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

i think blaming sven is like blaming rafa for liv last season (yes and no)

couldn't resist watching the eng-ger highlights again under that bbc carragher article

could quite easily have been 4-3 (with england having gone 3-2 up via lampard's "goal" and his free kick which smacked the bar - closer than any german misses). would've flattered england but would've led to the game being thought of as one of their more exciting exits (that didn't involve penalties). but whatever.

the thing that always stands out is the dexterity and precision of the germans. they score from such tight angles. podolski slicing it between james legs...could easily have been blocked or swerved but no it was inch perfect and impeccably timed. same goes for klose's opener - looks like he won't reach it AND be able to poke it in but it just does. the quickness of their third and fourth goals is just as impressive.

anyway for five years now i've said "copy the germans" (not just actually winning or nearly winning or even style of play but arrangements and practices...were their players bored between games? etc.). remember how fucked germany and spain were 7 years ago. analyse their recoveries in every conceivable way. emulate them as much as possible (including the ability to not only cope without key players but adapt to an equivalent or even superior standard without them ie germany sans ballack), unless the PL obstacle really is such a problem that the germans can't be copied in enough ways for the gap to be significantly closed.

feeling more and more that the latter is the case tho. so england are stuck as SHItaly for the foreseeable. a decent performance next Summer would depend more on luck of draw and in games than anything else.

would still much prefer to exit as they did last year than on pens ever again. some sort of progress...

could quite easily have been 4-3

this is true to a point but could also quite easily have been 8-1, like honestly. germany had loads of clearcut chances.

i wonder to what extent the clubs coach flexibility out of the players, finding their optimum role and drilling it in to the point that if they're asked to do something different for England it's too much of a stretch? also the kind of football often played in the EPL is untenable in a summer competition anywhere with reasonably high temperatures/humidity? and by employing two coaches in a row from outside of the English system this gap between what the players can do well and what the England coach is asking them to do has just gotten too wide?

The 2004 European Championship was the last time they looked any good amd that was as English as they've played since then, long balls to Rooney and a lot of pace on the counter iirc.

ha sorry forgot the McLaren interregnum

Was that when Rooney broke his metatarsal, NV?

yeah, the 'could have' will kill ye, at least the average irish fan is a pessimist, it gives you a list of things to work on. The 'hard luck' attitude lets you off easy, and tbh is untrue.

I don't blame sven for the lot, but under him the attitude towards england from key players changed perceptibly imo, it became something you had earned as opposed to something to be earned.

xp

he picked up an injury early in the match against Portugal that we eventually lost on penalties (after having a perfectly legit winner disallowed? haha my memory)

can't remember what the exact injury was, I thought the metatarsal was before 2006 World Cup and the whole Theogate extravaganza

xposts to local garda

well i'm just using the two nearest misses but when you look at the stats it really was surprisingly even.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/27/england-v-germany-match-statistics

as i say germany were just a level up on precision/execution, even for them whereas lamps goal relied on a crossbar deflection and his free kick would've too.

beardsley broke so many mirrors we're still fucking paying for it basically

after having a perfectly legit winner disallowed

Looked legit to me. I believe Campbell was said to have interfered w/the keeper.

yeah i think sven was damaging just in what he epitomises, just his utter careless greed. by the time 2006 came along it was clear everyone knew he was going and the players visibly were completely lacking in motivation. i'm not sure they've recovered since then. they qualified fairly well under capello but then reverted to that woeful lack of creativity in the tournament itself. they were really similar in the way they played in 06 and 10

sven's results were fine, is the thing.

Capello was excellent up until squad selection for the tournament, which was an absolute disaster going on form.

cant remember was the goal legit or not, i think it was.

yeah i don't think anybody but the ref saw the alleged interference

but under him the attitude towards england from key players changed perceptibly imo, it became something you had earned as opposed to something to be earned.

i don't see this really, not even with beckham. i felt there were real improvements in mentality during his time but they didn't stick. something went wrong between 04 and 06 but it is hard to pinpoint what...something about attitudes between sven, the press and the fans perhaps. it had an impact on the players, as carra suggests.

It's very strange how Capello totally lost it in South Africa. The rigidity, the timidity, the woeful morale and PR - like you say, he was great up to then, and even mostly got it back afterwards. Either the whole thing's random, or there's something in the English footballer's psyche that he's read totally wrong.

'not even with beckham'

The most notable exception, actually?

the psyche was 'i'm gonna get picked whether my performance merits it or not' and unfathomably, capello reinforced it in the buildup to that tournament.

He had everything in place to tear that mentality apart and he...i dunno what he did but the players he took to that WC did not warrant it in the six months previous

the only thing i can think re Capello last Summer is he was overcautious due to inexperience at that level...which sounds ridiculous but some similarity with Sven in 02 (except he had a much tougher group draw followed by a much easier 2nd round opponent). i'm not even sure England played better in the 02 group than in the 2010 group really.

didn't england beat argentina in the group in 02?

Best eng wc performance in a game i can recall, that one. Danny mills exceptional at rb

slightly flukey penalty and holding on like crazy for 60 minutes but one of our better performances at that level true

think we might've been wobbly against Sweden? also think Heskey might have scored at some point so maybe i hallucinated the whole tournament

didn't england beat argentina in the group in 02?

Beckham pen right up the middle

worst penalty i've ever seen that actually went in! 02 game vs argentina never struck me as a particularly good performance. decent enough but really not inspiring.

for a really good england wc group game performance i think you have to go all the way back to colombia in 98.

yeah that was a perf tbf, but colombia were no arg.

Heskey scored in the 3-0 victory over Denmark, iIrc

beckham unleashed by hoddle, who's management of him throughout was a shambles

arg weren't that great either tho dmac!

frankly i'm surprised and appalled nobody here remembered it was the 25th anniversary of this last week

http://ih3.redbubble.net/work.1163688.2.flat,550x550,075,f.hand-of-god.jpg

there was a horrible Radio 5 programme about it with Butcher and three or four others talking in front of a live audience and being hilariously bitter about it still

arg 02 weren't bad iirc, it was a pressure game.

yeah there was some brilliant defending from Campbell/Ferdinand in particular

england were excellent against argentina in 98, imo. was there a disallowed goal in that game too? campbell?

oh that rings a bell. yes England were definitely on top of that game until Becks had his moment

england/argentina '98 I remember liking a lot excpet for Simeoni/Becks BS.

they weren't bad but they were by no means better than england (on pitch or on paper) at that point. they couldn't beat Sweden when they needed to (either).

yeah campbell had a great header disallowed due to reflex thuggishness from shearer

Hoddle maybe should have subbed Owen on sooner, tho

sweden p sweet btw in 98

What was the result against Eng? 1-1? Or was that Nigeria and Swe/Eng was 0-0?

No, thinking '02...

stats from eng-arg 02 fwiw

Argentina England
Corners (1st half) 2 : 2
Corners (2nd half) 7 : 1
Fouls committed 21 : 20
Caught offside 5 : 2
Shots on target 5 : 8
Shots off target 7 : 7
Hit woodwork (back into play) 0 : 1
Yellow cards 1 : 2
Red cards 0 : 0

no possession annoyingly, i'm sure arg had a fair bit more of it tho (esp. in england's half)

owen started against argentina didn't he? he was only subbed on at the beginning of that campaign...

yeah i thought Owen started in that match, his career-defining goal was in the first half i'm sure

Hoddle was weird about Owen, but then Keegan was even weirder :(

sweden p sweet btw in 98

do you mean 02? they didn't make it to 98 thanks to...oh i forget.

Just watched highlights of Eng-Arg 98. Most shocking moment: seeing Paul Merson running up to take penalty. Like, what was that buffoon doing allowed near a world cup? I forget he was actually really good, now I just bracket him with Steve Claridge.

oh that's cold

ah sure who knows rly

Yes, all the goals were in the first half.

ha ha really no memory of merson at wc98. mind boggles. i will always remember him being england's best player on the night they went to shit in rotterdam (nov 93) not that it meant owt.