England Senior National Team General Discussion Thread

What has he said that was wrong?

 

Haven´t seen anything from the game so far but the result doesn´t make Lloyd Kelly look good at all... On another note, despite his stuttering start to the season Balogun has just scored twice against PSG.

 

The psg goal shouldn't have stood

 

Juve have been poor in Serie A recently and were terrible all round today (apart from Koopmeiners)

 

Chukwuemeka on for Dortmund.

 

Austria will be pleased

 

Kelly started for Juventus

Trent started for Real Madrid

Jobe started for Dortmund. (Chukwumeka) used from the bench.

 

Al-Ahli's 29-year-old England striker Ivan Toney has left the door open for a move back to the Premier League. (Sky Sports)

Manchester United have no intention of lowering their £26m asking price for 28-year-old England forward Marcus Rashford, who is on loan at Barcelona. (Mail)

Everton are set to reject any approach for 27-year-old English midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall this summer amid interest from Tottenham . (Football Insider), external

Former England forward Jesse Lingard, 33, is on the verge of joining Brazilian side Remo after leaving FC Seoul in January. (Sun), external

Harry Maguire is keen to extend his stay at Old Trafford - but he is now wanted by his former Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers at Al-Qadsiah - The Sun

 

Van Dijk is better than Terry and Ferdinand then eh?

Same Van Dijk who has looked like a fish out of water all season as soon as the PL meta has changed back to more a more direct, physical style and actually given him something to do.

Most overrated defender in history.

 

I really don’t know where this argument has come from to be honest. Maybe it’s an age/generation thing but I’m old enough to remember players from the 90s and I could name 20 defenders better than him.

 

For me I think peak Van Dijk is the best CB I've ever seen. I've been watching some games from the 2000s and some 90s recently and the more I see the more I think the players of that era are looked back on with rose-tinted glasses in a sense. I think the base level of athleticism, tactical understanding, passing and press resistance would weed a lot of them out of the modern game. I don't see a facet of Rio's game that is better than Van Dijk at his best, the main argument for him would be longevity in my opinion.

 

I don't think you can just compare players from different eras directly. If you transported Di Stefano into modern League Two he'd get completely dominated not least because of the vastly higher levels of athleticism in the game today. If you transported him as baby into modern society and brought him up in the modern sporting environment then he would most likely compete with the best. You can really only compare players from different eras by looking at their achievements and dominance within their own era.

 

Van Dijk can count himself very fortunate that football only began in 1992. In comparison with Baresi, Maldini, Beckenbauer, Moore and Hanson, he really would be just a small sidenote in the history of great centre halves.

 

We've spoke about it a lot before on here but I'm definitely not convinced that the top players of today's game are any worse than those of the 90s and 00s. You could maybe argue there there more "world-class" players back then, relative to the bar for what was/is considered world-class at the time, but if we strictly compare the best then and the best now, I don't see the players from back then as superior.

I remember being in the office at work and we had NOW TV on, and it was playing the 2-4 game at Highbury between Arsenal and Man United (often lauded as one of the best games in PL history), and we were all pretty shocked at how underwhelming so many of the players looked relative to their reputations. Rooney looked head and shoulders above everyone else on the pitch but the likes of Keane and Vieira looked no better than decent from a technical standpoint.

It's perfectly acceptable to find modern football less entertaining, but I think you can point to several factors outside of player quality that are responsible for that.

 

Van diik is lucky to be in an era of mediocre defenders. There's very few top defenders in todays game. Him, dias, ghuei, marquinhos, possibly pacho and upemacano are the only world class defenders today. Back in the early 2000s and 90s none of these would stand out

 

I have to disagree with you there. You are comparing him to the greatest defenders in history who have far more trophies than just two Premier League titles and one Champions League. In my opinion, if he had played in their era, he could have become one of the greatest of all time. Modern defenders are much more developed physically, technically, and intellectually, especially when it comes to ball progression and reading the game. In his prime, VVD basically won the Ballon d'Or and he fully deserved it. I am not sure if it is even fair to compare different eras, especially pre-2000s, because players today are much more advanced tactically and physically. Back then, a physically dominant Pele scored a thousand goals, and if I am not mistaken, he could run the 100m in about 10 or 11 seconds. Would he really be able to score that many against today’s defenders? I highly doubt it.

 

There's no doubt today's defenders have to think faster and be more athletic, due to the speed and technicality of the modern game. But l'd argue that their life has been made a heck of a lot easier, by the ridiculous amount of protection they're now afforded in today's non-contact version of football.

All the great centre-halves l mentioned had that ability to anticipate the play, progress the ball and always appear to be one step ahead. But they were also being clattered at will by bulldozering number nines for 90 minutes. And, unlike Virgil, they didn't find themselves up against just a single lone striker every game.

 

One thing I would say in response to the argument about how much more advanced football is tactically, is that I would argue that’s why life is much easier for a defender.

Teams are very predictable in how they attack these days, they have set patterns, routines, patterns of play etc. Coaches plan and micromanage everything that happens on the pitch and the system is king.

Even City in their prime under Guardiola, for all their attacking riches, scored a lot of the same types of goal. Cutbacks from the byline or De Bruyne crosses from the right hand side of the penalty area.

I would argue that the top teams of 20 years ago had a lot more variety and unpredictability in the way they attacked, and it was more chaotic.

 

Surely the opposite is true and the protection attackers get makes it much harder to defend. It used to be the case you could overcome much more technically skilled attackers essentially by being a hard bastard. Your norman hunter types.

Watch the highlights of any 60s 70s 80s English League game and the defenders will put in tackles that would be straight reds nowadays but werent even called fouls.

 

The simple test here is to watch england highlights from random mid 2000s games to the present squad. The 2000s squad is full of bonafide premier league legends but there is quite obviously a gulf in technical quality between the teams in favour of the modern day. This is particularly obvious when it comes to defence playing out from the back.

 

Gordon scores

 

Gordon looks electric right now

 

Anthony Gordon joint highest scoring Englishman in the champions league this season

 

Anthony Gordon highest scoring Englishman in the champions league this season