Bit of a testimonial type game to be honest and out starting 11 reflected that with a lot of changes. Nice to see some of the youngsters like Sancho, Winks, Chilwell and Alexander-Arnold get a start and they played ok. Future is clearly bright with so many young players starting to come through again and looking forward to getting Foden in the mix . It felt like the game was being played at half pace in the 2nd half. Good luck against Italy.
MLS? Wood, McKennie, Pulisic, Brooks start for BL teams. Yedlin plays for Newcastle. Guzan played in EPL (Aston Villa starter). Miazga is on loan from Chelsea to Nantes in Ligue 1. So, 7 of our 11 at a higher level. Green plays in BL2 Weah is with PSG II V/fana was with Mex League, now with MLS Trapp is in MLS - he used to captain our youth teams.
I have this feeling that international football is going to die in the next decade, or so. Maybe the US can be a leader in that regard.
Agree with nearly all of it, but I think the biggest issue is getting our players to play as a national team. The players do fairly well at their club teams . Excellency covered it already but we have players in top leagues. Your comment on struggling to get time on a English 2nd division is laughable at best and borderline arrogant. The rest of your post is fairly on point.
Umpteenth game with wrong players wrong tactics yet again come out from half push player up and magical improvement
Wood and Jozy are both labeled as lazy strikers (rightfully so). Bradley and whoever else we play at the 6 are gutless backpassers. We complain about the lack of depth at the left back position. If our starter there sucks, how can the backup and his backup be that much worse? Our reputation used to be that we had athletic, physical players that played with heart. Crappy soccer players, but they gave it their all and would f*ck you up in the process of trying to grind out a 1-1 tie or maybe get lucky and steal 3 points. Now we don't have the same type of athlete playing and we still suck at soccer. IF your touch is dog poop, at least get stuck-in and go down swinging.
Maybe Klinsmann was correct playing with a lot of bodies at the back and waiting for the set piece. The coward lives to fight another day. I mean, when we try to play as an equal, we get smacked in the snout. Maybe we should go for Berti Vogts to play the 8-1-1.
Maybe in some regions but never in South Ameruca. Too much passion and emotional attachments to the Seleccions.
Seriously, 68,000 for a friendly with an England B team and a team that didn’t qualify for the last world cop s a problem.
dirty little secret, a lot of international friendlies are modestly attended abroad as well. kind of like you could go to an EPL stadium for a cup or UEFACL game y'all adore and it might also be part full. personal experience. they like league. they like finals. they like games that count where the A team plays. also, Wembley has a 90k capacity, which means a 60k crowd leaves every third seat open. you can look at it like most American football stadia would be full to the brim, or you can pick on the empty seats. i think if we pulled 68k for Mexico we'd be ecstatic. i think if we pulled 68k for England here it would be a miracle.
Wembley often has a poor atmosphere in England matches. Lots of casuals/families with kids who sit there quietly and not the best acoustics. The upper tiers the same side as the TV cameras are often not put on sale for smaller games. To echo the above though, the attendances/ticket sales for England home matches are consistently very good by international football standards.
In Houston, the east stands face right into the evening sun, worse, glittering off the downtown glass skyscrapers. Combination of sweltering and blinding. You learn to buy tickets on the shady side. However, a film crew puts the sun at their back and points towards the stands in the sunlight. So the far stand that gets shown is the emptier one. The bulk of the fans are sitting under the camera basically. Not that our attendance is very good, just that the camera can play tricks. I don't doubt the friendly attendances are good relative to ours, but I also think there is some Eurosnob naivete -- from people who like the teams but never go to a game there -- about which games the fans favor. Short answer, not all. Long answer, league. My experience league was sold out or a hard ticket and cup and friendlies were the easier gets. I could watch Chelsea in Europe but not league much. The UEFACL snobs aren't noticing because they assume as the pinnacle it's well attended. But if you know your team is running out the B team against some Norwegian side to save the A team for the weekend against Arsenal, maybe not. I mean, it's actually similar to MLS just on a grander scale/better attended. I've been to CCL where the actual fans numbered in the 100s and you could see the A team players circulating the stadium in the seats but officially since it was a STH game that had 10000+ because you burned an "extra" whether you wanted to or not.
Even dirtier little secret: friendlies are among the games most often "sold" by the match fixing sites. Not so much the score, but they sell the "events" like own-goals, red cards, etc.