When he was fit and looked after himself he was brilliant,
I think United tried to sign him but he went to Liverpool at the time instead which was well understandable.
The fee was about 800k if I remember correctly. Around the same time they signed Beardsley for. 1.9 million?
Both super players. And both English.
Their talents would have been well recognised outside of England imo,
Barnes probably could have been even better but Iād say the abuse he got held him back mentally a fair bit. Just my opinion is all.
The standard of top English teams then simply had to be lower than they are today. the 2019 Liverpool team would kick the shite out of the 1988 team. You were basically picking almost exclusively from Britain and Ireland. Itās one of the main reasons we had so many players playing for the big clubs. The likes of Steve Staunton and ray Houghton would be playing mid table these days.
Yeah I often wondered where did the top footballers from the likes of Egypt and Senegal go back then? It was probably a much more even spread across Europe. Today the top cluster of clubs hoard the talent. The English clubs had a sort of golden period in Europe between 1977 and 1984 based around players from Britain and Ireland mainly. Just wouldnāt suffice nowadays.
Yeah, famously underachieved bar the Brazil goal at Wembley. I find that a big anomoly as he looked very complete. Maybe the European nations being ahead tactically played a part.
That was in the Maracana in front of 100k in one of his first caps. Was always gonna be downhill after that. He nearly turned the tide when 2-0 down in the Diego game in qf in Mexico . Probably his best cameo in an England shirt
You can say that about any era of football.
Go forward 35 years from now and lads will be on about teams playing with Egyptian forwards and Scottish fullbacks and questioning it too. Liverpool dominated European football a few years before that with mainly English Irish and Scottish players .
Hard to see any Irish lad becoming a first team regular at any of the top six teams across the water at the moment.
Id love to know what went wrong as historically we always punched well above our weight as regards the above.Look at the Charlton Irish teams as an example.