The cash the premier league generates hinders us, it means we buy talent from all round the world instead of developing our own. Belgium - They’ve never won a World Cup or European Cup being ranked number one doesn’t win you anything. Rugby League, Union, Cricket they’re quite limited on team sports England has a smaller population than France, we play as England not United Kingdom Russia, India, USA, China,Indonesia, Pakistan, Japan, Turkey all far greater populations all pretty useless on the world football stage when you take population into account. We accept the USA never wins a thing at Football Rugby or Cricket because they play American Football and Baseball
Totally disagree with your first paragraph with respect Ristac. The influx of foreign players has forced our academies to up their game and produce much better technical players, the likes of Foden, Bellingham, Saka etc. Without that we’d still be playing Allardyce / Dyche hoofball
Maybe we can’t. They’re not consistently brilliant. They had a really good side… with Boban and suker etc 25 years ago. Went quiet for a while. Then the modric generation came through and have done well in the last 5 years or so. Fair play to them but they have in my opinion ridden their luck a bit, certainly in this World Cup. Yugoslavia used to consistently produce good footballers with a mix of Serbs and Croats. It’s a football mad region. They have good academies. They’re very patriotic. Beyond that it’s hard to say. England had some decent sides that underperformed at major champs or didn’t get many breaks. My point really was we weren’t geared up to help the national team. That’s changed now, so I think we’ll be in the mix more frequently going forward.
Maybe. I think we overrate ourselves constantly, I guess that was the point I was making with regards Croatia. And we’ve been in the mix, we just fail the biggest tests mostly. Still, the real football is back now
Ohh the media build us up for sure… and then knock us down. Agree we haven’t grasped the mettle in the bigger games.., second best to Croatia in 2018 and Italy in the euros. Thought we were a bit unlucky against the French last week though. As you say time to move on… just Man City coming up… good job we don’t have any injury troubles
As Doc mentioned Belgium were ranked number one in the world but never won anything. A few years ago we’d be in a few peoples top 10s more hope than anything else. Now if someone doesn’t put England in a top 10 it’s out of spite. This World Cup we had a genuine chance, I didn’t expect us to win it but we had a realistic chance, how games and performances were unfolding France and Argentina were always going to be the two to beat. Argentina now need to find the next Messi, France rely on Mbappe, that’s the difference, to win you need the superstar which we’ve never really had.
Ristac mentioned us not having any superstars but Harry Kane is wanted by top teams yet again and valued at over £100m, so too is Bellingham and Grealish wasnt used and another £100m player, Foden will be valued at over £100m Rashford hardly used valued at between £80-100m, young Saka the same. Ben White went home £80m, Declan Rice the same value and even Alexander Arnold is coveted by many teams around the world and not used. A different coach maybe different result
That’s fine, if you think those players are in the same league as Mbappe or Messi even Neymar that’s your opinion. We reached a final and quarter final, you don’t do that with poor players, we just lack that one superstar head and shoulders above the rest. If we’d have had Mbappe or Messi in an England team it would have been an entirely different outcome Haaland joined city for £60m values aren’t everything. Just a shame Haaland didn’t decide to play for the City and Nation he was born in.
Haaland is a £150m player Rich but his contract had a £64m buy out clause hence City getting him half price and still making £54m in transfer profits
… Given his real value v release clause, there were no shortage of interested parties- so the haggling on the transfer for haaland was always going to be the signing on fee/wages. He may have nominally cost c£60m but he won’t have been a ‘bargain’ in total costs. let’s see how Leeds he is… by whether he celebrates his hat-trick next week.
