FIFA Women's World Cup 2023

Id say thatā€™s no longer the case and hasnā€™t been for a fair while. Cost of tickets has made going to games a middle class pursuit for a long while, and cost of membership has the grassroots game going a similar way.

Id say nearly every England player would still come from a working class background would they? I dont think thatā€™s the case in likes of Italy and Spain was the point of the book. Maybe itā€™s bullshit.

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It must be near 13 years since I read that book. I think it came out in 2009. The first edition was called ā€œWhy England Loseā€ but the revised edition was called ā€œSoccernomicsā€ I think. The book was divided into many small chapters and I think the real premise of the book was about the emerging statistical revolution in football. I think the premise and the title ā€œWhy England Loseā€ was always a fairly weak one. For many years you could have done a book called ā€œWhy Spain Loseā€ or ā€œWhy France Loseā€ until suddenly that was no longer the case.

Football tends to be the game of the working class in pretty much all countries it has been traditionally been the major sport. The USā€™s big weakness is that it isnā€™t the game of the working class and thereā€™s a pay to play culture there. I think Englandā€™s football culture is as deep as anywhere, probably deeper than anywhere. Iā€™m really not sure the idea that England rejects half the male population from the off because of social class is remotely true. I think the interesting thing is how white working class England has fallen away as a powerhouse of football talent and has long since ceased to be a powerhouse of football thought.

I find it interesting why certain places at certain times become fertile breeding grounds for footballers. Like why did Scotland produce great footballers from the 1960s to the 1980s and then just stop? Who was the last great player to emerge from the English north east? They had Beardsley, Waddle, Gascoigne and Shearer emerge in quick succession, but no real great player since then.

As far as I can see the two most fertile breeding grounds in the world now for footballers are the suburbs of Paris and London, and most of the players coming through are black. The French team which is the worldā€™s most talented (if no longer the World champions) is almost exclusively ethnic minority. Irelandā€™s most talented young footballers are beginning to disproportionately come from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Why is this happening? Tim Vickery Iā€™m sure used to go on in quite interesting detail about how Thatcher decimated the English working class in terms of things like shutting down playgrounds and sports facilities as well as taking away free school meals etc. The English working class at that point would have been overwhelmingly white. Loosely speaking I would say that neglect is one reason.

Maybe the move to a more sedentary society with electronic gadgets etc. is another reason. Maybe kids stopped playing on streets in large numbers. Maybe diets are another reason. But I do think that the fake ā€œworking class cultureā€ imposed by the likes of Murdoch is another reason. That culture rejected intellectualism as effete and gay, and created a cultural ossification, a fecklessness, a sense of entitlement but also a deep self loathing among the British working classes. The British working class were instructed to be stupid. So have the white American working class been instructed to be so. This fake, imposed culture shattered class solidarity and a sense of community and turned communities into lumpen proletariat. Is it a case that immigrant children or first generation children are now just more motivated, more eager to get ahead, in the same way that Jack and Bobby Charlton would have done anything to not have to work down the pit, and were thus highly motivated to make it in football?

At what point, roughly, did the stereotype of the rich being being fat and the poor being skinny reverse? Some time in the early 90s, ish?

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Out of the current England squad, John Stones, Luke Shaw, Ben Chilwell, Conor Gallagher, Eric Dier and James Ward-Prowse all seem to come from reasonably comfortable backgrounds. Neither Mason Mount or James Maddison seem like stereotypically working class lads.

Iā€™d imagine thatā€™s surely linked to the establishment of the Premier League and recruitment of players from around the globe. The Scottish and Irish lads were gaining less first-team exposure. From an Irish perspective, David Oā€™ Leary would have to cut his teeth with a Burnley or Sheffield United these days before he could dream of getting a game at Arsenal. Jim Beglin couldnā€™t go straight from the LOI to a title winning Liverpool team today. Manchester United wonā€™t be recruiting the likes of a Justin Ferizaj.

A big question Iā€™d have is why did Scotland perform so poorly at tournaments during that period. I know they were adept at qualifying for them but would flop then despite having the core of the great Liverpool team.

I suppose it all depends how you define working class.

My sense is that Scotland gradually tailed off producing players during the 1980s as opposed to it being a Premier League thing. The Premier League becoming a globalised place obviously has had long running effects on football in the other British home nations like the Republic of Eire but it doesnā€™t go near fully explaining the tail off in player production. We had a good generation of players coming through in the late 90s around the time Scotland were falling off.

Scotland also has the advantage over Ireland that it has a league with two massive clubs plus a smattering of other credible clubs.

If you look at Scotlandā€™s Euro '96 squad, it was a fairly old squad largely based on players who emerged in the 1980s, and even at that the quality was well down on what it had been a decade previous.

That generation of Gary McAllister, John Collins, Gordon Durie, Kevin Gallacher, Colin Hendry, maybe Duncan Ferguson was really the last generation of Scottish players with genuine quality, well at least until the Tierney/Robertson/McTominay/McGinn generation.

Scotland at the football World Cup is a bit like Ireland at the Rugby World Cup. They had Jock Stein and Alex Ferguson managing them for two of those World Cups so the failure is even more inexplicable. In 1978 and 1982 they were varying shades of unlucky. In 1986 from all I know they were dreadful, they couldnā€™t beat a bad Uruguay team who were reduced to 10 men after 2 minutes. Iā€™m actually surprised that World Cup isnā€™t used as a stick to beat Alex Ferguson with because it was a very notable failure on his part.

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Just after watching Nick Pope there for Newcastle, he went to a fee paying school - I only know that as the more notable part of his schooling is he was in the same class as the 2 girls murdered by Ian Huntly. Iā€™d say you would be surprised how many are from that background, and then you have all the kids of former pros like Harvey Barnes.

The black players coming from the suburbs of London and Paris are definitely overwhelmingly working class.

But you donā€™t get many top players coming out of council estates in the north east these days. The players coming out of Liverpool or Manchester are largely ethnic minority players rather than your Gerrards, Rooneys or Scholeses. Foden might be an exception.

Iā€™d say Jack Grealish would be about the closest modern day English equivalent to the lineage of stereotypical old style white working class lads from council estates making it as top level footballers. That Waddle-Gascoigne-Shearer-Beckham-Gerrard-Rooney lineage. Harry Kane I suppose.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s you could nearly have had an England team made up entirely of lads from the north-east.

Bruce-Pallister-Fenwick
Waddle-Robson-Gascoigne-Steven
Shearer-Beardsley

Add a goalkeeper and a defender to that and you have an entire team.

What has the English north east produced in the last 30 years? Michael Carrick and Jordan Henderson are about the pick of the bunch but both were solid professionals who wrung the last drop out of their careers through that professionalism and having great managers, as opposed to being genuine world class talents like a lot of the aforementioned.

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Spain are playing Sweden in the first semi-final of this. I was thinking of logging it in the Penalty Shoot Out Alert thread but there are only 78 minutes gone.

Iā€™ve no doubt itā€™ll get there though.

Just as well I held off. Spain have scored.

And now Sweden have scored. An equaliser after 87 minutes.

And now Spain have scored again! In off the crossbar!

Kenny Shiels was bang on with his comments a few years ago

Shades of Gianluca Pagliuca against Ray Houghton or under 12 boys football with that second Spanish goal.

Spain inflict pain on Sweden at Eden (Park).

Jorge Vilda doing his best Raymond Domenech impression

Incorrect. He faced them down and is very much the boss now. Delighted for them. Raging for my pre tournament predictions though.

Mupā€¦ā€¦

:popcorn:

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Sam Kerr starts.

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