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

WTF

Nigel Quashie has a Scottish granddad though - to play for Scotland, you have to have no more than a second generation link to Scotland. It's not like at present we're hoovering up all random Englishers who can't get a game, just the ones with Scottish grannies (you do all know that Craig Levein contacted every agent in the UK and asked them to check the lineage of all their clients just in case they had a Scottish granny and fancied a game, hence Matt Gilks?).

Not sure what, if any, precedent a nationalised British citizen with no parental or grandparental links to any of the home nations would have on this current set-up.

xpost, haha, not surprised Andy Roxburgh was involved in that. Learning a lot without it actually being any use was kind of his thing.

England's outstanding player not exactly high praise

I knew that Quashie qualified (plus loads of others since I think), I just assumed the 'no Arteta' rule had some wider aspect to it. If the only thinking behind it is to stop guys like Arteta, well what's the point of that?

England's outstanding player not exactly high praise

Inclusion for Rooney in the top 3 is far too high, however.

would have picked lennon upson and terry

forgot rob green!

Presume is just in case every Britisher player ever fails to get caps because of all these pesky foreigners coming in and stealing their jobs? I notice that rugby and cricket don't care quite so much.

xposts

it's to avoid our country becoming a laughing stock innit

it's to avoid our country becoming 4 separate laughing stocks innit

http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01122/MANAGERSPLASH_1122899a.jpg

That will have the rest of the world quaking in their boots with mirth

Big Sam's first press conference as England boss in two years' time: "it's time to get back to old-fashioned English virtues, no disrespect to Mr Capello but he's not English and he doesn't understand blah blah..."

he doesn't understand strong defending, he's italian!

fuck all that continental franco baresi 'defending', we need to get back to basics gary cahill defending.

really surprised at the lack of fuss over the best coach ye could have leaving.

tho he did have a shit WC i suppose.

he did shit to be fair. i honestly think harry is the man for the job. the players prob are pig ignorant enough that they favour an english boss...

the players prob are pig ignorant enough that they favour an english boss...

Not many of them play under one... apart from 'Arry

I can see an argument for saying that if the players must have English nationality then the coach shd. I don't think I agree but it's iffy.

I'll be happy enough with an English coach cos it'll be one less bullshit excuse for continued failure and whoever gets the job will probably be due for a kick in the hubris.

yeah i did think of that when i was writing it tom, but like, i dunno, for the weird way that job works i can see how maybe an english coach, no language barrier, etc, might be a better idea, motivation seems like the biggest part of it when you see the players so rarely.

anyone think trapp would have done a better job than capello? gotta say his motivational/organisational talent shines through hugely, if his tactics are v dull.

Capello is too good to have to put up with these cunts.

quite

cunts = the f.a., players, jingoist media, english managers, fans etc etc

yeah capello's international record is second to none to be fair, unlike the players.

oh wait

good to get a disastrous English manager out of the way before some Polack comes over here, takes our jobs, and wins the 2018 World Cup in England.

either that or, come the end of 2014: arise, Sir Paul Gascoigne.

They're going to raise him from the dead?

... sorry

tough but fair.

xp deeply unpleasant person imo

how about ray wilkins? he's worked with scolari, hiddink and ancelotti... just a thought.

Psycho for the job

^^^ Consider the source

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8991881.stm

Glenn Hoddle on some Harry Potter 'pure blood' shit right there.

I've been thinking - if we did a poll on Arteta-situtation players, what would the options be?

1) I think players should only be allowed to play for their 'primary nationality', and only have a choice if that's genuinely ambiguous (as for, say, Michael Owen/ Marcel Desailly) - "footballing considerations" shouldn't come into it.
2) Players with a strong, but secondary nationality from a parent are fine (e.g. Owen Hargreaves), but players with no family connection aren't.
3) Cacau/Arteta/Almunia etc are fine with me - if a nation gives them citizenship, then they should be allowed to play for it.

I tend to lean towards 2 I think. But as far as managers are concerned I like the medieval Italian city-state idea where you bring in a foreigner cos they're above the internecine squabbling.

(Possibly a truly cosmopolitan option 4 needed too - uncapped players should be able to play for any country they wish to, regardless of citizenship - no problems with John Barnes/Tony Cascarino etc)

The 'rejects' team that should be allowed in every world cup would solve these problems

Or England, to give them their full title.

BOOM

3) Cacau/Arteta/Almunia etc are fine with me - if a nation gives them citizenship, then they should be allowed to play for it.

The only problem I see with this is it isn't fair. Deco can go to Portugal before the age of 18, get a Portuguese passport in 2 years and be eligible. We cannot get a player from outside the EU to play here until he has played 50% of his national teams games in the past two years or got a special talent visa (i.e. the utd twins, lucas and denilson for their success for the brazilian national u19 or u17 teams) AND then wait five years for them to be eligible for citizenship...

if we could get every uncapped foreigner in the premiership to potentially play for england after two years, we'd only have about 5 englishers left in the team :)

you'd risk a big talent drain away from some nations too i expect

two is the option here i think

Mainz star Holtby chooses Germany over England
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=827179&sec=euro2012&cc=5901

Since the 2005-6 season Bent has scored 78 Premier League goals. Frank Lampard has 67 in the same period, Jermain Defoe 59, Steven Gerrard 56, Peter Crouch 41, and Carlton Cole and Emile Heskey between them – as a kind of raging twin-headed in-the-mixer monster – have 51. Only Wayne Rooney is ahead of Bent, with 82

cant play with rooney blah blah blah

Tonight on BBC2 at 9:30, crisp fans.

England has the strongest, most watched, most successful league in football. Yet none of the superstars who grace the Premier League were even born the last time the English national team won a major trophy. Can England win the next World Cup? England goal-scoring legend and Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker goes in search of answers to this 44-year-old question, gathering the views of some of football's biggest names, including Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klinsmann, Carlo Ancelotti, Harry Redknapp and Johan Cruyff.

Also contributing their views are the FA's Director of Football Development Sir Trevor Brooking, former England coach Terry Venables and Premier League Chief Executive Richard Scudamore.

And Lineker looks at how the Spanish have transformed the fortunes of their national team, how the Germans have reinvented themselves and asks if English football needs to change now, and if we really can have the best league and best team in the world at the same time.

That's a decent set of guests. I could answer their question myself though.

England has the strongest, most watched, most successful league in football.

V. debatable, okay, what does that mean?

Would like to see a joint Geoff Hurst and John Terry interview. Or maybe Gary could ask himself why he didn't win the World Cup in 1990, 1986, etc.