Zidane level
There aren’t many at that level.
Germany’s best midfielders over the last 50 years were probably Gunter Netzer and Wolfgang Overath in the 1970s, Lothar Matthaus around 1990, then Michael Ballack around 2002 and Kroos and Ozil in the 2010-2014 period. Stefan Effenberg might have been in that bracket but quit international football. Bernd Schuster quit international football too.
Sometimes you need fairly unheralded players to step into the breach and do a job. Dieter Eilts at Euro '96 a good example.
German football has traditionally thrived on the Kaiser figure, which doesn’t really need to be explained. Beckenbauer, Rummenigge, Hrubesch, Matthaus, Klinsmann, Sammer, Effenberg, Kahn, Ballack. They don’t really produce these figures any more. Thomas Muller is probably the closest latter day equivalent.
German football, maybe more than any other country, depended on personality. They seem to be producing withdrawn Nintendo kids* these days.
*Instagram kids
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Schweinstiger was an excellent playmaker for a number of years after Van Gaal converted him from a winger to central midfield
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I used to love Pierre Littbarski
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Ireland probably haven’t had a truly strong centre midfield since the Holland-Kinsella axis qualified us for WC 2002 & then shone on the greatest stage.
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Few people didn’t, a lovely player
Naturally two footed, made defenders look foolish. Very few like him now
Looking at their last 8 competitive matches, Luxembourg have drawn away to Turkey and Slovakia and at home to Hungary and beaten Iceland, Bosnia, Lithuania and Liechtenstein.
Is there anyone who could honestly say with confidence that Spock could pull 15 points from the same 7 fixtures?
That is how much Spock has bottomed out the expectations of Irish football. Luxembourg don’t have better players or depth than us but they are making the most of what they have. The prerequisite of any international manager is to make your team equal or better than the sum of its parts and this is simply not the case under our current management team.
I don’t expect Ireland to be qualifying for every major tournament but I think a team with a nucleus of Bazuna, Collins, Egan, Omabamadele, Cullen, Knight, Ferguson and the raw pace of a few other lads is a decent starting point for any manager. I don’t think it is fantasy to expect that side to be capable of consistently beating sides ranked below them and not lose to sides ranked above them but outside the top 20. We are 3 and a half years i and still completely threading water under this ham aside from a handful of matches when he had a competent coach in the set up where we looked ok.
Given that this group looked a passable international side when they had an adult in the room I think we will return to average with any kind of competent manager as the next appointment
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He played with a lovely smile on his face and helped to soften the Germany as an evil monster image we all had from learning about the Nazis and watching Escape To Victory. Though it did help that his first name was French and his second name was Polish.
Ye if he was called hans himmel it would have dulled his charm a bit
Just because we got more shit since doesn’t mean the wheels hadn’t come off for trap and MON, they deserved the criticism at the time.
Totally agree. 2 absolute dinosaurs.
Who got great results
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Some of the shit they played fueled the flames for a call to the type of shit we’re playing now. They got results for a while though.
No you’re completely wrong there anyway. People can be more than one thing, they could lie somewhere on the scale between English and Irish even. They could have been both, they could have felt more English but gotten something out of playing for the country of their heritage.
Would you ever fuck off.
They’re both English.
Born in england and Raised in England and wanted to play for England.
The idea they should be playing for Ireland is bizarre.
They probably couldn’t point Ireland out on the map.
Frank Lampard did a memorable press conference at a Chelsea fans night around that time. He said about Rice: “Well 'e definitely wasn’t good enough. There’s no comparison between between what Reuben Loftus-Cheek will achieve in the game and wot Declan Rice will achieve in the game. And there ain’t no doubt about that.”
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Grealish played underage GGA in Croker. It’s not as simple as you make out. He had some connection to Ireland and Irishness.
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It’s done and gone and isn’t worth going back and forth on but you don’t know anything about it you’re just pretending you do.