And they're always beating the rubbish sides because... THEY ARE NOT A RUBBISH SIDE! England consistently make it to the major tournaments (only missing two in my lifetime), and when they get knocked out, it's always by one of the best teams, and it's always close. England were outplayed by Italy for most of the game, but defended very well and made it to penalties, which is something to be proud of. It's just fashionable to whine about the England team. They're better than about 200 other national teams.
No they are not rubbish, they are just hugely average. In the Euro's i'd say England were markedly better than only 4 or 5 teams in the tournament, were on a par with another 4 or 5 and markedly worse than the rest. They should always qualify for major tournaments, because we have a huge population interested in football and good facilities to train youngsters, but we are miles behind other similar nations, and also a fair distance behind smaller and less developed nations.
England are a very consistent team...you don't win games and qualify for competitions over the years by being rubbish. The problem is that England fans judge by entertainment value...we're definitely not in the top 3 for that. We're low in flair players at the moment, so you qualify the best way you can.
We are aided in being consistent that by playing in one of the less competitive qualification regions.
I never get why Australia pulled out of that region. Surely it's basically guaranteed that you'll get to the playoffs?
I've been making the points Joe has just been making to people who criticize the FIFA world rankings for ages now. They are a very well thought out calculation, that takes into account all results, how much you win by, and how good the other team is, to work out how will any team has performed. As has been said, they don't just pluck figures out the air, it is a very complicated system, and a better system than any of you moaners have suggested. Instead all the moaners seem to prefer the method of plucking figures out of the air themselves, saying 'oh I don't think we should be 3rd cos when I see us play we don't seem that good, and by my own subjective opinion based on 1 game Italy should be above us'. To me that seems pretty illogical, and if the FIFA calculations say we are 3rd in the world, surely we should be happy that our country is, as shown by the most accurate calculations, the 3rd best team in the world? The method of working out the FIFA world rankings is far more accurate than the random suggestions made by fans of where they think a team should be because they do/do not like the style of play of the team. Rant over.
I think the rankings need to be adjusted. Hosts of tournaments should get a protected ranking, or allow some of their friendlies to count as competitive matches for scoring purposes. There should be less points awarded based purely on strength of governing body (if any) to remove the in built bias to European teams. Also, the points increase you get for winning a competitive game should be removed for qualifiers (and in any case, the multiplier should be down to 1.5 max), and results in major competitions given a far greater rating (e.g. the multiplier for a confederation level tournament should be around the 5 mark and between 7.5 and 10 for a world cup match). There should also be a big bonus awarded for progressing in a world cup or confederation level tournament. In all, the ranking syatem should be more like the way tennis players are ranked, based on tournament success (which is what everybody cares about) not about who you beat. It would also be nice to see points calculated over a maximum of two years and not four.
Good bit in 442 explaining the points system. M x I x T x C = P. M is match, ie points you would get in a league, I is importance;p 4pts for a World Cup game, 3 for confederations level match, ie Euros, T is team; subtract the oppostitions FIFA ranking from 200. So the team ranked 10th is 190, 50th is 150 etc, C is confederation, 1pt for UEFA or CONMEBOL (South America) 0.88pts CONCACAF (North America) 0.86pts CAF (Africa) 0.85pts AFC (Asia) and OFC (Oceania). So England's match against Ukraine in the Euros would be M(3) x I(3) x T(148pts(Ukraine were 52nd)) x C(1)=P (1332).
I accept the ways that rankings are decided and England are good at qualifying, but subjectively, on the basis of how confident I would feel that we'd win a tournament match, I would place us about 4-6th. What it does indicate is how poorly we perform in competitions compared with our ranking. Not suggesting it will ever happen, but we would probably perform better with an elite squad similar to that in cricket. Difficult for an England manager to have so little time to work with players.
I'd say the England manager has an easier job than a lot of other international managers. At least all his players play in the same country...
Do you mean "the rankings aren't in any way subjective and are completely based on predefined mathematical calculations, not including any human element"? Just checking
That's not saying a lot right now, but I have a feeling they'll be awesome again just in time for the 2014 World Cup.
