Totally agree with the last statement in that Young had an awful tournament. Did he ever take on an Italian defender? No (unless I missed something). Milner and Walcott were missing throughout and Welbeck was so out of his depth it was embarrasing! Sadly we are just technically way off the best teams in the world. Why? Is it because we seem to have an obsession for power and pace within our so called world class academys at the expense of skill and nouse? Is it because we play to many games in a season? (We did look knackered). But Perlo ran the whole game in his mid 30’s so I don’t buy that one.Or is it there are just too many foreign players in our game? SBL
What did Rooney do ? B***** all !!
In fairness to Rugby and Cricket England are only doing what New Zealand and Australia have been doing since the year dot. I don’t agree with it, never have, but it is in the rules. Years ago footballer had to be born in the country he played for, now he can get in if his Granny visited Blackpool! It is wrong but that’s the way it is and don’t forget we have had two foreign coaches. (Much good that did us!) The only way forward is what is finally happening in youth football, smaller pitches, smaller goals so that the kid with the “Big Boot” does’t dominate the game. Maybe in ten years we will be producing clever footballers instead of runners.
WHS.
In 2006 the Italians were one of only two teams where the entire squad was made up of players who played in their own country (the other was Saudi Arabia)
Italy went on to win the world cup.
In 2012 the England squad was made up entirely of players who ply their trade in the premier league, allegedly the best league in the world. We are made to look by poor by an Italian squad that may win it, but I wouldn’t fancy them beating Germany.
What does this tell us about the premier league? If the best we can pick from it are sub standard it clearly isn’t the best league in the world, or is it that there are too many foreign players?
The Premier League won’t take the hit of limiting foreign players because of the revenue issue. The knock on effect of this is good English players not getting e opportunity to get experience playing top football.
The other issue is that there are too many Premier League squads withholding young players and not letting them go out on loan. I have watched some reserve league football and to be fair some of these reserve teams would give championship sides a run for their money.
We need to nurture english talent and stop the tail wagging the dog. The FA need to decide if they want to invest in the national team and look 6-8 years down the line for success or whether they want to have same 4-5 teams battling for champions league places again by filling their teams with foreign players.
There were six English players in Chelsea’s CL final squad. One of them went to the Euro’s.
To be honest, i think the Premier Leage is a bit of a smokescreen. The damage is done way before we get to that level.
Jay Spearing for example has played a lot of football over the last 2 seasons, but he’s never going to be good enough to rival someone like Pirlo.
The damage is done at junior level.
As already mentioned, the pitch sizes and number of players issue has finally been addressed, but we’re still playing catch up to Holland, Spain, France etc in this respect.
Also there is the pitches. Look at some of the pitches at our level, pitches “maintained” by groundstaff. Imagine asking 8 and 9 year olds to try and play on pitches like that in November to February. What sort of technical skills are they expected to develop?
Coaching is another issue. Our best coaches coach at the highest level. But what technical development is a 28 or 29 year old international going to make on a day to day basis? A 10 year old would benefit so much by getting that kind of coaching, at an age where it will make a huge amount of difference. It happens in Germany, but over here kids are invariably “coached” by their parents at junior level.
Look at the accademy system in this country. It isn’t the foreign players in the Prem we should be worried about, it is the increasing number at accademy level taking up spaces english kids should have.
Then there’s the fact that every age group has an accademy side. So players are being selected on their age rather than ability. If you had a 2 year age range you would weed out a lot fo the weaker players and concentrate on those with the right level of potential ability.
Big teams just snap up every available player now and spit them out at 18 if they aren’t good enough. It should be the cream of the crop in our accademys, the rest should get the chance to work their way up the ladder from non-league etc, like an Ian Wright or a Stan Collymore(!!)
Reserve football is a joke. They play about 15 games a season. It’s not enough for sufficient development.
England players get tired because they spend the game chasing the ball when we get to tournament level. At 33 Pirlo had more energy left in E.T. than any of our players, simply because he let the ball do the work for him. I bet he made more succesful passes than our whole team.
Roy Hodgson is a good coach and given time he will produce ! Forget the World Cup in 2014 and concentrate on builiding a young side ready for 2016 Euros. Out with Terry.Gerrard.Lampard,Parker and there is plenty of young talent to bring in most of whom are in the squad already.
Thought that the BBC coverage was abysmal ! Hansen- never managed or coached, Shearer- failed coach,
Dixon - never managed or coached, Linekar - like Lawrenson thinks he is a comedian and never managed or coached. They all sit there ( competing for who is wearing the best shirt ) pulling the team to pieces and can’t wait for them to fail.
And why on earth do they have to all go out to Poland ? All at tax payers expense !
[quote=“Robbo_” post=44648]Also there is the pitches. Look at some of the pitches at our level, pitches “maintained” by groundstaff. Imagine asking 8 and 9 year olds to try and play on pitches like that in November to February. What sort of technical skills are they expected to develop?
[/quote]
You should see the pitch Ronaldinho used to practice on!
To be fair don’t agree with the foreigners ruining the English game or England team, if the England youngsters are good enough they would be playing ahead of the foreign imports, like has been said it needs to go back to the FA and investing in the children, and Iam sure once this is addressed in the future the English lads will dominate all the foreign imports and the Premier League.
Some brilliant posts here particulary Robbo’s. If we all can see whats wrong then why the f%*k carn’t the FA? SBL
Some good stuff on this topic but also some utter rubbish
Here’s the basis for the World Cup qualifiers:
hart
richards, smalling, jones, cole, walker, gibbs
wilshere, cleverley, oxlade-chamberlain, walcott, rodwell, young, gerrard
rooney, welbeck, sturridge
We do have the players. It’s the style of play and tactics that need sorting. Hodgson’s “league” tactics of playing for a draw may have made his prem teams (Liverpool, WBA and Fulham) hard to beat, with the odd surprise win against the top 6 teams, but tournament football requires some attacking element. Oh and by the way, that does not involve lumping the ball 100yards up the field to Carroll! Crouchy would have been a better option!
Every average foreign player is stopping a good English youngster getting experience. The fact is we are not just importing class players but merely adequate ones, is Park at United better than some English lad? Is Gallas a better long term bet that a young English lad, the list is endless and worst of all even the clubs lower down the pecking order are importing foreign players in the misguided belief that they will improve their team, they rarely do. Invariably they take the money, go through the motions and beggar off within a couple of seasons. Twenty years ago Scholes and Beckham etc were in the United team, would it happen today?
We should have a rule that if a foreigner wants to play in our league he should have at least 25 caps for his country, 50 if he comes from a crap footballing nation like Poland. We at Witton have learned, sign players who are committed to your club and they will give you 100% and probably success. We used to sign mercenaries and it got us precisely nowhere. I always laugh when they say an English “Team” has won the Champions League, an English “Club” yes, not an English “Team”.
WHS
This is what Woy Hodgson should do in terms of his next squad, bang on the money with this shout!
Here’s a stat;
There are 34,790 coaches in Germany holding Uefa’s B, A and Pro badges compared to 23,995 in Spain and 2,769 in England.
[quote=“Robbo_” post=44667]Here’s a stat;
There are 34,790 coaches in Germany holding Uefa’s B, A and Pro badges compared to 23,995 in Spain and 2,769 in England.[/quote]
Looking at some of the coaches at under 8s last season that doesnt surprise me in the slightest :dry:
[quote=“econneely” post=44654]
Hodgson’s “league” tactics of playing for a draw may have made his prem teams (Liverpool, WBA and Fulham) hard to beat [/quote]
You clearly didn’t see much of Liverpool from August '10 to January '11. 
There’s always the argument they get too much too young. I think the main reason we have so many foriegn players are the unrealistic prices you have to pay for an English player. If you want value for money you have to look abroad. Look at England squad by far the most expensive squad in terms of transfer fees. Our clubs are often pricing players out of moves up the football ladder. Jordan Rhodes had a good season for Huddersfield in league 1 now worth a reported £7mill. That’s quite a gamble considering he hasn’t proven himself. This doesn’t happen on the continent.