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

seemed to last about as long as it took for Costa Rica to beat Uruguay, which was somehow construed as a good sign for England

the realism, that is

it was a good sign for England, tbh. Uruguay are no better than average, bar Suarez. a performance anything like the first hour vs Italy might of done it, bish bosh bash six points mate and all a sudden things ain't so bad

which would be a fairer assessment of the team under absence than the two games have been, except that nobody ever really expects England to do even a decent job at tournaments these days, regardless of personnel or tactic

Will be interesting to see who they can get to manage them if Hodgson is replaced.

sherwood

They won't get rid of Hodgson.

Yeah focussing on the defenders is all well and good (and they weren't good) but it's kind of academic when teams are able to walk through England's midfield with ease.

There needs to be a centralised, co-ordinated approach to youth player development similar to one that's worked to France, Germany, even Belgium relative to where they were before. That won't happen under the laissez-faire EPL system.

We can all say 'first hour against Italy' but did anyone believe that Eng could've carried on like that? It was a big if..plus Uruguay were going to play better than they did against Costa Rica.

there is so much to criticise that i dunno where the people involved even start, they have got themselves in a never ending cycle of blame without stopping to breathe or put something right.

i wrote a bigger messy thing about this but re-reading i decided not to post it. basically the fa and the premier league need to stop being scared of modernising if they don't want to be left behind. tactically, in their selection processes for players and personnel, in trying to get bigger clubs investing in youth coaching like they are doing on the continent. roy isn't going to succeed in a world of klopps, bielsas, peps, rodgers etc. gerrards and rooneys aren't going to succeed in a world of modrics and neymars and gotzes, teaching 15 year olds how to head in a broken down shed in stoke is not going to compete with the likes of munchengladbach or bilbao or lorient trying their hardest to make their team stand out and provide technically sound players who could be worth a lot of money and maybe make the national team. football has changed a great fucking deal since the mid nineties and england or the fa or whoever are putting their fingers in their ears and shouting nananananaicanthearyou remember when sheringham and shearer whooped holland that was great lets do that again ey fellas

England can't control games, have pretty much never been able to. Okay not many teams can. It's hard. But if you look at, say, Chile although they can't always control games from a patient possession pov and probably don't want to, they can control their defensive pressure. They have a certain element of sustainability as to what the general tenets of their game plan will be. England don't really know what or who they are or what or who they should be. Forever hear players saying that they can't/don't want to be like Spain that they have to play to their strengths. But the strengths they point to are things like passion and power and pace and commitment as if all the other nations don't have this plus an idea of how they're going to play even if it ends up not working. England don't have this. Personally I think the Euro 96 team is v overrated - 3 draws, 2 wins (one against a team that rarely qualifies for the Euros) but they did have an idea of what they wanted to do and tried to do it.

I don't really agree that England doesn't still produce talented players, yes even technically talented players. Not in the number and variety they should considering the wealth of the country, league and FA admittedly, but let's not pretend that all we churn out is cloggers who can head.

You could really tell when England didn't have the ball yesterday, they were just miles off the Uruguay players at all times. Chile barely gave Spain any space, so even when they lost the ball they were able to win it back quickly. A lack of dynamism in midfield was also a problem, it wasn't set up with any real attacking dynamism in mind and Gerrard and Henderson aren't good enough at defending and reading the game to play the dual holding role.

look at Croatian midfield/attack and tell me England produce talented players again. the consistency of thought and execution of first touch in the worst of them is light years ahead of any of the most heralded English technical players IMO.

transplanted to England, the majority of them would be mistrusted le tissier figures, destined for a lifetime of lallanaesque benchings while the next pace merchant saws his hamstrings off for three years of hype and ten of abuse.

The answer is to pack up any vaguely talented 11 yr-olds and ship them off to Croatia.

pace, power, cunting ability when given space ranked as the moulding material of the trusted English youth star, notwithstanding years of proof that at tournament level you need to get the space to use that pace or to cunt it, and a lack of team rhythmic understanding or basic spatial intelligence makes it a cert that you won't.

power just means you give away frees.

yeah I've seen the croatian midfield. England produce talented players.

there's a wilful blindness throughout football culture in England. players whose position as superstars is established on some good performances early in their careers and are subsequently never scrutinized. the cult of the Sky-approved big dogs

aye I said last night there seemed to an air of "How is this happening? We play in the best league in the world!" that didn't take account of a) maybe it isn't, really and b) the best players in it are all from other countries e.g.Uruguay

hmm talented but not rounded, not functional in modern systems, skill sets based on playground games or needlessly focused on one or two aspects unbecoming an actual useful adult player cf quote about Gerrard from arrigo

i just think we have v different ideas of what makes a talented player which is fair enough

you're both right

pretty obv why ur modern day spurs fan will emphasise why talent on its own is meaningless tho

far be it from me to argue with ilx's official scout tbf

p much everyone i work with has come by my office with a concerned expression and asked me how i am doing, i guess because i took at the afternoon off to watch the game. it is nice i guess but it is difficult to articulate the complex relationship of an english football fan with the national side via the medium of small talk. for some reason i started off sort of playing up to the sympathy because it seemed expected, acknowledging the disappointment, whatever, but that wore away with repetition and eventually i was just "worthless shower, tournament is better off without them tbh".

Yeah I think England have talented players tbh. There's been a great deal of tactical ineptitude for Hodgson in this tournament

england produce talented players, one of the best five players in the world came from southampton. him and ramsey would most probably change the conversation a lot.

but there has been so much said about continental FAs working to get each team produce a level of excellence that is missing. That is why I made the dig about learning to head at Stoke. Arsenal, Utd, Palace, Southampton, Spurs, Liverpool and Everton. Maybe one or two other teams and the odd guy who will stand out wherever he would have been trained. Thats all that is providing half good options out of the leagues and leagues of training grounds and qualified coaches in England. Germany have half the teams and most probably could have selected an alternative 23 that would have had a chance of winning. Spain and France too, to a lesser extent. Whereas we are still left hoping Gerrard can do it because none of the 92 have made ONE obvious and ready successor in the past 15 years.

Im sure there is a lot that can be said about potentially good players like rodwell sinclair zaha etc. being snapped up by big clubs only to be benched for years instead of developing (and a lot of this has happened postabramovich chelsea) but barca dont play the likes tello that often or madrid morata etc. - so it only seems noticable when talent is sparce.

tello and morata haven't won any world cups yet

ok but promising players become good players by getting regular playing experience and only 23 out of thousands will win a world cup anyways so idg yr point

Arry Redknapp on the radio now - "I don't understand why England keep failing, we've got good players, we've got good managers, look at some of those other teams their players wouldn't get a game in the Premier League, I thought we'd win that group, we've got very good players, I don't understand it"

Rooney - "We don't kick people enough" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/10917358/Wayne-Rooney-England-are-too-nice-to-win-World-Cup-we-need-to-develop-nastiness-in-way-we-play.html

do these fucks never learn

they don't kick ppl *properly*, its true. English yellows/reds/penalties are generally crimes of passion and not profit

The worst of Arry's remarks was "oh Costa Rica beat both Uruguay and Italy, its all you need to know about that group". This notion that Costa Rica are a good team doesn't get through. Mindless cunt.

Costa Rica lost twice to Honduras in the last year. Honduras are not a good team.

I don't think it's a stretch to say England could have had a tougher group.

From the two games I've seen they've shown a better game in the tournament itself. Uruguay and Italy have I'm sure underestimated Costa Rica, but that's their problem (its not as if both don't know they can't lose to minor teams, and they have of course done so in their long history at the wc)

Ian Wright has the answer:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bq2HpOSIMAAjQuR.jpg

lolll

you've probably all seen this but i just want it here for posterity

Ray Wilkins, who won more than 80 England caps, wanted England’s defence to be more physical and test Suárez’s recovering left knee. “I’m not an aggressive person in my nature but Suárez has just come back from a cartilage operation five weeks ago,” he told Sky Sports News. “His training has been OK from what we’ve heard. Did we make enough physical contact to see if his knee is OK? In my opinion, no we didn’t.

“I’m not saying we should have kicked lumps out of him but we could have made a couple of tackles within the rules of the game to see if his knee was legit.”

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