Liverpool under Klopp played a very direct brand of football for a good few years often bypassing midfield and crossing the ball from very deep. They won a European Cup with it. The two times Athletico won La Liga under Simeone, they played very direct to Suarez (2nd Time) who also did well with Uruguay playing like that alongside Cavani and Forlan. It is actually coming back in, Arsenal hit it early to Havertz plenty. One of the French teams that won the League, Montpellier, I think the year Giroud was there won the French league the same way I think I read.
I often wonder, the very best teams, with the best players could play any way. Madrid sat in and fought like dogs to get over City last year as they knew City were better than them with the ball.
One of them, I think Rice was on the bench against the Danes in the Playoff iirc but I think MO’N had an agreement with the father not to use him and that he was there for experience. Grealish’s father was the same, they wanted to keep their options open. Looking back, it was never happening, probably a better chance of Kane if his career had stalled, the two lads were rated too highly.
Anyway England will soon have so many players they won’t know what to do with them and we’ll once again have a team of Englishmen with an English manager (well, probably not, maybe Scottish or Welsh) and a non-English attitude and we’ll qualify for the quarter-finals of the World Cup without winning a game while England lose to Sweden in the round of 32.
Look it, Jack is English, but he did love playing for Ireland too and saw himself as Irish. That’s the nature of the modern identity. I’d say had we managed to swing it, he would have loved being the main man in the Irish side. It was a catastrophic fuck up by all concerned but at the same time, we simply weren’t sexy.
