We are officially through after Portugal win 1-0. First time we have got out of the group at this tournament since 1997.
As I understand it then 2nd round game would be vs the Nigeria/Saudia Arabia group winner. It's a good achievement to get this far when you consider the vast difference in quality between this team and what would be the best XI. Even the likes of Jack Wilshere and Phil Jones would still comfortably qualify for this age group, let alone the likes of Caulker, McEachran, Wickham etc.
Not just that but our team are playing against teams that have qualified together and played a good amount of games. Whereas our squad was cobbled together and only had 1 proper warm up game together. From a development point of view though playing this negatively is pointless from a creative attacking sense. We have looked better when we have played an extra somewhat creative player centrally too.
The idea behind these tournies is to reveal players for the future full team. Cobbling together a team of players who likely wont get far is a waste of time. We should have tried to get a stronger lineup together .
We play Nigeria on Wednesday. We are in the easier side of the draw because Spain, Colombia and Brazil are on the other side.
He was an active poster on the Yank side of the board. Guessing he responded to a few of their baiting bollocks about us.
Our game is on in about and hour and a half. Parrett has gone home injured so we are another man light now.
No indian players have been good enough. The problem is that there are barely any professional players in England who are Indian. I cannot even think of one. England cannot pick Indian players, if there are no Indian players playing at the top level. There are loads of British Born Indian lads who play football and are obsessed with the game, but at Pro level there are just no Indians currently. The whole issue is possibly worthy of a debate, but not in this thread.
