Certainly agree that he still needed to actually get in NT games and there is no surprise he had to make an adjustment. I would say unhesitatingly that he has made that leap at least mentally now given how cool he was in that OT when he let his soccer instincts take over. I'm licking my chops to see what he does once Bayern play him on the first team for an entire season.....that's really going to hone his game big time. Thanks.
Yes I saw the date. It remains a credible follow up to those original thoughts of yours....which at the time you made them remained valid and well said. Thanks.
If the Bayern academy was enough of a crucible, Julian Green would have played better in friendlies. His goal has less to do with his technical ability (which we don't question, by the way) and everything to do with fresh legs. With the climate in Brazil, the starters are a lot more tired than they otherwise would be, and this World Cup is proving that a decent player with fresh legs is as good as than a world-class player who is exhausted. Note, for example, Algeria giving Germany a scare after unexpectedly changing out no fewer than five starters for the Round of 16. Algeria's new starters were all among the best players on the field in the first half, even though they weren't even regular starters for Algeria, simply because they hadn't played much in the group stage.
OK. I've just never heard anyone describe being knocked out in the same round as another team as having "gone further" than them.
Of course fresh legs play a big role for any sub. That was the role he was put in and he did his job.... he can't be faulted for not being exhausted. So I'm not disagreeing one bit. Any player moving from club to international play the very first time.....and at 18 at that. ....is going to have an adjustment. I don't recall suggesting anywhere the kid should have been a starter from day 1. But with the friendlies under his belt I would have loved JK to give him some more minutes off the bench. ...in each game. Precisely because he is a huge talent and went through the Bayern system. He was heavily recruited for a reason.....and not just because JK had a man crush on anything Teutonic. Thanks.
Winning the World Cup is complicated. The Netherlands throughout history have had a strong team. Yet have yet to win a World Cup. Spain and France won their very first World Cup only a few years ago and they were trying for decades with strong teams. The champions France were knocked out in the first round in 2002, champions Spain were knocked out in 2014. You can enter a World cup with the strongest team on paper, or the favorites, yet fail miserably. So Given that view, the USA is a loooong way off winning a World cup at all. England have over 40,o00 registered amateur football clubs, which dwarfs most countries. I personally think there is nothing wrong with England youth development from early age. Despite all the fickle nonsense that you always get. England are U'17 European Champions. They were also U17 champions four years ago, and there is not even a handful of names from that team 4 years ago that have really set anyone alight except Ross Barkley. The trouble is getting more of them 17 year olds to develop further. I think there was a huge problem with the English scouting system that is hopefully changing. The amount of skillful players that have been ignored up until the 1990s because of their "small size" is a shame. Hell Gerrard was nearly dropped by the Liverpool academy because of his size until he grew a whole feet in what seemed like a year.
You have this 100 percent correct though we have all seen disconnects everywhere between successes of the U teams and non success of thr national men. Scouting has a lot to do with it...and well as luck and opportunity. The assessment of players can be rapid and brutal and impatient. There are many Gerrards whi have slipped through the cracks and not just in England. Size had never been a harbinger of success except maybe at goalkeeper and even there medium sized players have excelled at the senior level. But yes the English have been size obsessed in the past and I'm sure it has cost them.
Doing well in a World Cup not only has to do with having good players. It also has to do with experience that can be transferred to fresh WC players by seasoned players and with a tournement mentality. You mention the English problem. The EPL clubs have been raiding the Feyenoord Academy (as other top Dutch Academies too) and stealing our talents with a high salary we cannot and arenot allowed to pay. Yet of all those "abducted" youngsters not one made it into the undefeated Orange team in Brasil. Those who stayed in the Academy and went through the normal way of gaining experience in the Eredivisie shone on the biggest stage. So you can measure the quality of the EPL academies from this example! Incapable of making our talents ready for the Orange team in contrast to our own academies. Or should I say the combination of their academies and the EPL is the culprit?
Is that the result of the EPL poor academies, or young Dutch players fighting for a place at clubs with better players?? (i.e not getting their chance) Yes, England has a problem. And that's the fact that the EPL can buy up players and offer them ridiculous wages instead of promoting youth and having patience with them. What were these players? And what clubs were they at?
The problems that have lead to England's current situation are numerous and wide ranging. The most obvious one is the insular nature of English football which has lead us to stand still while everyone else ploughs on ahead of us. The standard of coaching in England in recent history has not been good enough at every level, grass roots most of all. The formats we've used to teach are too backward, the general philosophy non-existent too. The climate and the lack of futsal have also been a hindrance. And then on top of that you have a league where a club is much more inclined to buy a ready-made foreigner on the cheap than take risks developing a youngster. Fortunately, since the 4-1 schooling by Germany, the FA are looking to make big changes to remedy what they can. The coaching modules have been revamped to offer specific and tailored youth and futsal courses after 2 years worth of research on the continent. The EPPP has restructured how academies work with small sided games and an increase of coach contact time. And St. George's Park has been built as a coaching hub for the country and a centre to find the best practises possible for the English game. I genuinely believe that in 10-15 years time we'll have caught up on the youth coaching front with everyone else and we'll be producing players technically fit for the very highest level. The one area I'm not so hopeful in is kids getting chances to develop with first team football. Short of quotas or lads sacrificing wages to go abroad, I just can't see how they'll get the game time they need. So to answer the question, the USA may well win a World Cup before England do, but if they do it'll be because they've gone through a drastic transformation into a world footballing power, not because England's apparent decline has continued. If fully believe we'll be a significantly better side in 10-15 years than we are now, but whether that'll be anywhere near enough is anyone's guess.
England hold the record of nine U’19 European Championships. The U’17s were champions in 2010 and 2014 and reached the final in 2007. The U’21s have the third best European championships record. To say the standard is lacking through all levels of English football is simply not true. England DO produce great youngsters under 19. But a lot of the time them under 19 players careers lead to nowhere. England need to get them U'19s to develop into real senior players. It’s funny that “futsal” is seen as some foreign import. England’s had that since anyone can remember. And played on a smaller scale with smaller goals. Youth teams up and down the country practice five-a-side in mid-week and have been doing for decades. There are players that are awesome at futsal and yet that talent does not transfer to a bigger pitch. Like you say, the main trouble with English football now is the money. Clubs can just go out and buy anyone now. They don’t develop players on the scale they used to. Like the Dutch guy said, it’s not just English players that are not being given the chance, but with the EPL buying up the best young foreign players, it’s also effecting other national teams. The insular way of English football has produced the most watched football league on the planet. The English philosophy in general was “one touch” that prevailed. You get the ball and “you get rid of it”. Creating a fast paced game with physically strong players and that has lasted for generations. That style is the very reason why the Premiership exists as it does. But yes, that is also the main problem. And it's not going to change anytime soon. The trouble is that international football is played generally at a slower pace. Major international tournaments are played in the summer in high temperatures. One of the reasons Italy beat England was that they slowed the pace down to a crawl. England teams in the past was able to enforce it’s own style on teams. The trouble was that the F.A thought it was absolutely necessary to change the English style. And they made the mistake of doing it with our supposed “Golden Generation”. What we witnessed was slow defensive football under two foreign managers and arguably the most boring English national team ever. While the players were adopting to a slow approach and being unsuccessful at it, the fans confused that with “the players just don’t care anymore” which has lead to apathy. Now we’re gone back to an English coach; who’s trying to do what England teams of old did. And that was to take the game to opponents, dictating the style of play and making it fast. But he needs some time to do it. As the team was very inexperienced in this World Cup. I think football is far too fickle and people like to take digs at the English national team. England finished top of their UEFA qualifying group in 2010, 2012, 2014. The only other countries to do that was Italy, Germany and Spain. I constantly see nations rated higher than England who didn't even qualify for major tournaments in that time or struggled through the play-offs on all three occasions. Yet people like to point at England like there is something majorly wrong and ignore where other nations are at.
The success England have had in youth tournaments has been largely due to athleticism being a huge advantage in the younger age groups, and direct football being more effective there, something that isn't true of the highest level of senior football. The recent U17 win being something of an exception, it's rarely (if ever) the case that English youth teams are technically superior to their opponents. Futsal is not popular in England. We're currently ranked 73rd in the world, one place above Andorra and one place below New Zealand. If you're conflating 5-a-side with Futsal, they're really not the same thing. Hell, when I was a kid a rule in 5-a-side was that you weren't allowed to shoot from inside the area, which of course runs completely counter to passing development. Some English clubs may have used smaller sided games as part of their development tools, but it was most certainly not the norm or standard throughout the country. It's only since the EPPP has recently come in that smaller sided games are mandated based on age, with league tables being abolished at certain ages too. And skills learned in these environments most certainly do translate to the bigger game, it's one of the many reasons that foreign teams are so much better at retaining possession, shielding the ball, and dribbling out of danger than we are. The problem isn't the pace of the game at international level, it's ball retention. In the Premier League possession is turned over all the time, so ball retention is not so important. If you try to play that fast and loose style in international football you simply won't see much of the ball, and you'll spend most of the game chasing the opponent. The fact is that insular English football is backwards, it hasn't learned from the continent and we're paying for it today. The Premier League isn't popular because the standard of football is high, the Premier League is popular because it's open and exciting and backed by an aggressive worldwide marketing campaign. It's the bane of English football but it isn't going anywhere, the best we can do is try and funnel some of that cash toward the grass roots somehow, and encourage more English lads to go abroad for opportunities if need be.
There is something funny about youth teams. One is that certain players are able to highly influence the game due to their physical abilities that doesn't happen in the adult game...another is that certain players are able to influence the game despite the lack of physical abilities but never find out how to make that work at the senior club level. The US easily had two of those in Marvel Wynne and Freddie Adu and most countries have plenty more. Another thing is that when you are projecting national team success it isn't about having the best U19s but rather having 2-4 U19s that end up transitioning into national quality players. The question with England might very well be are they producing tons of really good players (and thus having good youth results) but not producing enough special players. As an U16 player our team from Texas just absolutely thrashed multiple professional youth teams (Bayern, Nurenberg, Chivas, Nottingham Forest, etc) all by at least 4 goals and you wondered how they could be the youth teams of such prestigious clubs. But it really doesn't matter if those teams provide one player who makes the jump to the professional team. On the flip side we lost to Torpedo Moscow who isn't exactly known for producing world class talent. Youth soccer is just weird...
Now I don't think either country is on the cusp of winning a W.C. I still think England is more likely to win one before the US. One way to measure is look at all the players under 25 from the two WC rosters. England: Wilshere, Sterling, Welbeck, Shaw, Sturridge, Smalling, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Barkley, Jones, Henderson, US: Diskerud, Green, Yedlin, Altidore, Brooks, Johansson, Chandler Is there a US player you would trade for an England player? Brooks or MAYBE Yedlin for Smalling based on potential. Maybe Green for Welbeck also on potential. Those are big maybe's and those are really it. Obviously there are a lot of ways to answer this question but even with the US's progress and England's issues their next generation of players still look better than ours.
Every English player you mention costs about three times more than any of the Orange players from the Eredivisie. Would I trade any of them for an Orange player? Well, if I want a big chance not getting anywhere in a WC, yes, ...but no thank you.
Yes, you're right, but what I tried to bring over is that the names arenot important. The Dutch were ridiculed before the WC and looked upon comparable to the Yanks!
True players can be over hyped (and overpaid) and this is particularly true of English players. But I am pretty familiar with both groups of players and from my own eye test and what they have done at club level the comparison is still very much in England's favor. I can't comment on the Dutch because I don't know the dutch league or national team very well. But historically I would take a young dutch player over a young english one any day. Also not sure who was saying the Dutch and US are comparable. If someone did they have absolutely no comprehension of football.
Given the wealth of talent that is populating the English leagues and the failure to translate that talent into success in the world cup, it seems that the easy answer is that the lack of success is purely psychological at this point. Perhaps the English could do with a bit more dare I say, optimism, about their game and their chances in general. We take chuck and make it believe it is a tenderloin cut. The English take a nice Rib-Eye and convince it that it is ground beef and the Debbie Downer British press certainly doesn't help matters. I think a nice bong session and some sing-along folk songs a couple of hours before the matches would probably do the trick. Seriously.
I think a big part in the sub standard performance to the capabilities lie in the press. These guys arenot interested in soccer but in juicy, randy stories. So the climate is already poisoned by these jerks. We Dutch have an attitude to be the best (often not justified), and that gives us the edge to perform the way we do. It is upon the opponent to prove otherwise. When it comes to tactics I think we are top, by the way. If English youngsters would copy that attitude, much would be gained I think. But may be I just shitting nonsense
No I think you are right. The Dutch have been riding the coat tails of the early 70s Ajax teams for 40 years with much success. It almost won them this last World Cup. And the Dutch also have the top youth development system by far. So they should be confident always. The English could use a little George Best in their mentality and outward approach. No I think you are right. Hje
I thought english u21 u19 etc have a better record than netherland? And how many world cups do netherlands have again?
Winning at that level doesn't necessarily mean you're producing better technical players, especially when you take into account the physicality of past English youth teams. Clearly the Dutch are better at producing top players than we are.
Heard it before. Ok, lets just totally dismiss englands success at youth level. and er...netherlands zero world cups.