Had a conversation with the housemate this morning while we strolled to the bus stop. He’s a Sunderland fan and worships Niall Quinn. So for a bit of banter I said something like “Niall Quinn’s almost as much of a pr1ck as Roy Keane”. He said he’d split me open or words to that effect. So I says to him “what’s he got, like a strike ratio of 1:4.5 or something at international level”. He then says that loads of strikers have that at internaional level and I queried if that made it alright and he said it does. Then he says, and I’m not entirely sure what his point was, that Michael Owen’s international strike ratio is on the wane. So I asked if he cared to look up Owen’s strike ratio, compare it to Quinn’s and get back to me. At which point he said, look at the teams they’re playing for.
I took offence to this, told him it was an outrageous statement and asked him if he’d explain his point. What makes England a better team than Ireland I wondered. Apparently, history, pedigree, rankings, population and the fact that soccer is the most popular sport in Britain. No reference to the specifics of the Irish or English team. Now initially I was arguing that the England team that Owen has played in was not better than the Irish team that Quinn played in but it led to a wider debate and he came up with the gem that “England have always been better than Ireland”. So I said that this was crazy talk, said what about Euro 88, USA 94 and the fact that we were beating them last time we played them til the “fans” ripped up Lansdowne. He said that what he meant was “taken as a unit, England are better”. I said that that made no sense to me , told him to go read The Sun and hopped off the bus as we were now at the bottom of Leeson Street.
I suppose I have 3 questions to put to the forum.
Are Owen’s England better than Quinn’s Ireland, therefore justifying the difference in strike ratios?
Is the current England team better than the current Ireland team?
Have England always been better than Ireland and if not, when were they not?
Yeah Owen’s England are better than Quinn’s Ireland. Irrespective of the different roles they performed for their teams Owen was playing in a far better team. They were quarter finalists at WC 2002 and qualified for 1998, 2002 and 2006 world cups as well as Euro 2000 and Euro 2004. In other words since Owen came on the scene they have qualified for every major tournament, though they didn’t achieve much at any other than Euro 2004.
Quinn played a bit-part role at Italia '90, we didn’t qualify for '92, we did for '94 but Quinn didn’t feature then we didn’t qualify again until 2002 when he was again a bit part player. For his peak years between 1990 and 2002 we only qualified for one tournament and we were poor at that.
Incidentally if we’re talking about averages then maybe the above factors mean that Quinn’s ratio should be higher than Owen. Going on the assumption that tournaments are harder to win matches in than qualification campaigns then Quinn’s ratio should be unnaturally boosted by the fact that he didn’t feature in too many tournaments where goals are harder to come by.
The current England team is (despite being very average) way ahead of the current Ireland team. This has more to do with the poverty of our own talent rather than any idolatory of England. They’re struggling to qualify for Euro 2008 from a handy group. We’re making an even bigger mess of our group.
Over the course of history England have generally been better than Ireland. At certain times Ireland have been better, namely:
1992 - 1994: both teams were struggling a bit. We nearly messed up qualification for the World Cup and they did mess it up on the back of a shocking effort in Euro '92.
2000 - 2002: I think we were a decent side then. We lacked a bit of belief but we were more than a match for Holland and Portugal home and away. England were no better at that time but we lacked the conviction to beat quality opposition when we had the chances.
I’m sure there are loads of instances further back when we were better than them.
