He always had a great initial plan. But if anything deviated from that original plan, if the other team scored a fluke goal...he never EVER had a backup plan. The man would sit there like a retard and just take it. When Brazil scored that fluke goal in 02 to take the lead he honestly had no idea what to do. He decided to long ball it for the next 30+ minutes when he should have been pushing everyone forward for the equalizer and sending on offensive substitutions. Instead he made awful ones. If his initial plan worked, we looked awesome. If it didn't, we were buggered. The mark of a great tactician is working with what happens on the field in real time. Changing the formation and tactics on the fly. He could never do that. He couldn't even do it at half time. He was maddening if the team got a 1 goal lead. You knew the moment we got the lead, we'd play 10 or 11 behind the ball for the rest of the match. When England took the quick lead against Portugal in 2004 and Brazil in 2002 I knew we would lose because we would stop trying to score. And both times that was exactly what happened. We had Brazil on the ropes when we scored the opener. Instead of playing for a second and maybe a third, he decided to have us try and defend a one goal lead against one of the most gifted teams offensively in football history. He was over-rated when we got to the tournaments but he always got us into tournaments. Sure, he got us three QFs in a row. The first, in 02, he choked the game away for us. We had a chance to make the semis and actually beat Brazil, the eventual winners. He had no balls and attempted to win 1-0. Against mother********ing Brazil. Even after it was 1-1, he still played like we had the lead. In 04, he did the same thing. Quick lead, defend. In 06, he played for penalties. We're England, who in their right bloody mind takes an England team and tries to play for penalties? The fact of the matter is he had this unprecedented success with those finishes but he also had some of the most talented England squads in decades. We would never win a title with Sven. Not with his coaching style and lack of cajones. Would we always qualify? Yes. If that's all England strives for, Sven should always be coach. If we want to have the potential to win titles, then Sven won't be missed. But even for 2002, he needed Beckham's wonder goal at the death to get us there. Maybe in ten, fifteen years we'll look back on Sven with more appreciation. But the teams that have won the last two world cups have not been "teams of the ages" and Greece in 2004? Besides Spain winning the 2008 Euros, we've had a team that could compete against any of those teams for the trophy. And we didn't accomplish that with Sven. Sven may have squandered our best chances of winning a title and with that, I don't believe he is under-rated at all. He's not a bad coach, he's no twit like McSven. But he's massively over-rated.
To be fair, Sven had some horrific luck with injuries and penalties during tournaments. Although a tougher manager wouldn't have let Beckham take any penalties, and would have told Gerrard and Lampard that they wouldn't be picked if they kept putting in half-arsed performances. It's good to see us actually try to kill off teams these days, rather than sit on 1-0 or 2-1 against some average shit team.
I have to agree w/all the 'No plan B ers' on this one. Take for instance WC 2006 where Mikey goes down early. Sven is completely baffled. First he leaves Crouch up front on his own. Then he leaves Rooney up front on his own. Never does a 4-4-2 with Rooney and Crouch cross his mind or materialize on the pitch. Very upsetting, frustrating.
Should have thrown Walcott on vs Portugal after Rooney was sent off....could'nt have hurt and his pace, with 10 men, would have suprised Portugal.
He was on the squad, one of 4 ? strikers and 2 of them were out. About a year later he blistered the German u21 side....In germany...anyway, I fail to see how England could have done worse than they did.
England played hard a man down, arguably better than when they were at full squad. Sven's failure to ever put an emphasis on penalty kicks did us in..
It was actually the teen sensation at the time Aaron Lennon that was being thrown on to add pace to the team at the time. He did do quite well at times too.
well it hasnt hindered walcotts developement has it? blame that filthy chav rooney forstamping on a portugese players balls rather than theo
Therein lies the issue. Sven didn't trust the players outside of his regulars. I think the way he assessed them was wrong too. He put too many of them in together in the second half of games rather than playing them with the first team.
Can't wait to see Sven take on the yanks, if he pulls his usual thing of winning the derby games then Bigsoccer will go into meltdown
We were playing for a 0-0 tie and when Rooney went down we actually didn't look like crap. I totally agree we looked better down a man.
well if you could recreate the whole match using a complex computer generated model, and then change it so that instead of bringing crouch on we bring on walcott, and then you wil be able to see how england could have done worse.
but it was sven's fault that the squad didn't practise penalties; he went on the record as saying there was no point because you couldn't re-create the atmosphere of a penalty shoot out on the traning ground. who can know whether training would have made any difference to the outcome. it seems a bit stupid not to spend some time on it in a tournament though.
tbf you should expect pros to convert pens, especially the likes of beckham, gerrard and lamps with their technical ability its just nerves, more psychological
tell me who is the most likely to be more nervous in a penalty shoot-out 1) player A, who has taken a few penalties in every training session for the last month 2) player B, who hasn't taken a penalty since he was 8