, that it's exceptionally difficult to develop players with technique and football-sense?

I remember seeing little kids -6 or 7 yo - playing in a park in Barcelona, just a pickup game, not an organised event. The amount of skill and positioning sense was amazing, none of the boot the ball forward and everyone chase it stuff you get over here. its a football culture thing as much as training methods imo.

Do you think, in theory, that it's exceptionally difficult to develop players with technique and football-sense?

― flashing drill + penis fan (Noodle Vague), Friday, 23 July 2010 13:13 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

brazil and holland do this all the time and other countries are catching them up so no.

there aren't really any lessons for england in their success because england will never play that football, and will be lucky to develop a single player in a generation who gets near their level of technique and football-sense

― nakhchivan, Friday, 23 July 2010 13:09 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rpHP5-LnPcM/Sx6etA1GJLI/AAAAAAAABXk/dMDeTmJmeu4/s1600/wilshere_wenger.jpg

SUP Y'ALLLLLLLLL

xpost

Yeah this is what I think. Don't really buy into culture as an expression of National Spirit or some other 19th century nuttiness, think cultures can be changed if the will is there.

Of course I don't doubt for a second that in England's case, the will ain't there.

Do you think, in theory, that it's exceptionally difficult to develop players with technique and football-sense?

― flashing drill + penis fan (Noodle Vague), Friday, 23 July 2010 13:13 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

brazil and holland do this all the time and other countries are catching them up so no.

― one man meme-denier - jol in? (a hoy hoy), Friday, July 23, 2010 12:28 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

a hoy hoy otm here.

Also think tomofthenest is correct about the culture thing.
I would settle for England developing players who don't mind receiving the ball when marked. Also players happy to give the ball to teammates who AREN'T in space confident that they will manage to retain possession. A lot of the time with England their passing looks so poor, and they revert to the long ball so often, not because the players are terrible at finding space necessarily but because they seem to rule out passing short to anyone if an opponent is in the general vicinity, oddly enough they seem happy to pump a long ball to someone similarly marked so go figure.

A pretty long and relatively unbroken stint of English club success in the Champions League has fooled much of the English footballing establishment into believing that everything's fine.

If we go four or five years without English clubs getting much further than the quarter or semi-final then that delusion might slip, but the clubs will spend big to avoid that happening, and probably not on English players.

scared to bore people != successfully completing 5 yards passes

― one man meme-denier - jol in? (a hoy hoy), Friday, 23 July 2010 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Its all varying the pace and number of passes, sometimes its 5 x 5 yeard passes, at others 30. Ultimately => whatever is necessary.

Part of the reason things don't change is prem league resistance but the other part is because we are mostly fed on championship type stuff which people really like (and is exciting as spectacle). That brings in the bacon, making the championship bigger than the Bundesliga, its all good except the once-in-four-years when Eng perform badly in a one month international competition and the fans beat themselves about until the end of August or so.

I can see other countries overtaking Eng because football isn't as big a show so there is less focus on 'product' and more room to get a good team with good technique playing well together.

Ultimately the way Eng may not be 'an expression of the national spirit' but its certainly an expression of the ways things are in the particular country.

Clubs like Doncaster or to an extent Notts Forest have played a more measured passing game in the Championship of late and I don't think it's had a negative effect on their gates tho?

I would settle for England developing players who don't mind receiving the ball when marked. Also players happy to give the ball to teammates who AREN'T in space confident that they will manage to retain possession.

ties directly to technique, movement

also, i suppose, the propensity of your opponents to press. see- spanish league, midfielders, bovvered?

NV - But what if a lot of clubs lower down adopted a diff style, diff formations, etc. and toned down on what was described as 'stupid' in that F365 article?

Also I don't know what the football is like in Italian, German or Dutch lower leagues. I don't wanna get down and blame things on the championship in particular, but a wider look across the whole of eng football has to be taken.

i don't know that i'd describe forest's passing game as 'measured' tho- they're a very attack minded team, they just keep the ball on the ground.

Do you think, in theory, that it's exceptionally difficult to develop players with technique and football-sense?

― flashing drill + penis fan (Noodle Vague), Friday, 23 July 2010 13:13 (1 hour ago)

to the level of iniesta, yeah

i'd say that depends on the national emphasis on technique (for w/e cultural reasons) and specifically the barcelona school which takes it to an extreme, so they can field an entire midfield of players who would be star #10s for the other big nations

even brazil, w/ 190m ppl and their illustrious history/enthusiasm for football only have a few super technical players (diego, robinho, neymar maybe) and even then they lack the efficiency and system-oriented play of x + i et al

i think you're probably correct w/ the hope that england can just develop similar types of players but with more comfortable close control and more patience, like if you want to field a team of big lads who can kick ppl, at least ensure they can 'play a bit' to use the telling cliché

germany are a far better exemplar than spain for england to follow, if there is the will (probably not as you say)

england fwd with the best touch- k davies, btw

Yeah I think expecting England to become a completely different footballing nation is wildly optimistic and unnecessary, but the gaping absence of fundamentals surely has got to be addressed. Thing is that it has to be the FA that takes that lead and I don't really see the FA as leaders.

i waver a bit re damning the english for lacking core skills when i think of a team like doncaster - regular players passing it around like buggery purely as a result of o'driscoll's bloody-mindedness on the training pitch.

to a lesser extent (more foreign players) you couldve said the same in recent years about mowbray at wba, or even magilton's one crazy month where it all went right at qpr - truly startling how quickly they reverted to donkeys once they lost their nerve and the manager started headbutting them.

A pretty long and relatively unbroken stint of English club success in the Champions League has fooled much of the English footballing establishment into believing that everything's fine.

If we go four or five years without English clubs getting much further than the quarter or semi-final then that delusion might slip, but the clubs will spend big to avoid that happening, and probably not on English players.

― Matt DC, Friday, 23 July 2010 14:14 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ummm... Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs - the top 4, if not the big 4 - have spent the past ten years pumping money into youth development and are starting to see the effects of it (United's history of it, Arsenal is obv with 400 tricky midfielders, ok I dunno about Chelsea but they are letting go of a lot of 'big names' and not buying any replacements so its possible that opportunities for a Mancienne or whoever could open up?, and Spurs is Spurs, good w/ defenders, that Danny Rose fella etc.)

xpost

Felt like at QPR you had a nice compact pitch that suited the passing game but it went to shit when you had to play away. Could be wrong about that but I guess the possibility of being out-muscled and out-hoofed on a huge pitch is one of the factors that makes it risky for teams to try and play it cute?

look at fulham- fantastic footballers? not really. good tidy possession football? yep.

its possible that opportunities for a Mancienne or whoever could open up?

bollocks to that I think they should sell him :D