cracking article yet the EPL barstoolers on here are oblivious to English football being on deaths door
Gola, Runt, KIBMAN & Faldo love their brands so much they cant see that English football is dying
WTB is the biggest hypocrite of the lot - the champagne socialist that idolizes one of the biggest brands in world football and as for horsebox and his love of ManU - idiotic
Good riddance
As long as the EPL keeps powering on, we will all be happy. Maybe a look at the American system would be better, with youngsters battling it out in college football. Fuck your small time clubs like Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Forrest etc, who will miss them bar a handful of people?
we don’t give a fuck where our beloved Liverpool play. We belong in a European super league, not having to go and lose games in shot holes like Southampton and Wigan
Ok I’m not creating a debate topic as that’s been ruined already but as a youngster I throughly enjoyed watching England get knocked out of football tournaments. I was re watching some highlights of their games France v England in 04 was fav but how did they fail so miserably? They’d some team with the likes of Cole, terry, Rio, Neville, butt, scholes, Gerard, lampard, beckham, Rooney and Owen. Why did shearer quit too?
Most of those fellas were solid types that wouldn’t rock the boat I’d have thought too.
Their teams always lacked balance. Too much trying to pick their best 11 players rather than the best balanced side. Shit like playing Scholes on the left of midfield rather than just dropping him or always playing 4-4-2 to accommodate Michael Owen up top. They also lack a real tight nit squad culture.
Southgate in fairness to him took a fairly average side to a WC semi final due to picking a formation which suited the players at his disposal rather than trying to cater for egos and reputations.
My favourite.
Rio was interviewed a while back, said he regretted it now, but the Manu lads were so conditioned to out club first that they wouldn’t interact much if at all with the Chelsea and arsenal lads, for fear of letting something slip that might give them any kind of a marginal gain in the EPL. Wouldn’t share or discuss tactics etc etc.
My theory is they were overrated.
Other teams were just better
Ya you’d that with the Irish rugby team and Leinster/Munster in the past. Like Cole, Terry, Rio and Neville was an unreal back four. Maybe three of scholes, gerrard, lampard and Hargreaves was very good too.
England lacked a top class distributor of the ball. Gerrard was good box to box and could hit a pass in fairness, but he was mostly reacting to the game around him. He wasnt playing chess. He wasnt a move ahead.
England don’t have players that are a move ahead. Like the Pirlos or the Xavis.
Run, tackle, kick.
There was no self expression
Scholes.
They wouldn’t play him
If they’d shearer up top with Rooney off him they’d nearly have won euro 2004.
They couldn’t get any combo of scholes, gerrard and lampard to work together properly, which was part of the problem for them in the 00’s, they certainly tried.
As BMM said the teams had no balance, and they had a string of very bad managers then as well who hadn’t the balls to make the hard calls. Sven and the likes
I don’t think they underachieved that much, they generally got knocked out marginally by good teams. 2008 was a failure alright not to qualify
The combo would never work. None of them were an out and out holding midfielder. Lampard and Scholes were only any good in the final third. Neither could tackle.
Other teams were just better than them.
You have to factor in the media hype to any English team. They were alright. Never good enough to win a major imo
Nearly all of those players won champions leagues. They were surely good enough. Anybody tell me why shearer stopped?