Great article

I was reading my World Soccer magazine and I came across a interesting article about england. Do not start reading unless u plan of finishing.

England against the world

By Paul Gardner

You wouldn't think it possible, but these guys pulled it off. I'm talking about the British commentators on my US pay-per-view television channel inflicted on me. They managed to make a Euro2004 game between the Czech Republic and Latvia sound like an English premier league game.
All that mattered about the players, it seemed, was whether they played, had played, would play, wanted to play, or weren't good enough to play in the Premier league. The references to Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool- I think even Bristol Rovers got int here- just came gushing out.
And so it went on, for every game. he highlight came early, when one poor confused guy announced during the England-France game that "Arsenal are making a substitution".
Then at half-time we got the panel experts who, when you could understand what they were saying and when they'd stop killing htemsleves laughing at their own jokes, turned out to know everything. From a Premier league point of view, that is.
Overkill is, by definition, bound to be counter-productive, and i no time at all these commentators and panellists had made it very clear to me that, far from being the be-all and end-all of football, the Premier league is actually a monster blight upon the game. They didnt see the evidence, of coruse. Yet there it was, right under their noses at Euro 2004.
I'll start with France. Not that long ago, France had a glorious team, were World Cup winners, European Champions and so on. But for the past two years they have performed pathetically.
What went wrong? simply tha far too many players moved to the premier league- where they had to "adapt". This sort of thing from Thierry Henry "When you arrive in the Premier league you have to change your state of mind or you won't survive."
Marcel Desailly has told us that English football "is too aggressive, to the point that i'm obliged to force myself to be bad. But it's the only solution if you don't want to be eaten up." While Christian Karembeu found the footbaal- "too amateurish- it is as though teams are making things up as they go along all the time".
You get the message. So after a year ot two, the foreigners adapt. And when they're called back to the real world of football, the international game, they are lost. So logically, English clubs dont win in Europe. And Eglish players who try their luck abroad invariably flop.
Foreigners who can't adapt to the demands of Premier league coaches are trashed as worthless. Milan Baros? hopeless. Helder Postiga? Useless. Juan Sebastian veron? forget it. Can't play, any of them. Juan Pablo Angel has stuck with it for four years, brave, foolish lad, and no seems to have adapted. Probably at the expense of his career with colombia. Worth considering, all of that. So Postiga helps eliminate England from Euro 2004, and Baros top scorer. How can that be? Who is out of step here? The Premier League or the entire rest of the world?

David Beckham has had his say, too... about training meythods. Seems they're not much good at Real Madrid, those training methods that have made the Spanish club the most successful in the world. Not as good as Manchester Untied, anyways, where David always felt fit, wheras his Spanish training has left him feeling tired.
And if anyone thought for a moment that foreign referees were up to Premier league standards, Urs Meier must have shattered that notion. i mean, whistling for a foul by John Terry for elbowing a oalkeeper in the throat while not going for the ball? hat was a perfectly repectable goal by Premier league standards, herr Meier.
There seems to be no possible meeting of minds here. England try to impose the Premier league way on the rest of the world, and that obviously doesnt work. So they pay a Swede a fortune to impose some of that clever foreign stuff on the England players, and that doesn't work either.
Time to face up to the fact that English football, as the English never tire of telling people, really is something special, something incorrigibly different. A world in which even the World's best players have to learn how to play again. And then, when they have, they don't play like the world's best players anymore.
Time for me to call my star witness. The Brazilian player. I mean your typical Brazilian player, skillful, artful, creative, crowd-pleasing,goalscoring Brazilian ball artist. He's all over the globe, scoring goals and delighting fans everywhere in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Holland, even in Germany, and would you believe Russia. Everywhere. But not in the EPL.
Oh no, these fancy Brazilian powder puffs cna't cut it there. I know all about that pair at Arsenal who do quite well- but can you recall and Brazilian players who look less Brazilian than Edu or Gilberto Silva? or have they simply "adapted"?

17 years ago a stocky little Brazilian goalscorer named Mirandinha turned up in ENgland to play for Newcastle United. He didn't make it, of course. Couldn't adapt. His English manager, Jim SMith cut him loose witht he immortal words. "as far as Im concerned, he can rot in Brazil".
Brazilians, go home! Words that could almost serve as a motto for English football. To hell with the rest of the world, and in particular with Brazil, the worlds most successful and most admired football nation.
So on with the Premier league show, the world's greatest league. The yardstick for the rest of the world's football- except for minor affairs like the Uefa Champions League, the European Championship and the World CUp