The thread IS about a match against England! That is why I came here in the first place - also I actually came here to give 'positive' comments about YOUR team performance, like I said I feel a lot of negativity around the team is based SOLELY on results rather than actual performances, I think a bit of patience with the new man in charge is going to be needed, I was alarmed to see on here threads with titles like 'boycott the team' etc, that's why I felt particularly compelled to comment initially.
Fair enough? I don't know - @bungadiri just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble in USMNT, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of English Inquisition.
Frankly, Crawleybus came in with a good point as to the USMNT. There is no need for us to take pride in playing "whack-a-mole" with him. Maybe we should strive to focus on building a national side we can take pride in, and not spend so much effort making fun of someone who takes pride in his England national side.
this! I'm looking forward to our clash in the Nations League ko tournemet in Portugal, as his side is very good at the moment.
Or take so much time talking about England in a US thread on a US forum? It'd make sense if we played frequently, like if we were in the same Confederation, but we probably won't play England for another 5-10 years when we set up another Friendly. Who cares?
We should not “take pride in” our team because they play an attractive style. We take pride in any of our national teams based on heart, determination and character. I admittedly haven’t been clear in communicating my point: pride in a side becomes harmful to a national team when it is associated with playing an “entertaining” style instead of being solely results focused. England is the prime example of what we don’t want the USMNT to become! They are the only Big 5 league to have not won either a World Cup or Euro Cup in the modern era (last 50 years) despite having arguably the best and deepest league in the world. Maybe they should be solely focused on what it takes to grind out wins when it matters rather than comforting themselves with style focused platitudes. We are a long way from having the talent that England has and does have but I think they should learn from our historic teams who were clearly better than the sum of our parts and knew how to dig down to over-achieve relative to our talent (even though it wasn’t enough to come close to winning a WC). That’s what makes me proud to be a USMNT fan.
Fun fact he wrote "April is the cruellest month" because he was a Millwall fan and they'd just been relegated. That's not true. I have both volumes of his annotated texts, the first volume is incredible the second not so much. I was obsessed with The Wasteland and The Four Quartets especially Burnt Norton for a long, long time. One of the good things about the internet is you can say you like poetry and doesn't matter if everyone thinks you're a wanker.
Why do you say cake draw rather than cake walk? England have been rather lucky with their draws but that's largely by virtue of being consistent and therefore being top seeds. Off the top of my head '98 '02 and '08 were difficult, if anyone remembers in '08 Croatia and Arshavin's Russia were perhaps the two surprise packages, it's the last decade which has been easier and I'm thankful for that because yes we would have struggled in a tough group after Sven. As fans would you enjoy a CONCACAF/CONMEBOL merger, the north bringing the quantity and the south bringing the quality? As a neutral I'd love to watch a merged COPA AMERICA, I think it's a great shame the non-European teams have to wait 4 years to watch a big tournament. It's great being on a two year cycle, as a fan.
And so it goes with you, Individual Eleven, ever allowing dogma it's central place by your hearth. How is it,then, to be he who weeps that he cannot revive old factions , cannot restore old policies, and fails in his bid to follow an antique drum? IE, Kudos on Squaring that Circle.
The English 'system' currently has two national World Cup winning teams, the senior team has the sixth best 'all time' World Cup record, so, not the best no, but to read your posts you would think that instead of one of the best they were somehow the worst team to ever exist. Sure we would all like to be like Brazil (a very big country) but the US could do a LOT worse than strive for a national team record like Englands.