...and so ends another decade of abject failure for the England team

and so end another appalling decade for the english national team.

started with so much promise. united finally clicked in europe, we looked like we could actually have a half decent euros. we all know how that one turned out.

our record this decade is :
2000 first round humiliation
2002 quarter final loss to champions, great chance to win blown
2004 quarter final loss to minnows, chance blown
2006 quarter final loss to minnows,
2008 did not qualify.

so, two absolute humiliations, and not even a single semi final appearance, so nowhere near winning anything.

pretty shit. compare to others:

brazil= wc win 02, semi 06, copa am 04 and 07, confed cup 05 and 09
germany=wc final 02, semi 06, final 08
spain= euro win 08, confed cup semi 09
france= euro win 00, wc final 06, confed cup wins 01 and 03
italy= euro final 00, wc win 06
portugal= euro semi 00, euro final 04, wc semi 06
holland= euro semi 00 and 04
argentina= copa am final 04 and 07, confed cup final 05
turkey= wc semi 02, euro semi 08
greece= euro win 04
czech= euro semi 04


anyone want to offer any explanations? this is not exactly a one off. it does appear to happen to england that most decades go by without us reaching semi finals, with us suffering first round kos and also not even qualifying, which, whilst one of these may happen occasionaly to our rivals, happens all the f'ing time to england. this decade was an incredible ride for our clubs. we can be said to be once again the masters of club football around the world, a position we have been at for the majority of the 150 years of association footballs history. but once again the nt has floundered miserably.


who here would be surprised to be reading the same stats for the 2010s? and what can be done to avoid the same fate? (just to point out that it is too late to do anything for 2010s anyway as a generation of players cannot be churned out overnight. the best anyone could do is to lay the foundations in place so that the 2020s are an improvement)

i suggest we start with a little revoution, and shoot all people associated with the admin for the nt, ala stalin, and start a new. becuase clearly this antiquated system we have in place, this gravy train for incompentents which has been in operation since the dark ages, has failed and failed and failed and has somehow managed to keep itself alive. now we have another set of clowns, at the top lord triesman on 100k pa to massage the pimples on his own behind, running the show. we have a nt manager on 6m pa, which, though i love capello, is an absolute joke, especially seeing what the other nt managers are earnng, and , i hate to say it, but the odds are heavily stacked againt him dragging our shambles of a nt anywhere close to winning anything. we have a coaching system which is incapable of producing coaches and utterly incapable of training english players to the standards of the modern day game. yet, still it goes on.

oh well, heres to another decade of having our team humiliated in all corners of the globe to whichever rag tag bunch of mongrels choose to humble us. thanks so much , fa, for being such effective 'guardians of our game', your all doing such a great job!

I'm annoyed that we didn't do a lot better.. but to be honest, things could have been a lot different if you look at refereein decisions e.t.c

2002 was a great chance for us, but I don't think that we can be too disheartened by going out to Brazil, who eventually became champions. If only Seaman was back on his line...

2004 was probably the best chance of the decade for me - we were playing the best football of the tournament. Then everything has to go wrong, Rooney gets injured after 25 mins, and Portugal scrape a late goal. Then in extra time, in the last minute we get a perfect goal scraped off by some homo ref. I still feel annoyed about this even now, we only had Holland and Greece to play, and I'm sure that we could have beaten them.

2006- well we were crap except against Portugal. We had many chances and were the better team, but we just couldn't finish. On another day, Lampard would have netted two goals and we would have gone through.


I think that the next decade will be much better, like the 90s where we reached 2 SFs. We have plenty of young talent coming through at Arsenal and Everton in particular, and our u21s just reached the final of the Euros..

See you didnt offer up any idea's.
You just said everything is crap and sack everyone. Nothing constructive in that low quality diatribe .

This is not the time for some kind of post-mortem style debate when we have a had a great qualifying campaign playing good football. What the f'ck do you want people to reply with here?
You want everyone to pat you on the back for being edgy and controversial.
Shit thread from a shit poster.

We had these threads after Euro 08 when we were rock bottom. Now??? nah dont think so.

aw, did my wittle posting upset you much? when you post, is it for a pat on the back? lets all give sinner a nice pat on the back because he is clearly very upset. did the reality of the situation cause this outburst? so many years of believing every word you read in the sun and the mirra about how 'england expects' and now the sudden realisation that the decade has been a total wash out as far as the nt goes, to put alongside every other decade that we have failed to impose, to even close to the stanards that our clubs manage to do, and , even worse, that we are so far behind even the minnows of the game, like turkey or portugal, who 20 years ago we were capable of putting 10 past them. germany have continued to succeed in this decade, and their playing personal rarely looked anything special. italy has had serie a go down the toilet, yet they continue to get respecatable returns. the french, despit not having a first division worthy of the name, continue to out do england, massively. spain now have been to the same numbers of semis in this decade as englad have done since colour tv was invented. do i need to go on? if you think that capello is the begginning and the end of our renaisance you need your head examining.

We had dozens of threads de-constructing English football when we flopped in 08. Debating how we had slipped in coaching development.
Your are fuelled by lazy stereotyping I see when you throw out the cheap "read the sun" jibes. You've got nothing to say and your writing is abysmal.

You dont have any insight into improving our fortunes whatsoever. "Sack everyone" is about as good as it gets for you. When we debated this countless times before I said we needed things like a mid season break and a restructuring of the FA coaching setup.

Far behind Turkey? only been to 2 tournaments this decade and just been KO'd from the world cup by Bosnia. People in this forum are supposed to debate with this level of stupidity? Portugal is not a minnow and wasnt 20 years ago either.

calm down dear, its only a forum for debate. if you dont like what you read, just move on, no need to burst a blood vessel, but i do think you should cut down on the salt in your diet or risk an early death, because clearly you have no control of your emotions.

so, you dont wish to reflect on the obvious, that is fine with me. now i have mentioned some overhaul of the fa, and you agree on this, even though you say i have nothing to say. so, what type of overhaul. they are a law to themselves, they are not responsibe or accountable to anyone, and there is no way for the world outsde of the fa to have any impact on them. what can be done from here? tragically, unless people are willing to take the law into their own hands then nothing can or will be done. this is why i make the comment about revoluvtion and purge. not that i intend to do this, but there doesnt appear to be anyother solution. we have just failed another decade, and we go into the next with the same probs as we entered the last. 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.'

Nothing overboard about my replies. The same cant be said for your melodramatic ramblings... That opening rant came across as a someone who is on the verge of suicide. Like that line below... I mean we arent scotland or wales here FFS .

We debated this countless times in 08 and we all agreed the FA were mugs.
On a daily basis we say the FA are mugs. This thread offers up nothing really.
The fact is ,international trophies are very hard to come by. very few teams have got wins under their belts. Turkey will never win an international trophy despite what you think.

On top of our coaching issues ,the sheer physicality of the British game makes it hard to go to an end of season tournament with a team in fit shape to win. To put it all together for a short tournament is very tough.

Hmmmm, a nice cheery subject for Christmas.

In my humble opinion I think 'abject failure' is going overboard. In the 5 tournaments this decade we have had 1 'abject failure' which was the last Euros. The rest can be described as 'underacheiving' 'disappointing' or 'unlucky'. Given the players we've had I think we should have at least reached 1 final or semi-final, but through a mixture of being rubbish at penalties, unfortunate injuries (we've never had a deep squad) and a good goal in the dying minutes being disallowed, things never seemed to go our way. Let's not forget there have been quite a few very good teams this decade, and we've never really been classed in the top 3. We've consistently been a top 8 team and proved that during Sven's reign, and were close on a couple of occasions of going further.

Beyond Managers, do we have underlying problems? I think we probably do, and as Sinner said there were some good threads during and after the 08 qualifiers about coaching and the FA's ineptness. I think even after the good campaign we've just had, some of these issues will need to be addressed. However, I don't think now is the time for a 'glass half empty' thread. Let's get behind the team, and hope for a big improvement in 6 months time.

karloski, is there a postwar decade, other than the one associated with 1966, where at the end we could say 'that was a good decade for the national team?

i dont think there is. after each it would always be a case of 'unlucky, came up short, bad referee, penalties'.

i also thought it was a good junction to carry on my pet peeve of 'compare us to germany'. similar population, similar physicality and similar lack of skillful players, yet again they have put us to absolute shame, despite us beating them in competitve fixtures twice, despite us having all the marquee names and big transfers etc, they still, in this decade alone, got to more finals than in our entire history. ********.

Germany has always had a long mid season break. Critical IMHO.
And their league is not even remotely close to the physical level of English league. The germans have always been way ahead with their scientific preparation and organisation. Even in the 1950s their players were using supplements while ours were eating pies for breakfast.
They are just flat out ultra efficient in everything they do. Anyone who has travelled within Germany will know what I mean. They get nothing wrong.

England does not have a bad world cup record though. Despite everything.

http://www.planetworldcup.com/NATIONS/maraton.html

if we had Spains "never been past the QF" record you would probably have hurled yourself off a cliff by now.

No. Over that time scale we have certainly underachieved. I think a few other countries could say the same thing. I don't think we've ever really been seen as the best team coming into a tournament though, but a few more semis or finals should have been expected. If you look at our overall WC record (wins, losses etc) it really aint that bad.

Put simply, they've been better than us. But hey, they've been better than almost everybody else as well. Their continued success at all levels of the game can't be put down to luck or fluke. They obviously have a good structure in place, and I think in many ways success breeds success and vice versa.

I'm just want to wait to see what happens this World Cup before I disect any deep rooted problems. If it goes wrong in the summer, at least the manager excuse can't be branded around any more.