Perhaps, but we topped almost every chart where it came to English players last season, so we accept no responsibility at all.
And yeah, we have always been crap, I don't expect anything to change in my life time. It doesn't even bother me much anymore.
Indeed yes. I hear he was feted everywhere in Russia after that famous game. Certainly turned him into a star. In truth though I think it's the out-moded coaching techniques. By and large, kids are kids, and kids who want to be great at playing football will be great at playing if they are coached right. I would take the current British FA coaching manual and the direction it is coaching kids and put NOT in front of every DO, because clearly our DOs aren't doing very well, and haven't been doing well for quite some time.
We had perfectly good players but the coaches of the time were way behind the best European teams. Fact was, we'd won the World Cup in the last 5-10 years and we thought we were still the dog's. We weren't a million miles away either, but we didn't improve after 1966. In 1970 we were there or thereabouts, and in the 1970's we just stood still, while other teams improved, and after a cameo caretaker managerial interlude by ex-Man City manager Joe Mercer, who got England playing some delightfully free football, Don Revie came along and we went backwards. When he ballsed it up, and went looking for a Saudi style payoff, I think the whole country were ready for Brian Clough, and got instead Ron Greenwood. And that was when the tradition of alsoran managers started to manage England, and not the most successful.
Short answer - yes. Long answer - English players aren't good enough anyway, for the price they're going for.
We weren't crap at the beginning of the 70s. The 1970 squad that went to Mexico was arguably better than the 1966 cup winning team. A combination of bad luck and bad decisions by Sir Alf got us knocked out of that competition by West Germany, after we had led 2-0. We failed to qualify in 1974 and after that it was all down hill, but we had plenty of decent players at that time too. The rot really started in the 1980s. English clubs being banned from European competitions didn't help, and we now have a situation whereby English players are way behind other Europeans in terms of basic technique. Just look at the way players who've learned their trade in Italy or Spain open their bodies to receive a pass, and compare that to almost any English player (other than Adam Lallana).
Yes but everyone played in them. One of the things I don't like about today's strips is the flappy excesses of material in shorts. Mind you, at least it isn't as bad as it was around the late 1990s, when they might as well as worn skirts.
It doesn't matter at all what the ratio of foreign to English players is, if the youth coaching system, England management and FA are completely clueless and have no idea how to run things then we don't stand a chance. We could have a 100% English league, but with the way things are currently we would still be pony. I hate this xenophobic nonsense. There are still a fair few foreigners at top German clubs, and they still produce world class home-grown talent. It's just a poor excuse that the FA and anyone involved in English football like to fall back on.
