England post tournament analysis [R]

Better than France and Italy. It's not often we get to say that, so let's make hay while the sun shines.

 

england will always have good talent. They have the structure in place and the most entertaining league in the world.

why they can't have an English coach i can't figure out.
Those talents are unproven but got overhyped too much. Before they start regularly in the league n play well, don't predict players' future.

England was trying to make Walcott the new wonderkid n "hope" of English football back in 2006, even included him in their World Cup roster. I can still remember how people rated him as the best talent England have produced in the last 20 years or something. But 4 years later he's still shit.

Heard people praised James Vaughn 3 seasons back too. But....

Overhyping the youngsters doesn't mean u actually have the talented young
players emerging. Fans n the media never get this right n that's why they keep being disappointed owing to the overexpectation. U can't just name a few 18/19 year olds and say they're 'world class' talent n they'll make it for sure. Coz every country rate their youngsters as top of their age group too. And having the potential doesn't mean they'll hv a prosperous career

That's why I don't count Welbeck, Wickham, Sturridge n Baxter before they actually produce n show promises consistently in the epl.

It's not gonna be easy. Too many foreigners in the league n they're taking domestic players' playing time.

France actually hv some good players emerging n unlike England. Their players do play n show promises before they got overhyped.

Agbonlahor, milner, Walcott, huddlestone, Lennon, micah Richards and Gary Cahill are not enough to turn things arround.

If u look at chelsea's shopping list with names like Torres n Suarez; or Arsenal's with Oezil n some Spanish midfielders, u may realize they a won't give wilshere n sturridge too much match practice the coming season.

Epl are owned by foreign owners and they want the best players available. This makes the premier league a difficult place for English players

it's worrying. But when Baxter n Walcott ******** it up, do not try to over hype some random 18/19 year olds or else u will be making the same mistakes

French league actually encourage clubs using domestic players but this will hardly happen in the epl

 

Something wasn't right from the very beginning. Rooney was well out of sorts, Lampard was lethargic, Gerrard was better, but still not the player we know. Terry was ok in fits and bursts, but yesterday he was getting pulled all over the place when they ran at us. The midfield totaly failed to keep the ball for any length of time in any game, be it against USA or Algeria.

 

The players are all mega rich. Some of them cant muster up the motivation/discipline to follow tactics and instructions. Its obviously tough to try and discipline someone who earns 120k a week. Some of them have forgotten where they first came from.

They had this problem in american sports for a while. Players who just didnt show up for the international based events and acted like it was just a holiday. The NBA players spring to mind. For a while no coach or tactical system could get anything out of their talent until they switched afew things around.

It used to be a mental block in tournies.. but now its big ego mega rich players.
Even capello couldnt get through to some of them. Like rooney ,who only had one shot on goal in 4 games and sulked like some big kid.

 

Turd-on-a-string

 

This.

The Argies yesterday played with a smile on their face. Like being at a World Cup was a privilege, not a chore, to be enjoyed, not endured. What went on amongst our group of players during this tournament was beyond parody. Until we stop treating our Premiership "stars" like deities we'll never get a proper team representing us at international tournaments. Likewise, until we stop treating the Premiership like some sort of uber-league and stop kidding ourselves that excitement is more important than quality, we'll never produce anything other than the utterly mediocre English sides that have been representing us at World and European Championships for nigh-on twenty years now.

Upson might have had a 'mare for most of this World Cup, but at least he appeared to relish being there and appreciate the opportunity. Likewise Milner, Lennon, Wright-Phillips, Crouch. Bog standard Premiership players to a man, but give me that and a bit of bollocks over Rooney or Terry any day of the week.

We've got nowhere left to go with managers, that's a dead-end line of enquiry. Time to start looking at the real problem.

 

Good, we can legitimately call it a theme. If the same thing keeps coming up then maybe we should have a think about it and see if there's something that can be done? Because only a blind idiot would dismiss the obvious evidence of a badly wired mentality amongst this and pretty much every other England squad in living memory.

Unless we agree that England's players don't do well at tournaments because they're not very good footballers, then the mental dimension is the obvious starting point for a change in our fortunes. And as with most problems in life, if you start with the obvious flaws then you have some hope that in time answers will suggest themselves for the more intangible issues too.

This is the single biggest issue. Conversely though, we also have a problem with "experience". We overvalue it massively. And as a consequence we don't play young players at league level and we don't elevate enough players to the national side in a concerted and meaningful fashion.

The team that gave us that solid, unambiguous spanking yesterday had three players with less than ten caps each in their starting line-up. Their squad has the lowest average age of any at the World Cup. They also had lots of players at the other end of the experience scale of course, but they're blending things nicely.

We need to stop the mass wanking that happens between August and May every year and accept that the Premiership is bad for the development of our number one national sport. Then maybe we can look forward to an England team one day actually justifying its own hype.

 

The problem we have is that we cannot look at our manager and say "we need better". Capello is asgood as they come. What we have here is a lack of strength in depth. Ferdinand gets injured and the best we have to offer is Upson, and inexperienced Dawson or an injury ravaged King. Rooney's our only striker of real class (although you woyuldn't know based on these performances) and our midfield suffer chronic "give-the-ball-away-itis".

In terms of ability on the ball we have some great players, but for one reason or another it didn't come together for us this summer. I'm truly devastated that we're talking like this so early. To not even make the quarters is a massive under-acheivement. It simply leave me gob-smacked. I can't stop going over that "goal" in my head. If that had gone in we all know we'd have seen a very different game. I'm not going to react with increduality about the EPL or the FA's coaching structure, but truth be told, we were first struck by bad luck, and then hit on the break because we were chasing a game, in which parity should have been restored.

The thought of it sickens me.

 

Yeah - and England usually go out of tournaments against the first decent side they meet. Like I said - if it's got the appearance of a recurring issue, then maybe it's worth focusing on? I genuinely do believe that the principal reason why England do badly at international tournaments is a combination of our football culture specifically and our sporting mentality generally (given that England's footballers are not the only ones who routinely make clowns of themselves on the international stage).

The latent quality of a pool of players is intangible, given that it's only manifested when you actually use them. Likewise, depth is a matter of our own making. You have as much depth as you give yourself. If our domestic game gave more youngsters more chances to progress, depth would not be an issue. The facilities are there, the raw material is there. What's lacking is a system that is geared towards final output.

I don't happen to believe that the Premiership should have the national team as a focus. That's not what they're there for. We let that genie out of the bottle when we allowed the Premier League to come into existence in the first place, too late to ram the stopper back in now. The FA needs to grow a giant pair of bollocks (not a pretty image, I admit ... ) and legislate for long-term success where it realistically can. That means the Football League and grass roots.

The Premiership is what it is and it is that because that's what we as a nation have shown that we want. We're buying it, year in year out. No point bitching about it and no point wishing it was something it's not designed to be. The only way to change it is to stop treating the Premiership as some sort of valhalla of sporting entertainment (it's not that entertaining half the time), or an unparalleled elite competition (it's not that high quality most of the time).

That may also have an impact on the mentality of some of our domestic players. If Jon Terry didn't spend every moment of his largely meaningless life being treated like a demi-God by everyone at Chelsea, then maybe he would be a more useful tournament player for England. Same goes for Rooney and Gerrard and all the other "stars" of the England team.

T'was ever thus. This would all be entertaining if it wasn't such old hat. England teams since time immemorial have been unable to keep hold of the ball for any length of time. The question is whether or not the mounting pile of footballing shortfalls will ever cause us to actually try and change anything. Or whether we'll be back at the Euros in 2012 confidently telling each other that this time it will be different, only for us to crash out to the first decent side we meet - again.

Really? It must rank as least remarkable news item of the year, quite frankly. Up there with "it's raining in Manchester".

 

I get the feeling that the only thing that's going to pull us back from the brink is quotas for English players in the Premiership. We need more English players in the league, it's as simple as that. We may have a steady stream of talent coming through the youth ranks, who can do well at International tournaments but why aren't they finding their way into the top sides in this country? Because it's easier for many of the top clubs to buy a foreign player for £20 million, than show any faith in the youth players.

 

Credit to the Germans for triggering our collapse-- the mark of a decent team. Tactically, Loew got it spot on by over-running our central midfield and using the ball over the top while Capello was largely unimaginative in his substitution. But let's not throw the baby with the bath-water. There are various shades of grey in all this-- we are not nearly as good as we though but hardly also the wasters being reported in the press today.

We were basically undone by unusually poor defending-- I mean a Conference-level defender would have cleared Neuer's goal-kick for the first. And then the central defenders and, ultimately the whole defence, were sucked out of position for the second. From then on we were always battling against it, although after clawing one back, we had Germany rocking on the back-foot. We then had a goal disallowed during this period but were ultimately undone by the two-card trick of break-away goals, all from our our set-pieces deep in opposition territory , as we sought to get the second goal.

Of course, changes have to be made but not just to the playing staff but also the whole structure which "coaches out" flair from footballers, and a top league which promotes the recruitment of ordinary foreigners at the expense local talent, both ordinary and promising. And the coach has to create a team, the whole of which is at least the sum of its individual parts.

 

I've been very pessimistic over the last several years over England, because I seen what was gonna happen a mile off. I do believe though that with the better young players we have coming through, we can win a trophy under Capello.

Fat Frank, Beckham, Heskey, James, Owen, hell, even Gerrard, they've let us down so many times, why was 2010 gonna be any different? When you look at the younger players, you can see they have abilities the old guard do not, and with Capello in charge of them to mould them, we can really be a serious threat.

******** the 2010 World Cup, let's look to the future.

 

Back to the old "youth development" argument? Really?

It's the Premier League's fault? I've heard the same complaints my whole life and the Premiership has only been around for half of that time.

Our players blew it through a lack of nerve and as a result, a lack of discipline. There are no other magical coaches to come in. Capello is top class.

Our "lack of talent" is also a misnomer. Players in the England team prove week-in, week-out what they are capable of and they do it against top talent.

This kind of backlash is what the players feared and it came to fruition. I don't recall a major tournament where there hasn't been a scapegoat for our lack of success. Rooney only escaped last time because the public got to vent at a foreign Man Utd player instead.

The players, as always, went into this competition with enormous weight on their shoulders. FFS, we had a few mediocre performances during warm-up games that were effectively auditions for fringe players and the nation started to freak out.

If we had maintained the discipline Capello instilled during qualifying, we would have done better. The domestic league doesn't affect that, grass roots football doesn't affect that and the coach can only do so much.

If the nation and it's fickle, manipulative media were more supportive, perhaps we'd get players determined to fight for it instead of being worried about the backlash from it.

How many other fans booed their team after one lacklustre performance? Actually, come to think of it, the England "supporters" have a tendency to boo all too often.

 

So England weren't tipped as favourites after Brazil and Spain to win this? Bollocks.

What do you propose then? Because from where I'm standing, Germany just beat us with Klose and Podolski, neither of whom is World Class. We weren't knocked out by a lack of talent, but by a lack of discipline and composure.

Few teams are that deep at international level. Italy are supposedly at the forefront of youth development and they went home after having to field an aging side - and they have far less foreigners in their league than us.

Too much is made of "youth development". We supposedly "weren't good enough" pre-Premiership. These are cliches.

Barry had Carrick and Milner as cover, both of which are as good as plenty of midfield starters in this tournament. Barry was used because he was our best option and he was fit to play - a bit like Schweinsteiger.

And the big issue to me is that if Green hadn't made that mistake against the US or Lampard's goal had been allowed to stand, things could have been very different.

I don't care how Italy were criticised or Brazil were booed (which is more to do with them disliking Dunga's approach than actual capability), this England team clearly has issues dealing with the expectation and media pressure. That's why I cited the Wembley situation.

 

Wow, that one hurt.

I'm going to attempt to keep this short.

On the games played:

In the first 2 games, and the beginning\end of the Slovenia match, I truly believed that the poor performances were down to the 'fear of failure' factor for these players. The level of the opposition were by no means rubbish, but to not top that group, and only score 2 goals, was not good enough...

..which brings us to the Germany game. I don't think the fear factor was there yesterday. While watching that game, I genuinly think they believed they had enough to beat that German team, they held possesion quite well (without looking that dangerous, it has to be said) and although there was some terrible passes (way too many over hit), players seemed to be looking for the ball (they hid in that Algeria game), and pushed numbers forward......problem is...that fell into Germanys tactical plan. Sensibly, they identified the weaknesses (lack of pace, and brain) in the 2 CB's and Johnson, and just hit us on the counter time and again. We were totally out thought. Now, add to the fact that they are way more technically comfortable as a team than us, and that result is what you get. Put simply, they were better tactically and technically. I'm still struggling to understand the indiscipline and amateurism of our back line. In a WC knockout game, it's unforgivable....can anybody imagine our backline\covering mids from 2006\2002 consistently allowing that to happen, we weren't world beaters but we were difficult to beat then. Part of this has to come down to....

...squad depth - We don't have it really. Capello knows it, and deep down we all probably do. After all the time Capello has been here..at the selection stage, what does he do? He takes half injured player. He makes phone calles to retired 30 somethings begging them to come out of retirement. He goes against what he said and takes players who are not on form. Problem is, the depth is so woeful, it's difficult to blame him. It's a sad indictment of the English players coming through in our league. So what does the..

..future hold. I'm not one of the people who blames the amount of foreign imports into the league, because more than anything it should lift our level of technical play. I do however, believe that if you are good enough, you will make it, regardless of where you are from, so if we aren't getting enough coming through something must be going wrong earlier down the line. I know some on here (who follow the under 21's, 19's etc) are confident of some of the younger guys, but I've heard this many times over the last decade and not many seem to be moving onto or close to top, top level....I hope the confidence by some of you is correct, and the next generation make that step up, otherwise....more of the same I guess.