England Tonight

Who's going to be watching? Spain are on ITV 4 or will you be out tonight?

I will be watching England but not really that excited about it tbh. Zamora rumoured to start but I don't know why.

 

Zamora for England? oh my goodness

 

I'll be watching England and I'm excited. Love watching my country unless its one of those **** meaningless friendlies. And I'm one of the few who rate our current manager very highly.

 

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Probs watch Spain for a bit before hitting the pub

 

I'd rather stuff an orange in my gob stick a noose round my neck and do a spot of Asphyxi-****ing than watch England and as that has no appeal to me either I'll just watch Andorra vs Ireland

 

I had massive respect and admiration for Capello as a coach before England. He was outstanding at AC Milan and even Real Madrid. His tactics were awesome. His time at England has made him go down in my estimation but I still respect him. I just think International management wasn't for him, especially with England. Maybe with Italy where he would be able to communicate better he would have succeeded.

 

Capello I thought would pick his team upon discipline and merit and I couldn't of been more wrong, just another media muppet.

 

Certainly did. Got a very impressive record as manager. Has qualified with ease for each tournament and there are a whole host of reasons for our failure at the WC. The England job is a poisoned chalice for me.

Reasons for failure:

Unrealistic expectations of fans - face it we're not even one of the top 5 sides in the world, why do people think we have a god given right to win it. You only have to look at the squads, its laughable. We're decent but way too far behind technically to compete with the likes of Spain, Germany, Brazil, Holland, Argentina.

Years of burying our head - All those nations mentioned concentrate huge masses of cash towards upskilling their coaching. We have sat for 20 years telling all and sundry we don't need to learn, we invented it. Arrogance beyond belief. Germany failed at Euro 2000 and invested something like 500m straight away in response. All the best coaches in Spain/Holland/Germany work with the young players. The PL clubs are too selfish to allow this. We've got it the wrong way up and not enough have gone and got educated. I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like Spain had 15,000 UEFA quallified coaches. We had something like 1000. Its not rocket science to work out the problem! Spain spent years of failure at National level despite having a smattering of great players. They had the same mental block we had. They simply invested in education to overcome it. it took 15 years but I think we'd all agree it was money and time well spent.

Money - You're rich at 21 in this country now if you're a footballer. The PL has sucked the desire out of players and we've sold out our league to the extent that the FA is now powerless and the PL clubs look after number one. Players are pulled out left right and centre without an eyelid batted now. Disgraceful. You might aswell give the running of the national team to the PL, at least they may show some interest if it reflected on them.

Winter break - Is there seriously anyone out there who cannot see the problem this causes? Our players are able to give nowhere near their best at major tournaments because all they are all ****ed. Mentally as much as physically. It was intereting to watch some of the foreign players who play over here, adn funnily enough they were struggling too! They ran a series of tests on England players before the world cup. Capello stated before the tournament began that the levels were no where near what was needed and way below that of the qualification campaign. Why can't someone show a bit of common sense and bite the bullet. Yes I love our Xmas programme, its tradition and its great fun. Would I happily do without to see our national team better? of course I ****ing would.

Honestly don't get me started with England. We'll just blame the manager again and continue on until we fire the next one. Trevor Brooking is one of the few who has seen the problem and has done some good work to getting over the problems. You're talking about one of the top bosses in our lifetime in Capello. Yes he makes mistakes and yes he picks Gareth Barry. But if our fans are sitting there thinking any manager who takes over won't make selections we don't like (Harry included) quite frankly they're idiots.

 

Ment to be gan out to a mates for some drinks and poker, so probably watch it there. I think we'll draw tonight though.

 

Oh England are playing today?

 

I'll be watching, we generally play better away from home so I'm hoping for a decent win.

 

Fair enough

 

Which other countries are playing?

 

We play **** when we are on ITV.

 

Just seen Rooney getting interviewed. He said he was devastated at being sent off in the 73rd minute of tonights game.

 

aginairrr - just realised the length of that post, apologies. As you can probably tell I'm pretty patriotic and take our national very seriously! It just frustrates the **** out of me that we're so arrogant about international football. I must admit I hate the lead up to major tournaments. I love people supporting the country but most are fairweather. I hate all the media garbage "lets go and win lads!" without a thought for whether that is realistic. It just sets everyone up for a fall. I'd prefer we were able to back that up with some substance on the pitch. That said our younger teams are playing much better technical football now. (bit like us really!)

 

Hahaha!

 

I will be watching it but I know fine well that Barry will be **** and slow the game down and make it really boring, as will Lampard!

As for Zamora - pffft!

 

Hart, Jones, Terry, Ferdinand, Baines, Rodwell, Gerrard, Young, Rooney, Agbonlahor, Welbeck are are strongest 11 imo.