International Break Thread

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Tots, you remember the David oleary team, exciting young team, got to semi finals of champions league, I think Johnson was bought for the following season from Derby, oleary never lasted that long after!
 
Tots, you remember the David oleary team, exciting young team, got to semi finals of champions league, I think Johnson was bought for the following season from Derby, oleary never lasted that long after!

O'leary was a good player,but didn't quite cut it as a manager,why is it good players rarely make good managers and lesser players do,?strange
 
O'leary was a good player,but didn't quite cut it as a manager,why is it good players rarely make good managers and lesser players do,?strange

Normally an ego thing or lack of patience as they can't understand why players can't do what they could do.

Hoddle was on his way to becoming a class manager and was suited to lower league teams or international management, but not premier league as he couldn't relate properly with players who he looked at as inferior to him!
 
Normally an ego thing or lack of patience as they can't understand why players can't do what they could do.

Hoddle was on his way to becoming a class manager and was suited to lower league teams or international management, but not premier league as he couldn't relate properly with players who he looked at as inferior to him!

Most were!
 
O'leary was a good player,but didn't quite cut it as a manager,why is it good players rarely make good managers and lesser players do,?strange

In fairness to O'Leary, he did enough as manager at Leeds to deserve another chance in English football.
 
Normally an ego thing or lack of patience as they can't understand why players can't do what they could do.

Hoddle was on his way to becoming a class manager and was suited to lower league teams or international management, but not premier league as he couldn't relate properly with players who he looked at as inferior to him!

Believe me, David O'Leary definitely had an ego. About the size of Heathrow Airport by all accounts.
 
O'leary was a good player,but didn't quite cut it as a manager,why is it good players rarely make good managers and lesser players do,?strange

Worse players have to think about the game more in order to compete.
The Neville brothers were never the most naturally gifted individuals, but they studied the game and worked their arses off.
You can hear that now in Gary's analysis on Sky. He knows exactly what he's talking about, whereas a more gifted player like Merson has less insight.
 
Worse players have to think about the game more in order to compete.
The Neville brothers were never the most naturally gifted individuals, but they studied the game and worked their arses off.
You can hear that now in Gary's analysis on Sky. He knows exactly what he's talking about, whereas a more gifted player like Merson has less insight.

Gary has one or two more brain cells than Merse too - that helps.
 
Remember when Andy Gray was offered to leave his Sky job for Everton, that would have hilarious to watch.
I'm sure a chairman will look at Gary Neville one day and consider making him a offer.

Jamie Redknapp is still waiting!
 
It amuses me to watch Carragher hyper-ventilating and giving a team a half-time dressing down over defensive errors, when he committed numerous howlers and was an emotional dependency rather than a qualified premier league player in his later years.

Gary, well, I think he's a bit vogue at the moment. It's fashionable to like him, but some of his views are unnecessarily against the grain, insular and a bit childish, like the idea that the fans want players to cheat and dive if it means they win games. No Gary, I'd rather watch my team put in a performance and win on merit. He is more tactically competent than many of the Sky Pundits, but I still retain the ultimate impression that he's a bit of a simpleton.
 
I wonder if anyone will ask why England can't play like Chile. People say Chile has good players. I'm not convinced their talent level is any higher, though they do have exactly one more world class player than England does, which comes in handy. But they play cohesively and with a commitment to a very aggressive system, and have the conditioning and toughness (as well as the belief) to make it work. If any team gets the right manager and installs the system Chile plays, which in a nutshell consists of doing nothing but pressing and trying to score quickly, they'll play very exciting football and probably be more successful.

Afram Ísland! Gylfi outplayed Modric, though Croatia had the better of it.


Worse players have to think about the game more in order to compete.

Yup. A gifted player tends to be a crummy coach because he never had to think about the game. He'll also tend to look down on mediocre players. Finally, he may view managing as an afterthought to his glory days as a player. In American sports as well, it's usually the mediocre players who make the best managers. The Pirates manager just won manager of the year award. He had been known as the biggest bust in major league history: the can't miss #1 pick who did absolutely nothing in a short career. Somewhere in his mind, he desperately wanted to be a big success in baseball, and was willing to do anything he could to be a top manager.
 
I wonder if anyone will ask why England can't play like Chile. People say Chile has good players. I'm not convinced their talent level is any higher, though they do have exactly one more world class player than England does, which comes in handy. But they play cohesively and with a commitment to a very aggressive system, and have the conditioning and toughness (as well as the belief) to make it work. If any team gets the right manager and installs the system Chile plays, which in a nutshell consists of doing nothing but pressing and trying to score quickly, they'll play very exciting football and probably be more successful.

Because Chile are guilty of the crime of being able to string two passes together. That is actively discouraged in the England camp, judging by the last decade or so of performances.

Also, it says a lot that a tiny Chilean contingent could out-sing the majority of Wembley.
 
We didn't have anything to sing about.

"We're **** and we're in denial"

Anyway, the full list of play-ff first leg results:
Sigurdsson 0 Modric 0
Ukraine 2 France 0 (ha!)
Greece 3 Romania 1
Showpony 1 Ibrahimovic 0 (****...)
Jordan 0 Uruguay 5

Mexico 5 New Zealand 1
Ivory Coast 3 Senegal 1

Ethiopia 1 Nigeria 2
Tunisia 0 Cameroon 0
Ghana 6 Egypt 1
Burkina Faso 3 Algeria 2

You almost feel sorry for the Jordanians, knowing they haven't got a hope in hell of qualifying yet they have to travel to Montevideo to be battered a second time. In fact, I haven't seen Jordan humiliated like that since Peter Andre took her to court and won!
 
Assou-Ekotto played 90 minutes for Cameroon as they beat Tunisia 4-1 to qualify for the finals.