Good news and hopefully we can then afford a replacement who wants to help us in our fight for promotion!!!
Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that Jagielka dug our so called top goalkeeper, Joe Hart, out of a huge hole Hart had stupidly dug for himself against Italy. If Hart is the best goalkeeper in England then that, IMO, simply evidences the shortcomings the Country has at international level.
I hope that we get beat tonight so that the FA can not then hide behind a veneer of respectability! The whole thing is a complete shambles and only further humiliation will exact any signs of positive action!
What an absolute load of rubbish, dear me There was hardly anything to choose between Italy, Uruguay and ourselves in either game, the results could easily have gone either way and nobody would have complained. On another day with a smidgen of good fortune Rooney could easily have scored a hat-trick and we'd have won the game 3-1. Such tiny, tiny margins involved at this level and as in virtually every previous tournament that I can remember we ended up on the wrong side of them. I see no need for any massive inquiry or hand-wringing exercise as to what went wrong, ultimately we got mugged by one of the best and most in-form strikers on the planet against Uruguay and that is why we'll be on the way home in the morning. We lost by the odd goal against both Italy and Uruguay, both who are ranked above us according to FIFA and both who have far more impressive records at tournament football in recent times so they were always going to be tough, tough matches - particularly over in South America. It's not as if we got turned over by Slovenia and North Korea for ****'s sake, all this sensationalist bullshit from our red-tops and so called 'experts' such as Lineker who are now criticising the choice of squad and tactics just weeks after being happy with both does my head in! What exactly is this "positive action" that you are hoping for by the way? Let me guess, sacking Hodgson and giving Harry ****ing Redknapp the job?
If you were to take you head out of the clouds for a second you will see that the whole England set up is rotten to the core! We have been reduced to a second rate football nation brought about by hubris, greed and self interest. Everyone knows it but no one wants to do anything about it and so we go on! Fine margins my arse! We are tactically inept, technically inferior to our foreign counterparts and the key thing is that we do not invest nearly enough in coaching and facilities at the grass roots. We have abouut 2,500 fully qualified UEFA Licensed coaches in this country where as in the Netherlands they have 20,000! There are no financial incentives for coaches to get better qualified and as a result we have to suffer inferior coaching from inferior coaches! One example is kids football where we still insist that kids football should be on a competitive basis and that they must play on big pitches from the age of 12/13! This is the age when they should be focusing on technique and skills rather than humping it as far as they can on a boggy field! What are they learning by doing that? There is absoutley no desire to address any of these fundamental problems because the FA is only interested in burying its snout in the Premier League trough. So you carry on being blindly lead by these idiots who run our game if you like, but for those of us that have seen the bigger picture, things aren't as rosy as you make out.
I have to say, being neither an Ipswich fan or a Norwich fan, (so no axe to grind there, I am actually a Luton fan), the above comment nails the problem down and is by far the most concise and accurate assessment of the problems facing English international football. Well said, Johnny Wark...
How many coaches do they have, and how well paid are they in Costa Rica I wonder? Or Uruguay, or Mexico, or the Ivory Coast? I do understand some of what you are saying and you do make some valid points, but you miss the main points that I make and they are that we were nowhere near as bad in this tournament as some are making out and we were unfortunate not to progress out the group stages - despite it being a very tough group to start with, despite what some might say. And how can you say there is no such thing as fine margins that make or break games at this level? Of course there are!! Godin should blatantly have been sent off in the first half for a second yellow (if he hadn't been booked already the ref would have booked him for that, absolutely no question) which would have changed the game for sure, we hit the bar, Rooney's free-kick missed by centimetres, Gerrard was desperately unlucky that the ball came off his head and ran straight into the path of Suarez for the winner - another day we would have won that game and there would have been no complaints as we totally bossed the possession and had far more shots that they did, three times as many on target in fact. I never said things were "rosy" for England, they haven't ever been in my lifetime and I imagine it will be a long time before they will. I fully accept that we aren't good enough to be really competitive at these tournaments, we're certainly a million miles away from winning one and that is due to a great many factors, some which you do highlight yourself but there are plenty more that aren't as simple to fix as employing more coaches and playing kids football on smaller pitches. You speak of financial incentives for coaches to make them better coaches - has the standard of refereeing improved since they turned professional? Have they ****, it's made no difference at all so why should paying coaches more give any guarantees that we'd become a better footballing nation? Everyone had tempered down their expectation for this tournament, people accepted that it would be a hell of an achievement to make the quarters and I personally thought it would be a big ask feat to even make it out of the groups, as has been the case. I thought we played ok in both games, we were the better team against Uruguay no question but ultimately got mugged by some weak officiating and some deadly finishing from one of the best footballers currently alive. And that's football folks!!
Tony, there are lots of things that can be done and it wont happen overnight but there seems to be a lack of will in making all the changes that are necessary. We have an over powerful Premier League with all its riches that is sucking the lifeblood out of the game. On any weekend you have only a third of English players playing for a top side while the rest either sit on the bench or are forced to play out on loan in the lesser leagues! Not ONE English player could walk into any other top international side and the fact that we have no English players playing in La Liga, The Bundesliga or in the French Leagues speaks volumes! We were promised a Golden Generation when the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Beckham, Scholes, Owen all emerged in the 90s/00s and now where are we? We might have a couple of decent midfielders coming on but apart from that the cupboard is bare! We have reached the Nadir for the national game.
But who was it that promised us a Golden Generation? Again, it was our wonderful sensationalist media and unfortunately too many people got swept along on such a wave of hysteria and started expecting the moon. Again I do agree with the points you make, however I think they actually go deeper than that to depths that the FA nor anyone involved in football can rectify. How many kids do you see down the park after school kicking a ball about nowadays - let alone kicking a satsuma about in the favelas of Rio? Just doesn't happen anywhere near as much as it should any more, kids are glued to their Ipads or Xboxes, or tweeting some bollocks rather than trying to make themselves better - our society is ****ed basically, and I don't see how Greg Dyke is going to be able to do anything about it. That all said I do maintain we have been unfortunate to bomb out as early as we have and wold say we have been far from the worst team I have seen so far (and I've seen everyone!)
I agree with the points you make and it is a huge problem for us as a society when there are too many kids not doing any form of active sport. Thankfully my kids play football every weekend and train 2 nights a week but there are many that would rather sit and play on the XBox etc. This obviously opens up into a much wider debate around the obesity time bomb that we are facing as a society. We are not the worst team at these finals but as a supposed football nation we are light years behind compared to Spain, France, Germany and The Netherlands. Things could be so much better but there just isnt the desire to address the fundamental problems in English football.
