..... for having taken on the thankless task of managing England. Having watched the opening matches in the Confederations Cup, the gulf between England and e.g. Italy and Spain (even Uruguay and Mexico) in terms of technical ability and on-field intelligence is so evident. The best we can hope for at the 2014 World Cup (always supposing we manage to qualify), is the odd performance on a par with the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. As Michel Platini might say, quoting a French general, "Magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le football".
i think we could give tahiti a game though! i didn't really watch it, just had it on in the background, but the nigeria match last night was like watching a kids under 12 game. truly was bizarre!
also, what you have to remember, is that england's natural place in the footballing world is around the 6th - 12th best team in the world. its rare we get higher than that and rare we go lower. we might not be the best to watch but i think its fair to say there's only about 5 or 6 nations that you think will definitely beat us if we play them, and even then, they don't always manage it! the problem is, we aren't good enough to actually win anything but a couple of good results and everybody gets excited. i always describe england as a 'quarter final team'.
English football is second rate and is glossed over to a degree by the foreign element in the Premiership which raises the overall standard. Erikkson did a great job of reaching the quarters at the World Cup twice and again at the Euros and if we hadn't been conned by bad refereeing disallowing late winners we may have pogressed further. We are a decent team / squad and that is about it sadly and until we limit overseas players and bring on English players it won't change. I wonder how many of the winning youth team will actually play for our first team?
and as much as coaching is vital to the progression of any young player, there is a case of requiring a little bit of luck too! spain are currently producing some fantastic footballers but they've had a little luck to get so many world class players through at a similar time. they don't simply 'generate' these players, luck is involved, even if the coaching levels are more focused. i doubt they will ever produce another team as good as the one of the last 10 years, no matter what they do behind the scenes.
Having the talented overseas players in the Premier League does at least ensure that the home grown ones have a chance to learn from them. And it has well and truly put paid to the comfortable, insular idea that English (or British [Isles], given how many Scots, Welsh and Irish play in the Premiership) is by definition best. The very small number of English players prepared even to attempt to try their hand abroad is all part of the same cultural backwardness and lack of aspiration to improve. Look at any continental league, it is full of overseas players -- except British ones. At any given time you can count the number of English players playing for top overseas clubs on the fingers of one hand, and you usually won't get much further than your thumb and forefinger. It would be good to have enough home grown talent to shift the proportion of home grown to overseas players a bit more in favour of home grown. But limiting the number of overseas players is not the way to do that IMO.
I take your point Robbie but think that there are similarities possibly to be made with what happened with the national cricket team which was poor for many years and counties were employing several overseas players (like Richards and Garner at Somerset for example) which improved the spectacle of the county game but did nothing for England. Since there has been a cap on overseas players Englland have improved tremendously. I appreciate that European laws mean that we cannot cap European players but we can limit the Rest of the World players, a lot of whom are arguably not that much better than the home grown talent - that is the conundrum for me.
But before the current cap was introduced the ECB had already introduced central contracts, and with them a much more coherent national management and coaching strategy -- which is what the FA are now trying to reproduce with the new academy and development system. You are assuming that the cap is the reason for the improved performance of the national side(s), but I and many others question that. There are plenty of people in cricket who have genuine doubts about whether the benefits of the cap outweigh the costs, particularly regarding the effect on young English talent. One quote (from 2010 when the rules were tightened): "Current rules will only encourage mediocrity. We have made a negative out of a positive. Instead we should have celebrated the fact that English cricket attracted the best players. We were lucky to have them."
A couple of strange quotes there supers, if we turn the arguement around by changing England with Norwich (I say this by being kind of rating you between 6 & 12 in the premiership, I doubt anybody could rate you higher) and the world to the premiership. do you get excited and go overboard by a couple of results? and do you descibe Norwich as a Quarter final team? just trying to find the logic in the negativity that always surrounds the national side, yet if its to your own club side you are positive about the same outcome. I'm not picking on you supers inperticular, its just your comment is a perfect example.
sorry guru, i literally have no idea what you are talking about! i'm not negative about england, merely realistic. since '96 england have been as high as 3rd (crazy!) but never been lower than 17th so placing them as a side ranked between 6th and 12th is totally fair. i describe them as a 'quarter final side' because that is generally where they end up getting knocked out in both world cup and euros. sometimes they do a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. it's basically their average over time. it's impossible to compare club and country as cup competition is completely different to a league format.
I think it's probably a combination. The fact that English clubs are saying English players cost too much certainly suggests they'd be too expensive for less rich leagues. Also, the clubs with the money (PSG, Monaco, Real, Barca, etc) will pay huge amounts, but for world class players. The only British player I think who comes close to being World Class right now is probably Bale, beyond that I'm struggling - Rooney and Cole at a push? Any other players who might come close to that title are too old to be commanding big transfer fees any more (Gerrard, Lampard, etc) - if they go anywhere it'll be on a free for ludicrous wages when they're deemed too old for the PL.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we should save all our clubs a lot of money and ban all English players from playing in it for 5 years. They can all **** off to Romania to earn a living and then earn the right to play over here.
