ShiftyPowers
Make America Great Again
Croatia and Ukraine!!! HAHAHAHA!! You're not going to play for the World Cup either!
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Viesta_13;2442806 said:if u're not through @ euro 08, u cant play world cup??? how?? why?? i dont understand...
Tom;2442811 said:Ukraine are ****.
ShiftyPowers;2442819 said:Think they advanced just as far as England in 2006.
KingPaulV;2442830 said:Here's the sad part, as someone said, England (unless they have a drastic improvement) look set to miss the world cup too...Ukraine are no push overs, if I remember correctly they were the first team to qualify to the last world cup loosing no games in the last qualifiers; also they dont drop too many points in Kiev....its looks grim for England
KingPaulV;2442830 said:......Ukraine are no push overs, if I remember correctly they were the first team to qualify to the last world cup loosing no games in the last qualifiers; also they dont drop too many points in Kiev........
ShiftyPowers;2442819 said:Think they advanced just as far as England in 2006.
Tom;2442860 said:Yeah they did, they're a far worse team since then in my opinion. They looked useless in Euro qualifying - worse than us
Scotland
Ukraine
Says it all.
Spot onRobbieD_PL;2442869 said:
MikeyM;2444143 said:The simple and painful fact is that there are less English players in the Premiership because ... wait for it .... they...are....simply....not.....good......enough. Okay England does have some supremely gifted players like Rooney and Ferdinand and Terry and Gerrard etc.
I pin the faliure on several factors;
1: The 1966 effect. England has been dining out on this far off triumph for far too long - the survivors are wheeled out time and again and showered with adulation for a tournament largely forgotten by the rest of the world. The attitude should be not "We won the world cup in 1966" but "We've been absolutely pi$$ poor in every tournament for 41 years" Barring 1990, but that was the best we have been.
2: England's players are never to blame. Everytime we nosedive out of a tournament (or fail to get there) the search for "He who is to blame" begins. 1986 - Maradonna, 1990 - Gazza, 1992 - Lineker, 1994 - Koeman, 1996 - Southgate, 1998 - Beckham, 2002 - Ronaldinho, 2004 - Beckham (again), 2006 - Cristiano Ronaldo. Never once can our media say - well we lost because we played a better side, or we made tactical errors. I agree in the case of 2007, Steve McLaren was woefully inequipped to do the job - but ultimately faliure rests at the feet of the players who wandered aimlessly around Wembley.
Look at the logic, it's far easier to print Beckham/Ronaldo's face on a dartboard than face the truth that the England team is largely represented by pampered millionaires amongst which only two or three would happily give blood for the pride of our nation.
3: The media/advertising influences the team. Take Brazil for example, every friendly they have they use the opportunity to try new players and ideas - even the Copa America last year featured debuts for Anderson and promotion of Wagner Love to main player status. Look at any England friendly and you can see the teamsheet in your head (barring injury) Robinson, Neville, Ferdinand, Terry, Cole, Beckham, Lampard, Gerrard, Cole, Rooney and Owen - every single time. Well I'm sorry but there are 60,000,000 who want to see England evolve and do well - yet the FA see the £60,000,000 that Nationwide and Nike and Umbro will titter about giving them if "heavens above" England actually play some young players instead of the "Superstars".
And this leads to the situation that when one of the "Superstars" are injured for a big game, the likes of Scott Carson are baptised in a cauldron of pressure - and if they falter the consequences are dire - Little children will point and laugh at him in the street, and in all probability it'll be a long time before he plays for England again. Because "it was his fault" England lost. Except it wasn't.
How the hell would you feel if the second taste you had of an England cap was in a game where if you made a mistake you'd be "directly responsible" for the total faliure of the team. What if, when England played a "meaningless friendly", Carson had been told "Go out and play son, it really doesn't matter too much if we lose this - so play with no pressure". Then maybe when the call comes for the big games, Scott Carson feels confident and relaxed and can play the game. "I've done this before" he could feel.
4: England believe we have "A devine right" to be involved in these tournaments. We don't - we won't be there in Austria because ah, how do I put this? Ah yes "We played crap over nine or ten games and we don't deserve to be"
Sometimes (as with the Croatia game) you sense the England players feel they just need to turn up because "We are Mighty England" and somehow Croatia will just roll over for us.
As someone said, France failed to qualify for USA94 too, but while England were crying about "Koeman should have gone and the goal was offside etc" France's FA held a meeting and somehow came to the conclusion that it was their fault, and maybe we need to fix some things. And you know what?
That's exactly what they did, and won France98 and Euro 2000 on the spin.
Maybe there's a lesson there - all though the FA (appropriate that it stands for "F*ck All" - which curiously enough is exactly what England has won since 1966 ) will obviously fail to learn it.