Touche - a once in a generation TECHNICAL english talent. More importantly - how many Scholes esque players didnt make it past the academies because they werent strong enough? Would Messi have made it if he was English?
LOL, I said exactly the same thing on another thread, he wouldn't have been considered 'good' enough to play professional football in England because of his physicality
The top academies these days are generally pretty good. If a 15 year old Messi walked into the door at one of them, he probably would make it. The big issue though is the grassroots football where players are encouraged to kick and rush from a very young age. It makes sure that we have very little chance of producing a Messi in the first place.
Obviously Messi would have made it if he had entered a british academy as a 14 year old. I did have my tongue in my cheek when I posed the question but I was more asking whether an 9 year old messi playin gon an 11 a side pitch with other 9 year olds would have been bullied out of the game at a very young age. Its an extreme example - im sure messi would still have made it but many much more mortal players who could do a very good, technical and skillful job for england are probably forced out early.
Glenn Hoddle, Paul Gascoigne, Matthew LeTissier, all made it in the English game. All comparable talents to Messi.
it would be incredibly harsh to sack Hodgson now since He has performed exactly as he always has. The FA new exactly the kind of manager Hodgson was before they hired him yet they did it nonetheless. He is a stubborn naive buffoon who plays 4-4-2 defensive hoofball no matter what occasion. Admittedly players were ****e but a lot was because they had to do as Roy said and with comments from Roy in training like "when you have the big man up front, kick it up to him" then of course we are going to lose possession and play hoofball. The state of English football is just an utter embarrassment at the moment and Roy's tactics just rubs salt in the already festering wound. At least Harry would have told it like it was, unlike Roys yes-man attitude and we-were-unlucky attitude.
True but they are few and far between. Also Gazza and Le Tiss both were excluded from major tournaments in place of more 'water carrier' types like David Batty!! Shocking really. What our midfield could do with a Gazza in it now
Or big enough. You'd have to assume Messi would probably not have made it through. He nearly didn't anyway as I'm sure he had to undergo some sort of growth hormone treatment which Barca paid for (if you believe all you're told in these documentaries anyway). If the Argies were willing to discard him because of cost, then us discarding for size would be almost guaranteed at the time he'd have come through. Fortunately Mr Brooking has decided that the coaching problem and us having our heads buried in "we invented the game" is a task worth tackling. When I saw the stats for the number of UEFA qualified coaches in each country at the time of the last world cup I couldn't believe it. What was it, about 2,000 in England compared to Spains 23,000? We may have invented the game but we're now being given a lesson how to continually progress at it.
His technique and skill on the ball might not have been as well honed but most young players with a bit of pace aren't ignored at youth level. Lennon was the youngest Premier League player ever when he debuted and he's a small guy too. Trouble is what works at youth level doesn't always work at senior level, hence why a lot big strikers go on to be centre backs and when Lennon came to us he had to spend 2 years learning how to cross.
Not sure if Im taking your comment out of context here (i assume you are talking about Messi) but arent the bold points precicely the problem? Is it ridiculous to suggest that at the age of 9 or 10 lennon, milner, downing, Beckham, even Ronney (!) had the potential to become messi's but were trained to 'get to the byline then cross to the target man' ? The fact that our natural talent is being trained to play a certain way, a way which patently doesnt work in the big games, is surely the root of the problem, meaning the choice of manager is largely neither here nor there until that problem is fixed?
^ This. It was not Roy's fault you know what you are getting with Roy. However I do question why they hired him in the first place when there is so much pressure to play the more beautiful "technical" game. (I'd rather we played less Roy like too)
I'm not defending the coaching systems in this country for one second. I just think it's an exaggeration to say that Messi wouldn't be a proffessional football player if he was coached in this country because he's too small. The shift from your standard "English" play has already taken place at most big clubs coaching systems anyway so you'd expect some of our best talents to be coming through having had their talent better nurtured in the coming years. I'm not going to start on another discussion with you on whether the manager has good enough players at his disposal though. I think we have to agree to disagree on that one
Exactly. Are you saying that you would have been more pleased with Hodgson if a 50:50 situation he had no control over had gone his way instead of against him?
And there in lies the problem. And it won't matter whoever is the manager - if the ' English ' players are not good enough - they will never win anything.
England will never win anything again because we are simply stuck in the past. Any creative spark is mercilessly beaten out of youngsters by dinosaur coaches who don't know anything other than "the English way", i,.e, be STRONG, FAST, HARD. We breed some good athletes that there is no question about, but footballers? Not a chance. From the youngest age, competition and winning is more important in this country than bringing out the talents that that young person may have, nurturing them. I've been to "kids" football games, my brother used to play for a side for a few years. It was disgusting seeing all the fat ****er dads screaming at their children from the sidelines "GET STUCK IN", "GO IN HARD, BRING HIM DOWN" and so on. Untill there is a COMPLETE ****ING OVERHAUL in how we do things in this country we will just be another "hard to beat quarter finalist" side, competition after competition.
