Match Day Thread Slovakia vs England 8pm 20 June

Who's to say that Not 606 Germany is in meltdown.

 

Not a dig at Pelletron, but his post above made me think of posting this:

Has anyone not thought/realised that maybe we just don't develop players well enough. We keep looking for the short term win. It isn't there. I won't say too much for now as otherwise I'll be on my soap box for a week, but many people may remember how passionate I get on this topic. If you want to look for the answer as to why "Why don't we do something now for once?" (quoted from Pelletron above), we need to look so much further down the food chain. I remember before the last Euros talk from the FA of England starting again and doing a Germany. They then immediately targeted 2018 as a 'win'

We simply do not develop players in the right way. We have an inbuilt desire to win at all costs. We have that natural aggression that prevents us from building and planning properly. Until we do start again properly, stop taking a short term view and actually develop coaches and players properly, nothing is likely to change. Biggest, fastest, strongest, quickest. That's how we work with young footballers (in the majority of cases). Win, win, win.

 

Which was my point. England are missing chances. I remember hearing loads over the past few years when moaning about Saints doing the same loads of people saying "we are creating chances, if we weren't creating chances then we should be worried but we are so no worries."

I have no worries about England. We should have won handsomely the other night but we didn't and by the same merit of the Germany game you could say that Slovakia were never going to score.

 

Think that's been changing for some time actually. Which is why we are starting to produce players with good touch and close control.

Probably still too many people coaching kid's teams trying to fulfill their own dreams of glory, but we've moved on a bit now Fats I think. That's what I'm told anyway, coaching of youngsters has changed quite a bit in recent years.

 

After he's finished with the USA we should get Klinnsman in as England manager. Probably about the only German that England fans would accept luckily.

 

Oh no thanks!!!!!!!

 

Yes, I should have said that they have started. They've been working on it and 'preaching' it at grass roots levels. It is better, but the reality is (and I witness it every week myself) is that these grass roots coaches still play for winning's sake. Coaches and parents.

If I was to take a guess, I'd say that between 10-20% of grass roots coaches "get the message" and the rest still scream and shout to get that ball up there and win the match.

 

I would like to see a young enthusiastic manager who is on a low basic with rewards for doing well. The fact the Woy is on 3.5 million is pretty disgraceful.

 

Eddie Howe. Ten year contract.

 

Sounds perfect to me, i wouldn't even mind if he did it as a part time position.

 

That's very interesting. Keeps the coach in practise too.

 

This is where Saints differ. They would like the Academy sides to win, but it isn't their main priority. We play kids in the groups above their age to learn and get experience. Some fans criticising the Academy for not storming the leagues may have missed the point.

 

It won't be changing as unfortunately the majority of youngsters play in a team where the coaches are someone's dad/just parents who enjoy football, and in the worst cases who play the quickest on the wing, and his son up-front. (Not taking anything away from genuine dads who try to train the right way).

Take a look at the Iceland model, they spent huge amounts of money, developing training pitches, but they also have an extraordinarily high amount of Uefa B standard coaches to train the kids. In the BBC documentary on their success, I think I heard that kids get the opportunity to train with a Uefa coach once a week. How many kids in England/UK get that opportunity?

 

I'm not sure it would be so bad, had we won the last World Cup, and competed in international football decently over the last few tournaments.

 

Yes, I am not casting doubt on our ability to progress further down the road here. I agree we could well get some results against more open teams. We equally may well not. That's the frustrating bit - you never really know what you're going to get. I don't think England have a style, or a particular team ethic, whereby you can fancy them to win against a certain other style of football. Infact, the one sure thing we have is that we're bound to lose a shootout! Which is why being able to play those tight games where we hold a top team to a draw is only useful if we also have the nous to nick a goal too.

 

Yes, I agree with that. That ties totally into all our frustrations. Why I was also so adamant Rooney should be in this squad too is he is the only player in the squad who has slipped through the developmental black hole, with a winning history across the domestic board. Even with their young squad of 2014, that German squad had experienced winners of leagues, CL finalists etc. Now they have a ton of CL winners. Spain's team have a **** ton of them. This is where teams like Liverpool have a responsibility to the national team - poaching players from better domestic sides is all fine and good; getting them instant free access to the national setup is also fine; but if you can't use them to get into Europe and create some winners, or win a piece of silver domestically, then let another team, who can, have or keep them.

 

I would not say that England are anywhere near a cert to win this, but we are fully capable of beating any team on our day....bit like Saints in the EPL....so we just need a run of those games. We are not a rabbit in these competitions which some people seem to think....more the plucky team waiting to overtake the favourites if they slip up.

 

There is a graphic somewhere showing the number of coaches at different fishing levels by country. We're miles behind. I didn't know about Iceland, but you're right on the quality of coach.

 

You've just summed up the British psyche perfectly, FLT. If we do it, we have to do it quickly, ill-planned, off the back of a *** packet type stuff. In Europe things are planned, considered, properly weighed up and then achieved. See where I'm going with this.?

 

Yes but now we need at least 3 of those days, and if we could have just put one in the net against Slovakia, we would only have needed 1.
All ifs and buts, and I don't believe for a moment we could have won the thing under any circumstances, but there is always a chance...