I came up with a list last week of significant eligible players that didn't go for one reason or another: Ravel Morrison, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Josh McEachran, Will Keane, Michael Keane, Connor Wickham, Jack Butland, Raheem Sterling, Will Hughes, Luke Shaw, Andre Wisdom, Nathan Redmond and Nick Powell.
What do you mean by this, exactly? To me, Ross Barkley has been the best english player by far. Is physique what we should be looking at when judging a young striker? Or should technical ability and development be the main focus? We could have used a 6'6 player up top, and he would have been "influential", but that's not the way to go.
Physique IS indeed a factor - you may not like it but pace is an other one. The ability to play is another one. There is nothing complicated about this. What I was saying was it was foolish to focus criticism at Kane, the front man, who was our most influential player in the first two games (it wasn't just me who noticed this, Whackadoodle - or did you have the sound down). By the way physically Kane is pretty unremarkable. But he wasn't in the last game and we lost. Kane was our best player in last year's u19 Finals - that's is where we qualified for this world cup. Germany, Italy and Holland didn't qualify. Along with Brazil and Argentina in South America. However, Kane didn't play in the last game. We lost it. Stones seemed to go under the radar but he looks like a Premiership player in the not too distant - tall, good runner and assertive. Over and out.
Bit of a heads up for anyone suffering from withdrawals and who doesn't mind watching foreigners - France v Turkey is on tonight. With us not being in I kinda forgot about it all.
Uruguay knock out Spain. Will be interesting to see if the two teams from our group can make the semis.
I know it was only a friendly but how did we beat Uruguay 3-0? Why would they try any less than us? Maybe our players played better because there was no pressure.
It wasn't even a friendly. Looked like a training match. Sure they would have been trying but it's not even a real match experience.
He started playing regularly for WB but then got carried off with what looked a bad injury - I assume he was still injured so didn't get a call up.
Uruguay look really good. They can definitely beat France. They will park the bus and France can be very wasteful as we saw against Uzbekistan. Uruguay are very solid defensively and won't give France that many chances to score plus they are dangerous on the break.
Uruguay love the underdog giant killer role. Some of these Uruguayan kids already know about finals since they reached the finals of the U17 in Mexico. They will be eager for a second chance. As for us (Chile) we are out but we did the homework for France, a couple of Ghana players are suspended and most of them are exhausted. Easy route for France now.
http://iraqsport.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/massive-age-fraud-in-the-iraqi-youth-team/ This article is a proof how you guys ( and the other countries that played against them) got cheated. A lot of the Iraqi players are much older than 20. Their goalkeeper is probably in his late 20s.
I heard the rumours but in the end (if these are true) it doesn't matter to us (or no other team for that matter as there seems to be no other team complaining), all they are doing is hurting themselves by making their youth look better than they are. I take comfort that Chile was close to getting a result against them without our starting lineup. As destiny will have it, Chile will play Iraq in a friendly again, this time with full internationals on neutral European soil. That match will be a good gauge to see where everyone is at.