If he genuinely gives a **** about the game mate, then I feel sorry for him. This grass roots **** is ridiculous, they think talent emerges from posh kids who get dropped off at sports halls to run around cones. He'll never go near a housing estate, where kids are/were kicking balls at garage doors, jumpers for goal posts and all that. Nobody gets scouted from a school footy team, the training methods in schools are pathetic and all revolve around political correctness, equality and safety. The next Gerrard/Rooney/Shearer isn't being tickled with bibs and cone ****e, he's climbing over barbed wire fences to get his casey back.
Slightly less than 'golden' you reckon Vince? Trevor Sinclair, Danny Mills, Vassell. Ouch, surely we can do better than this? The awful thing is we have a player who to me looks a genuine potential game changer in Ravel Morrison, and he's got the money cancer and already done 2 moves for money, mentality isn't there. Zaha in spells looks like a real talent then disappears, we can't get the talent/consistency right, and we carry so much ****. Our midfield is terrifyingly average.
****ing spot on terry. My boy (9) plays for a local side. He plays in the street occasionally but,. with so many expensive cars and stuff about, often he gets chased by the neighbours. Often uses out garage as a goal. Opens it up and that's the goal. I've even bought a net to go inside it (mainly to stop my bike getting hit with the ball but still!) and the net fastens on like a real goal. Kids always play football. but they no longer play like we used to - 18 a side on a pitch not even the size of a normal pitch. Formations of 2-2-13 cos every ****er wants to score. You don;t learn close control playing with cones and bibs and stuff. It is something which you can either do or can't do. And parents on the sidelines telling you you're Lionel Messi when you're an OK player but nothing particularly flash is another thing killing the game. Kids are "hand picked" at 8 or 9 year old for academies and 98% get let gop by the same academy before their 16th birthday. OIf the 2% that remain 98% of them are let go before their 18th birthday and of the 0.2% of the original crop which remain, less than half of them will ever make it at Premier league level. Mainly because kids don;t enjoy all of the rules forced upon them by clubs and stuff. All of the "You must play like this or that". A lot of talented kids will get sick of it simply because they're playing to rules which weren;t areound when I was a kid. Had someone given me a football and said "Kick it with your left foot 100 times at that target" I'd have told them to get stuffed and quit. But the clubs don;t realise, or care, about the kids enjoyment of the game - they want to try to coach the next Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard. Sadly a lot (not all) of natural ability is completely ignored in favour of players who will listen better to instruction at a young age
I had all the hope in the world that Jack Wilshere was going to be genuinely world class, top 10 material. He looked immense to the point I was actually jealous of Arsenal, now he's gone missing after a few injuries and he's a shadow of what he was showing us a couple of years ago. There's one England player who currently excites me (Januzaj's passport situation aside it could be two) and that's Luke Shaw. A left back. We already had a ****ing world class one of them!!!
That's it mate, and when you look at teams that both historically and currently are dominating the international scene. It's all countries where kids are given the opportunity to express themselves without boundaries as their countries are not obsessed with consumerism (in South America), or have access to the best technical coaching (Holland/Germany) going. I watched my mates kid in a footy game for his school, every div kid on the bench got a game "Come on Owen, you're coming off now to give Iqbal a game and James is coming off so SARAH can have a go in goals", they got turfed off a team who were taking it seriously, they lost by about 15 goals but their manager (PE ***** teacher) was just giving it "Never mind, we had fun"....**** sake man.
I think there's a few mate, Shaw, obviously, but I think if Llallana is developed right he could get there, same with Jay Rodriguez, who has that instinctiveness in him. As I mention, Zaha & Ravel have that magic IF we can get them mentally right, Henderson is developing rapidly into a proper water carrier, every team needs one, every great team has one, and we are always ok at the back, for some reason. If we could get Januzaj to play for us would be massive, and the French & Germans have done this for years, Wilshere, so much ability but he seems to have stooped dead, but then Oxlade-Chamberlain looks like he could do something, we'll see. What we lack, badly, is a proper ball playing, scruff of the neck centre mid, and there isn't anyone looking likely to develop in that are either, we are producing wingers, but that's not a weak area. Most worrying for me is up top, wonderful to see Sturridge developing, but we have nothing else up there that's exciting coming through. Rooney is Rooney and we are lucky to have him, but we haven't that foil like RVP or Ronaldo for him, if he & Sturridge can get together like Suarez & Sturridge, then maybe, just maybe. The Spanish way, school them together, educate them, play them in squads, it's the way, and it's also what Belgium have done, look at the results.
The Southampton lads are smart players but they're 25 year old, hardly kids coming through for the next gen, apart from Shaw. Zaha is a puzzling one, if he ends up a bling boy like Young/Lennon then he's ****ed before he even gets going, I think he'd have massively benefit from Mike Phelan and Rene Meulensteen at United, the new set up doesn't convince me that his development will go to plan, nor do I think a relegation scrap will see him develop at all with Cardiff. If Moyes had any sense he'd have let him go to either Newcastle or abroad. Ravel Morrison can be great, but like you say there's big if's hanging over his head. As for CM bosses, Barkley has the potential physique-wise, but whether he's adaptable is another question. Cleverley won't be that player, not now and not ever in my opinion. As for Strikers, hopefully somebody can kick start Lingard and get his potential out of him, Devante Cole looks promising, but all things considered it's not always the case that the best strikers do well at international level, just look at Crouch and Klose.
and skp couldn't get a game. Trevor Sinclair, Danny Mills, Vassell. Ouch, surely we can do better than this?most certainly should have done.
He had a worldy filling in for injured Owen Hargreaves in one of the games though, once, to be fair. Argentina?
Them were the days. It's bloody ages since i heard the term casey. We'd kick the same ball around til there was nowt left of i bar the bladder.
Half the ball was just bits of ****ty faux leather hanging off and it never hurt that bad when you took a dry one to the face but **** me a wet casey to the grid and you were getting on ya bike and going home.
****! there was nee flinching up our way. If you took one to the face or a raw one on the thigh of a winters day you carried on til the feeling came back. That's what these kids need. Lining up and having wet caseys drilled at them from 10 yards. You could include the England squad and FA in the line-up.
Side of the face on a cold day man, especially a windy day, ****ing hell. The pain, then the heat after, bastard!
