England at World Cup 2014

Lagger said:
You're welcome. :)

Forget Balotelli for the moment, or any name really. A comparison wasn't really the point of tossing names into the post. The point is that - even if you think I may irrationally hate english players - some people are blinded by things like transfer sums, style and name rather than what is happening on the pitch. I don't want to diss Rooney on a United forum, really, but I have never ever seen a game from him that closely resembles what people like you are telling me. I don't follow the EPL as closely, of course, so I miss 90% of his games. But I'd expect when he plays against Bayern Munich, Dortmund in the CL; or Germany's NT in friendlies or anywhere... at some point I'd see ONE good game where I'd be legitimately scared of Rooney. So, either he's got the biggest Germany-complex in the history of England, which really would be a feat, or he just isn't that good when it counts. Which basically makes him just not that good, because nobody cares about Rooney being a champ against a lower third EPL team.

I like Rooney, because he embodies what pure football was about for me. Working class guys playing their game and working in it and being able to succeed in it. I actually like english players despite what you say. That's why I care enough to enter into a debate about english football with english football fans that could very well rip my head off if I did that in an english pub. Or perhaps not, who knows. :)
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Then like you said, you haven't watched him enough. What are people like me telling you? That's he's a very good player? I'm not saying he's at the top level of footballers at the moment. I think Van Persie is a superior striker to him. It's people that act like he's a pub player that irritate me, I am far from a massive Rooney fan.

He was absolutely sublime against Bayer Leverkusen I believe. That may not sound like much but at the time if I remember correctly they were flying in the Bundesliga and second. He also has a very good record in the Champions League, so if you're saying he's a failure in European matches then you'd be wrong. He's scored numerous goals against big clubs in the CL and is actually a very dependable big game player.

I apologize for saying you dislike English players, it was unfair to make that assumption. It was based mainly on the Balotelli comment which just seemed foolish, as he's not even comparable to Bale let alone more dependable in my view.

I think Rooney has struggled in the last couple of years. Earlier in his career he was undoubtedly a world-class player, but the season before last he was second fiddle to RvP and dropped for a while and this season whilst he was good and provided some decent numbers, it wasn't a truly world-class season. I understand what you're trying to say and like I said I agree with you that at the moment England lack some special players, hopefully we develop some. We're in a bit of a transition stage - we genuinely did have some world-class players not long ago: Ferdinand in his prime was undoubtedly a world class defender, Terry was as well as was Cole, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney for a time etc. Sadly this "golden generation" didn't work, most likely due to many of the same problems we suffer from today.
 
England haven't done as badly as it looks on paper. After the Italy game pretty much everyone agreed that it was one of the best England performances for a while and that they were unlucky not to come away with a draw. Gerrard heads Suarez through in the last minute to lose 2-1 to Uruguay, who themselves went on to beat Italy. In reality they've probably done better than they did in the previous World Cup yet finished up on 1 point and out rather than 5 and going through.
 
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cap the premier league wages at 100,000 pound pw.
many foreign players will then leave england and go overseas for better money.
some english players will go overseas to earn more money and at the same time become much better players.
in four or five years this will result in a pretty good english international team, but no english club would be able to win the champion's league again.

so said a pundit on the box earlier.
 
Lagger said:
Yeah, you're probably right. I am still working on the traumatic experience from 2 years ago during the Euro. But hey, you can easily replace Balotelli with some other random genius in the italian NT just to follow my point.
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It still doesn't explain why you didn't put Rooney into a fantastic talent bracket. Because he was an absolute gem of a player and a talent of the top tier (that included the likes of Messi, Ronaldo) that owned the group stages in the Euro 2004 while being a kid.

And Balotelli we see now is quite possibly the most overrated player you will see.
 
Tomuś said:
It still doesn't explain why you didn't put Rooney into a fantastic talent bracket. Because he was an absolute gem of a player and a talent of the top tier (that included the likes of Messi, Ronaldo) that owned the group stages in the Euro 2004 while being a kid.

And Balotelli we see now is quite possibly the most overrated player you will see.
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I don't put him there because I don't rate him anywhere as highly. If we played England or Manchester United, Rooney would be the last person I'd be scared of. He's just yet another striker struggling to find his place in a modern football that doesn't rely on static strikers anymore. That's why. I am aware that my viewpoint may be narrow, so please dismiss my opinion if you don't share it. But that's how it is.
 
Apologies if some or all of this has been covered, I haven't read back through the thread:

I agree with Gerrard (:nervous:) when he says young players get too much too soon. In many cases, money corrupts and removes the motivation needed for success. Apologies for being crude but if I was 20 year old footballer earning 100K a week with Page 3 girls coming at me from very angle legs akimbo, I wouldn't be thinking about my next match away to Stoke. Although I want him at the club, the fee being touted for Shaw is outrageous. No way he should cost any more than 15M. I just hope it doesn't go to his head. The same goes for the fees for Jones, Henderson, Milner etc. David Bentley has retired from the game at the age of 29, a case of too much too soon if ever there was one.

For the players who do manage to juggle football and fame, a season is a long and grueling one. The club pays their wages so the motivation is to work hard for and impress the club to earn new contracts/big transfers. I'm not surprised by the revelation that English players have asked to get out of international duty, it's their excuse to take a rest. I don't think patriotism plays a big part any more in the game either.

Maybe these are reasons for why we are seeing more humble teams do well at this WC (although there are other factors to which i won't get into). The like of Costa Rica, Algeria and Mexico have all qualified for the next round and deservedly so while 'bigger' teams such as Italy, Spain, England and Portugal are out already. The smaller teams have played some great team football and perhaps some of that is due to small-name players who have the hunger, fitness, desire and ambition to do well for their countries, for their teammates and for themselves.

I don't know what the solution is from England's point of view but something needs to be implemented; a minimum number of homegrown players in the starting 11 or a wage cap are two contenders.
 
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Lagger said:
I don't put him there because I don't rate him anywhere as highly. If we played England or Manchester United, Rooney would be the last person I'd be scared of. He's just yet another striker struggling to find his place in a modern football that doesn't rely on static strikers anymore. That's why. I am aware that my viewpoint may be narrow, so please dismiss my opinion if you don't share it. But that's how it is.
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He hasn't developped the way we hoped but I'm talking about his talent here, not the finished article he is now. And obviously, he's nowhere near the very top at the moment. Then again, Balotelli is even further away from that.
 
If this World Cup has achieved anything - it's made me realise how much of an England fan I really am. I like to give it the big old "I don't care that much about England" spiel, and claim to not be too bothered how they perform - but feck me, getting dumped out in the group stages, when we seemingly have a decent(ish) squad of players really annoyed me, and hurt my nationalistic pride... god damn World Cup.
 
Tomuś said:
He hasn't developped the way we hoped but I'm talking about his talent here, not the finished article he is now. And obviously, he's nowhere near the very top at the moment. Then again, Balotelli is even further away from that.
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Please don't get hung up on one name. Especially when you're saying the same I did... Rooney is not a fantastic individual player. That is one of the problems England has. And I blame the english clubs for that. You're supporting the point I'm making. Talent alone never won any titles.
 
At least you lot weren't the worst English speakers there. Performance wise you were, but England got a point at least.
 
The likes of Lallana and Shaw moving up to bigger clubs, hopefully getting CL football and working with better coaches and players will help by 2016.
 
Grinner said:
Who's worse...Capello or Woy?
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If you mean in general then capello is a much better manager than roy hodgson. If you mean just with England it is hard to say but I think capello would have had the team improve on the 2010 world cup. They topped the qualifying group for euro 2012 quite easily and managed to beat spain in a friendly (I know only a friendly but it is still good going and imo international friendlies should be taken serious because the manager doesn't get to work with the team much). I definitely think capello could have taken England to a higher level than roy is capable of, as I rate him up there with the best managers.
 
I think england do and have had world class players.
They've just been wasted mostly.
Paul Scholes - wasted.
Gerrard and Lampard - if you picked one and just stuck with it either would have had a great england career. No manager having the balls to drop one for a decade was a waste.

And you dont really need more than one or two to compete.
Chile have vidal and sanchez the rest (seem) to range from competent to good but nothing more.

But the english media pick the english team and 6 months before every tournament they decide to throw out whatever formation you've been
playing in qualifying to fit some random player who's having a good season into it.
And the balance is pretty much invariably lousy.

Imagine a midfield of scholes, hargreaves and gerrard/lampard - you could have had that. You could have had it for quite a few tournaments too before hargreaves got injured.
Your defence was always good, your keeper wasn't really but you pretty much always had at least one good striker (owen, rooney).
Beckham wasn't world class i guess but he wasn't far off. Joe Cole was good briefly.
That team should have won stuff. The teams they were up against weren't that good, they were just more functional.

You just wasted the talent you had and played a lousy, defensive 4-4-2 with donkeys like heskey, lennon, defoe and crouch in the team.
And the gerrard and lampard thing, which was a total waste and butchered any shape, rhythm, defensive nous and positioning you had in the team.


Your doing the same thing now. You didn't bring a defensive midfielder.
You brought gerrard and put him in a midfield 2 where he hasn't had a good game ... ever?

You threw in sterling, barkley and shaw.
I actually get that to be fair because you did need to phase out the older players and start a new team.
But its the same thing as usual - dreaming of an english pele to emerge and drag your team to victory.
Sometimes it pays off (rooney in 2004, sterling somewhat this time out) others ... it doesn't, like barkley.
You never go into a tournament with a settled team and formation and you tend to spend most of the tournament
changing it because some player is 10 yards closer to the wing than your happy with.
And hes not cooperating with being the english pele, the lousy bastard!!!

I think the main difference is your defence has gone from players like Ferdinand, Sol Campbell, Ledley King, Terry, G.Neville at right back and Young at left to
Jagielka, Cahill and Smalling and Jones (whose confidence and form was bad) Johnson on the right and Baines on the left.
Its a massive downgrade.

Joe Hart is quickly turning into david james too.
So your lack of tactics and quality in midfield and the lack of consistency up front with it changing every match you play
is coming home to bite you in the ass.
 
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You spent how much on a stadium you didn't need, instead of plowing the money into coaching and for youngsters?

Exactly!

How do I know? Because my country done the same thing and plowed all the money into other areas and away from the actual football side of things.

Having said that, Roy is a disaster!! Get rid asap
 
caid said:
I think england do and have had world class players.
They've just been wasted mostly.
Paul Scholes - wasted.
Gerrard and Lampard - if you picked one and just stuck with it either would have had a great england career. No manager having the balls to drop one for a decade was a waste.

And you dont really need more than one or two to compete.
Chile have vidal and sanchez the rest (seem) to range from competent to good but nothing more.

But the english media pick the english team and 6 months before every tournament they decide to throw out whatever formation you've been
playing in qualifying to fit some random player who's having a good season into it.
And the balance is pretty much invariably lousy.

Imagine a midfield of scholes, hargreaves and gerrard/lampard - you could have had that. You could have had it for quite a few tournaments too before hargreaves got injured.
Your defence was always good, your keeper wasn't really but you pretty much always had at least one good striker (owen, rooney).
Beckham wasn't world class i guess but he wasn't far off. Joe Cole was good briefly.
That team should have won stuff. The teams they were up against weren't that good, they were just more functional.

You just wasted the talent you had and played a lousy, defensive 4-4-2 with donkeys like heskey, lennon, defoe and crouch in the team.
And the gerrard and lampard thing, which was a total waste and butchered any shape, rhythm, defensive nous and positioning you had in the team.


Your doing the same thing now. You didn't bring a defensive midfielder.
You brought gerrard and put him in a midfield 2 where he hasn't had a good game ... ever?

You threw in sterling, barkley and shaw.
I actually get that to be fair because you did need to phase out the older players and start a new team.
But its the same thing as usual - dreaming of an english pele to emerge and drag your team to victory.
Sometimes it pays off (rooney in 2004, sterling somewhat this time out) others ... it doesn't, like barkley.
You never go into a tournament with a settled team and formation and you tend to spend most of the tournament
changing it because some player is 10 yards closer to the wing than your happy with.
And hes not cooperating with being the english pele, the lousy bastard!!!

I think the main difference is your defence has gone from players like Ferdinand, Sol Campbell, Ledley King, Terry, G.Neville at right back and Young at left to
Jagielka, Cahill and Smalling and Jones (whose confidence and form was bad) Johnson on the right and Baines on the left.
Its a massive downgrade.

Joe Hart is quickly turning into david james too.
So your lack of tactics and quality in midfield and the lack of consistency up front with it changing every match you play
is coming home to bite you in the ass.
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This - excellent post.

There has been a history of England not making the most of (mostly limited) resources and even when we do have the makings of a good team, such as the 'Golden Generation' again tactics and indecisiveness - looking at you Sven - let us down.

Today I read a quote from Motty where he said "Roy Hodgson picked the players most of us would have done" and that is the problem. As Caid said we choose flavours of the month and legends who are on the decline and play them in unfamiliar positions and expect it to somehow magically 'just work'.

In fact a good England manager would recognise:

1) We are not the biggest country in the world, not by a long chalk. Brazil population >200m, Germany >80m, England <60m)
2) We do not and are not ever likely to have the best players (see 1 above)
3) Most teams that succeed at International level have a 'style' that plays to their strengths
4) Being English and 'trying hard' is only a style in a very limited way and definitely not a strength!
5) The best team is not the best 11 players randomly thrown together

Van Gaal's Holland is a good example of how a manager should make a difference. I don't know how far they'll progress but already they have topped arguably a tougher 'group of death' than England's with a midfield that includes Nigel de Jong and a defence comprised of guys like Ron Vlaar!

We leave guys like Carrick behind when they can play the DM role better than any other Englishman: Fabian Delph would have been better than Gerrard ffs. We don't make enough of club synergies - central defenders who play together; full backs and wingers who play together. We continually play two strikers (including our best one out of position) when we are weak in midfield and then wonder why we cannot retain possession.

We need a manager with balls big enough to fit players to a system, ignore the media, realise our limitations and play to our strengths. Sack Woy - bring back Carrick!
 
Raul Madrid said:
If you mean in general then capello is a much better manager than roy hodgson. If you mean just with England it is hard to say but I think capello would have had the team improve on the 2010 world cup. They topped the qualifying group for euro 2012 quite easily and managed to beat spain in a friendly (I know only a friendly but it is still good going and imo international friendlies should be taken serious because the manager doesn't get to work with the team much). I definitely think capello could have taken England to a higher level than roy is capable of, as I rate him up there with the best managers.
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Capello was awful for England, tactically terrible (set 4-4-2)/unable to adapt to situations/awful viewing on the eye (hoof ball) and squads he picked was all wrong.

I don't think Hodgson is as bad as people are making out, Euro 12 terrible but transformation 2 years after that shows progress, ok results never went our way, but we are playing much better football and actually competing and the squad he took to Brazil was similar to most peoples lists, only mistake he made was taking Lampard over Carrick or a wild card in Ravel Morrison.

Best England managers in my lifetime have been Terry Venables & Glen Hoddle, those England teams were really strong and played excellent football.
 
Not sure if this has been posted. Interesting to note England coach is second highest paid after Russia. Van Gaal is just paid average as the Dutch coach. Hodgson is really overpaid and not deserves it

“@danroan: World Cup coach salary breakdown via @sportingintel
 
redevil2 said:
Not sure if this has been posted. Interesting to note England coach is second highest paid after Russia. Van Gaal is just paid average as the Dutch coach. Hodgson is really overpaid and not deserves it

“@danroan: World Cup coach salary breakdown via @sportingintel
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And note Mexican coach is paid least. Granted their living standard is low. Still... And they would have high prospect to go further (but to overcome The Dutch is an uphill battle of course)
 
redevil2 said:
And note Mexican coach is paid least. Granted their living standard is low. Still... And they would have high prospect to go further (but to overcome The Dutch is an uphill battle of course)
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Mexico is a bit of an exception, he took over last year when they had just fired 3 managers in just 1 month time. He signed a new 4 year contract yesterday which probably rewards him much better.
 
Bloedrood said:
Mexico is a bit of an exception, he took over last year when they had just fired 3 managers in just 1 month time. He signed a new 4 year contract yesterday which probably rewards him much better.
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Ah, thanks for the info. Good to know (if that's the case).
 
redevil2 said:
Not sure if this has been posted. Interesting to note England coach is second highest paid after Russia. Van Gaal is just paid average as the Dutch coach. Hodgson is really overpaid and not deserves it

“@danroan: World Cup coach salary breakdown via @sportingintel
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Still more than the PM of the UK, just for perspective.
 
redevil2 said:
Not sure if this has been posted. Interesting to note England coach is second highest paid after Russia. Van Gaal is just paid average as the Dutch coach. Hodgson is really overpaid and not deserves it

“@danroan: World Cup coach salary breakdown via @sportingintel
Click to expand...


That is an utter disgrace!

If I were English, I'd be losing my shit
 
Señor said:
This group and the World Cup was there for the taking for us. But for a better manager, we could have faced Greece in the Round of 16, Netherlands in the quarter-finals, and from there onwards it's all about getting the tactics right which for Roy Hodgson is alien.
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Yes, if not for Hodgson England would have won the World Cup. And if not for Capello they would have won in 2010. And if not for Sven, and so on.
 
ea385 said:
Yes, if not for Hodgson England would have won the World Cup. And if not for Capello they would have won in 2010. And if not for Sven, and so on.
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Exactly. That's exactly what I've said.
 
The issue isn't the individuals like Hodgson, Gerrard, or Rooney even if they are woeful. It's the FA's failure. Lack of coaches, lack of vision, attention to development. England's focus on individuals has been detrimental to them for decades. Lampard and Gerrard starting in the middle over Paul Scholes is a fantastic example of this. The other two score more goals and offer more chance of the spectacular, but Scholes could control a game far better than either. The Spanish and other continental players recognize that Scholes is the best midfielder of his generation while the English media fawn over two very good but tactically undisciplined players. If the focus had been on the team rather than fielding the "best" players, England could have done much better in tournaments in the early 2000s. They had the talent but failed to do anything with it.
 
You get 5m for not choosing the best defensive midfielder in the world and you finish last in the group.. Roy probably withdraw all the money after the Costa Rica game..
 
I have no problems with the England manager being paid a handsome salary. This is because I believe their is a certain kudos to be England manager, England being the home of football.

I do not have a problem with coaches being offered the job, if there is some evidence that they can manage at the highest level. For example at Champions League level.

I do have a problem when failure, is not met with the consequence. Hodgson, for all his good intentions has categorically failed in his and England's objectives at the World Cup and so really should be dismissed. The Managing director of a big city firm wouldn't be in his/her job if their results didn't live up to expectations. Why should the England managerial position be any different? This is the England manager job, not Fleetwood (no disrespect of course).

I do think the FA is a joke, and that the structure of that is English football from grassroots up, does not lend itself to enable a successful national team. The number of qualified coaches compared to other nations is just one example of this. To not address this and to hope for success is just madness. So what should the FA do? They could do a lot worse than following the German model. In 2002, they completely restructed their academy system. This is from a Guardian article (2010) which is outlines the restructuring.

'
'Seifert said that the national team's stark improvement was a direct result of the overhaul of Germany's academy system, with all 36 clubs in the two Bundesliga divisions now obliged to operate centrally regulated academies before being given a licence to play in the league. Of the 23-man national squad now in South Africa, 19 came from Bundesliga academies, with the other four from Bundesliga 2 academies.

The most significant change, said Seifert, was insisting that in these new academies at least 12 players in each intake have to be eligible to play for Germany.'

The success of the German national team really is no fluke. If we expect the same success then we'd be not to stupid to follow their lead.

Here's the link to this excellent article.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/jul/04/germany-youth-development-england
 
So all the uproar died within a week after another miserable World cup. Roy is still in charge, and will be for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the manager of Italy has quit, and the Spanish manager who won the World cup and European Championship offered to quit. Nothing is going to change for England, same thing will happen after the next tournament (if England qualify), people will be shocked, but be over it in a week. Teams like The Netherlands, Italy and France may have a poor tournament, but next one they will usually do very well. Germany always seem to do well, and Spain will be back. I think Roy deserves another contract with a huge pay raise for getting a point against Costa Rica, and preserving England's failures at major tournaments.
 
Perhaps the point is not to put in good performances in the Euros and World Cup but only to ensure the supremacy if the English prem on the world stage.

It may well be that they are mutually exclusive objectives.
 
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