Porter looks small in the goal and doesn’t want to come for anything. A disappointing result and poor performances all round, save for Rodriquez. I’d start Harry Gray in the next game with Rodriguez playing off the right. Not sure what we can do in midfield as there’s no one to really put their foot on the ball as usual.
Maybe to an extent, alot of people are in a English bubble and don't really know what's out there elswhere. But I do think this age group has some seriously good players and will come good down the line.
Which is bad sign for our future because we really need to keep producing T select due to how hard it is for an English players to make it to a top league compared to most other countries (Italy prehaps in our situation actually with Serie A not that great on Italian numbers)
The defending was just awful! I can’t pretend to watch that much under 17 football but I expected basic defending to be at a decent enough level. That fourth goal just about sums us up.
This is also one of the disadvantages of Brexit. While now it may give English players more opportunities across the board, the top foreign kids coming in at 16 always gave a bit of extra competitiveness and allowed you to see how our prospects stacked up against them.
Agree remember our 2017 world cup winning team. Loads of talent most have them haven't fulfilled their potential. There's always players who come out from nowhere
Well yeah and not to really put a downer on him but if that’s the sort of standard defending in our leagues then it’s no wonder Dowman looks shit hot.
They’re talented players in this group, it’s disappointing to lose, but it doesn’t signal/harbinger anything.
People are flapping like crazy, last year the u17s beat France 4-0 and Spain 3-1 before getting knocked out by the eventual winners Italy well against the run of play. Not sure how we’ve fallen off the edge of the earth since then?!
Really? I think the results for this group have been mixed and plenty were complaining about the top heavy nature and lack of balance in the squad when it was announced a couple of weeks ago.
It's hard to tell from games like that, needs a bigger sample size from differing environments. That Italy side are exceptionally well-coached and when you have a group of quality players who have freedom in a well-defined and effective structure like that, they're inevitably going to look better than a group that doesn't have that. You only have to see how Mbappe, Rodrygo and Vinicius looked against Arsenal for an example of a bunch of talented players looking lost without a little bit of structure. It's not at all uncommon for England to look smaller than the sum of their parts at youth level. We've won entire tournaments without looking particularly great. The fact is we don't produce top quality coaches at the volume of an Italy or a Spain so the standard of coaching we see at this level is inevitably going to be quite low, barring a few exceptions every now and again. France often have a similar issue, although their team at this tournament looks very well-coached. You only have to look at the difference between how England U21 look under Lee Carsley (anomaly) compared to how they looked under Ben Futcher (more representative of the general level of England youth coaches). It's night and day.
We still have the under 17 World Cup with this group at least which can hopefully lead to a better showing where we rectify some of the major issues. Certainly we haven’t helped ourselves at all from the beginning here with the squad or line ups, although if you defend set pieces like we did today it doesn’t really matter how you play, you aren’t going to get far. Unfortunately our coaching at these levels often seem pretty reticent to learn from mistakes, indeed today was a perfect example of not learning from the second half vs Belgium.
The midfield selections have probably been the main issue for me, we always look a midfielder short and lack options to change it. Is Louis Page also one of the two best English central midfielders at this age group? He seems very non descriipt to me, like an Alex Denny pick from yesteryear. Granted it’s a difficult job in that central midfield.
True. I’m just a pissed at the amount of times we go into various tournaments missing a designated full back. Byfield can play that role but is a much better CB. Its happened at Seniors, 21s and 17s and I think we produce decent full backs at all levels.
I think that's hard to judge considering how deeply flawed the coach's tactics, decisions and selections were. It already became apparent in qualifying when they beat one of the supposed lesser opponents only 3-2 how unbalanced his selections were. I mean someone like MLS has looked completely out of his depth at u17 level under Ryan Garry(?) At times. Same for Dibling who against Usbekistan at this level. Now the 06s are looking like on of the more promising age groups. Of course there have been some new players introduced since u17 level but coaching can make a huge difference at u17 level imo and this current coach looks to me like he even mid-tournament doesn't know the strengths and weaknesses of this age group nor does he recognise the importance of a tempo-setter in midfield (Nwosu, Emenalo) which ultimately makes it almost impossible for any player to shine. I don't know the name of the coach by heart but has he overseen many of the young age groups before? Could this possibly have consequences for him?
The Ryan Garry era was rough at times. Remember us getting slapped 5-0 by Poland with the likes of Nwaneri, Tyrique George, Acheampong, MLS etc. Not to mention losing to Kazakhstan at the World Cup with all of those names + more.
Bit of a strange decision to put Byfield at RB, thought he played well at CB in the first game and Hardy has been playing RB at Spurs so might have been a bit more comfortable there.
Don't think Byfield playing there was necessarily the problem. Think someone mentioned it against Belgium but there was a real lack of support for him. Italy were regularly able to isolate him in 1v1 or even 2v1 situations.
I always worry when a coach starts players he didn’t even have in his original squad. Benamar apparently wasn’t even needed for the tournament but has played a full match in both games. Maybe he just took Mantato’s role but it still feels odd. The coach obviously doesn’t know his best team and is blatantly trying to shoehorn players into the team. The two CM’s look like attacking box to box type to me too. So the whole system doesn’t make sense. We’ve discussed the misuse of full backs during this campaign too. I don’t think it’s the end of the world. We’ve played some decent stuff but this is tournament football and you will get nowhere if you don’t adapt tactically. We’ve really not helped ourselves in this tournament over the last few years.
More opportunities across the board is a massive advantage that leaving the European Union afforded English players. But let's not bring politics into football I don't think that's worked out very well recently ie men playing football against young girls, premier league wearing the symbols and slogans of BLM, muslims refusing LGB logos.
I've not seen an England side at any level pass so poorly out from the back for years. No grip on possesion at all. Simmonds in and shift Braithwaite to left back.