England

[Park Life 71]

What's the point in that?

 

"Not only is he a 'fucking black cunt', as my client Mr Terry quite rightly pointed out on the video m'lud, he's a bad character too."

 

What sort of a defence is that?

 

The Nuremberg defence.

[Asprilla 96]

Agreed. The only luck in 46 years then. Unlucky to be unlucky for half a century don't you think?....

Agreed. The only luck in 46 years then. Unlucky to be unlucky for half a century don't you think?....

Yep. It's uncanny that my/our two teams (England and Newcastle) both have world class piss poor luck.

[ewerk 31203]

'In my defence, your honour, he is black and he is a cunt'.

[Kid Dynamite 7170]

It's not as simple as: winter break, too many foreigners (lots in Liga and Serie A too), bad luck. Coach well your coaches, the rest'll come -- Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague)

 

Spot on. Everyone on here trying to find THE reason why we are perennially shit. The fact is every reason given can be attributed to other countries that have won the tournament at one time or another.

[Gemmill 46030]

'In my defence, your honour, he is black and he is a cunt'.

 

That's it. That he is black is not in dispute, so if they can simply establish that he's a bit of a cunt too, then this shit gets dismissed.

 

The BNP defence.

[Park Life 71]

It's not as simple as: winter break, too many foreigners (lots in Liga and Serie A too), bad luck. Coach well your coaches, the rest'll come -- Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague)

 

Spot on. Everyone on here trying to find THE reason why we are perennially shit. The fact is every reason given can be attributed to other countries that have won the tournament at one time or another.

 

Belague has got his facts wrong.

[Park Life 71]

That's it. That he is black is not in dispute, so if they can simply establish that he's a bit of a cunt too, then this shit gets dismissed.

 

The BNP defence.

 

Terry will turn up blacked up. Nailed on.

[DEADMAN 0]

england are not good enough cant no one see that quater finals is all we get then booted out

[ChezGiven 0]

It's not as simple as: winter break, too many foreigners (lots in Liga and Serie A too), bad luck. Coach well your coaches, the rest'll come -- Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague)

 

Spot on. Everyone on here trying to find THE reason why we are perennially shit. The fact is every reason given can be attributed to other countries that have won the tournament at one time or another.

People are expressing points about a range of issues and naturally are highlighting the ones they think are the most important. That tweet however, does exactly what you say everyone else is doing i.e. THE reason is 'coaching' according to Balague, who fundamentally gets the number of foreigners angle wrong in that tweet too.

 

I'm all for boiling things down to the most important element though. For example if someone could explain to me why you're such a bell end in less than 20 words, i'd give them a medal.

[The Fish 10965]

People are expressing points about a range of issues and naturally are highlighting the ones they think are the most important. That tweet however, does exactly what you say everyone else is doing i.e. THE reason is 'coaching' according to Balague, who fundamentally gets the number of foreigners angle wrong in that tweet too.

 

I'm all for boiling things down to the most important element though. For example if someone could explain to me why you're such a bell end in less than 20 words, i'd give them a medal.

It's not that he's cool, it's that no one else is. So, crushing self doubt masked by braggadocio?

[Gemmill 46030]

Why can't we all just get along, you cunts?

[The Fish 10965]

Why can't we all just get along, you cunts?

It's the sexual tension.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

People are expressing points about a range of issues and naturally are highlighting the ones they think are the most important. That tweet however, does exactly what you say everyone else is doing i.e. THE reason is 'coaching' according to Balague, who fundamentally gets the number of foreigners angle wrong in that tweet too.

 

I'm all for boiling things down to the most important element though. For example if someone could explain to me why you're such a bell end in less than 20 words, i'd give them a medal.

 

Genetics.

 

Done it in one.

[Kid Dynamite 7170]

Oh the irony

[Park Life 71]

Hodgson the problem is that English football is being pulled in two directions simultaneously. We want a healthy and competitive England side, but the development is hindered by the hideous statistic which says that only 30-odd per cent of the Premier League's players are eligible to play for England, compared with 70-odd per cent of La Liga's players qualified to play for Spain and an only slightly lower figure for German players in the Bundesliga. As great a commercial triumph as it may be, the Premier League's new £3bn TV contract will only make the situation worse. Even more Eden Hazards and Marko Marins will be attracted to England's Champions League contenders by even higher wages, at the expense of a brilliant prospect such as Josh McEachran, who should now be playing for Chelsea every week."

[Asprilla 96]

None of our players play abroad either.

[LeazesMag 0]

Teach children to play football, not to "knock it up to the big lad" at the age of 9, enocuraged by ignorant bellowing parents on the touchline, desperate for their little treasures to win something. That would be a start.

 

Can't see how anyone can be too disappointed this morning. Played off the park by a very average Italy side. Its just not in our nation's footballing culture to play posession football, despite what the individuals are taught at their clubs. It all seems to go out the window when they put on an England shirt.

 

kids should play 5 a side, with small goals for as long as possible, on smaller pitches too.

[McFaul 35]

Maybe our golden generation just didn't maximise their potential, and maybe this generation are just the cyclical shit one before the next good side. People go on about Brazil and how all their kids play football, but they're fuckin shite. They are shite, and have no hope of winning their own World Cup. We are a country of 51m people, smaller than France, Italy, Turkey much smaller than Russia, Brazil and Germany. We are ranked 6th in the world on the only way you can judge how good a side is - results, maybe that is our station 6th-10th in the world, and looking at population if we go higher than 6th maybe just maybe we are overachieving.

[LeazesMag 0]

It was on his BNP quarterly cover.

 

 

oh dear

[Dr Gloom 22149]

Hodgson the problem is that English football is being pulled in two directions simultaneously. We want a healthy and competitive England side, but the development is hindered by the hideous statistic which says that only 30-odd per cent of the Premier League's players are eligible to play for England, compared with 70-odd per cent of La Liga's players qualified to play for Spain and an only slightly lower figure for German players in the Bundesliga. As great a commercial triumph as it may be, the Premier League's new £3bn TV contract will only make the situation worse. Even more Eden Hazards and Marko Marins will be attracted to England's Champions League contenders by even higher wages, at the expense of a brilliant prospect such as Josh McEachran, who should now be playing for Chelsea every week."

 

that's the big problem in a nutshell.

 

then there's the issue of english players not trying their hand abroad. it's a shame more players don't go out to spain, germany or italy for first team football. it rarely seems to work out for british players. they always seem to struggle more with the language and the foreign much food.

 

i'll never forget ian rush remarking about his miserable time at juventus - "it was like living in a foreign country"

[LeazesMag 0]

Look if we had the same amount of Cathy Burke's as have Pakistani's it would make a difference, it's not the amount of immigrants, it's the type of immigrants. If say 10% of the pop. is Pakistani in 15 years time, basically you're removing 10% of the population base as a football country. Instead of your predictably dour response, why has the vast Asian community in this country never produced a decent footballer?

 

do other western countries produce woolly headed pc obsessed liberal kids as much as the UK too do you think Stevie ? Your point is quite obvious even if someone doesn't "agree".

[Tooj 17]

Maybe our golden generation just didn't maximise their potential, and maybe this generation are just the cyclical shit one before the next good side. People go on about Brazil and how all their kids play football, but they're fuckin shite. They are shite, and have no hope of winning their own World Cup. We are a country of 51m people, smaller than France, Italy, Turkey much smaller than Russia, Brazil and Germany. We are ranked 6th in the world on the only way you can judge how good a side is - results, maybe that is our station 6th-10th in the world, and looking at population if we go higher than 6th maybe just maybe we are overachieving.

Are all of the foreign teams shite to you? As that seems to be a constant theme you're coming out with.

 

If you think Brazil are shit I'm not sure what that makes us then as most of their current XI would walk into England's.

[Andrew 4857]

Brazil are shite

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_national_football_team#Current_squad

 

tell you what have a look at that and recent call ups and tell me where we are better

[Andrew 4857]

I think Stevie said italy are shite compared to us and that Pirlo is a shadow of his former self early on in the tournament too

[LeazesMag 0]

We don't know cause we've made nil effort to do it. You can't say the soup is crap if you haven't even bought the ingredients. If we were germany there'd be training camps in all of our former colonies with quick fix passports for all 14-15 year olds. It's what GERMANY IS DOING. Can you get that into your head?

 

Off the top of me head Arteta would have been beside Gerrard.

 

I remember when Sky TV bought the rights to the premiership etc, and the new School of Excellence was vamped. They told us that a lot of this money would be used to improve the technical skills, coaching etc of young English footballers who would eventually filter through to the England team. That was nearly 20 years ago now.

 

People in the UK have ALWAYS believed bollocks spouted by officialdom of various organisations. In reality we are a run by shit people in numerous organisations who are all too protective of their own status, perks, and lifestyles, promoting their friends and being influenced by the Fleet Street press a perfect example being the appointment of Trevor Brooking as has been pointed out, a player who was a top player but is sadly a West Ham supporter and as such is part of the Fleet Street brigade which is why he was appointed. A previous appointment to this "kids coaching" school is HOWARD WILKINSON. A man who is supposed to be a "brain" but won the title as manager of Leeds playing helicopter football. I never expected anything from this new School of Excellence and as such I'm not surprised or disappointed that absolutely no good has came out of it at all.

 

At the end of the day, there are reasons why England lag behind the real top european countries such as Germany, Italy and now currently Spain. We also lag behind the likes of Holland and Portugal and France, despite the results in the Euro of Holland, their footballing setup, outlook and approach is still superior to ours and they will be back.

 

This competition has only confirmed our long term standing, which is behind Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy who are the current top european sides and are all in the last 4 of the Euro. In World terms, add Brazil and Argentina to that list and it confirms again that we are and always have been for most of the last 40 years somewhere between about 5th and 10th, or even lower, in the world. We confirm this by being semi-permanent quarter finalists, with the odd semi and the odd group knockout thrown in.

 

The reasons for this are to do with size of population, economics, cultures etc, all sorts of things not just footballing grass roots and the lack of amenities and correct facilities and coaching for kids.

 

This is a huge complex problem, it can't be done in a few years, it is far reaching.