Deja Vous ?

[Bazile]

O dear - so England hasn't qualified for the European finals

I'm not particularly interested in football - however I do feel moved to make the following observations.

Should the England Team's motto from now on be
'' it's mathematically possible to qualify , lads '' - given that we seem to have a habbit of relying on other teams
to shoe horn us in ?

Didn't we invent this game - how long are we going to dine out on the 1966 victory - and why are we bothering to bid for the world cup finals , when we cant even qualify for a European finals , which , lets face it doesn't include the world's top teams , or very few .

Do you think our failures stem from the - '' never mind , i'ts not the winning , but the taking part '' syndrome , when it comes to sport generally , in Britain ?

Still , chin up - we are world champion at one sport , at least - yes the magnificent sport of conkers .

[Lucy Thomas]

I would say that all the top teams in the world except two compete in the European Championship. The two exceptions are Argentina and Brazil.

[flipnflap]

Money is said to be the root of all evil, and it certainly looks to be the root of England's soccer problems. Our players earn so much money they lack incentive to perform well. The transfer fee money earned by top clubs, players and their agents means there's no restriction on the number of foreign players in our league. And, because of that lack of restriction, many potentially good English players don't develop properly or even emerge at all, and the foreign players within our league get to know the England players and set-up too well. If we are to ever repeat the glory days of English soccer - which are so long ago now, it's absurd - we need to pay our players according to performance/achievement, and cut the number of foreign players per team (if nt club) right back. But greed will ensure this won't happen and therefore situations like this will happen...over and over again.

[daffy654]

the correct saying is "The love of money is the root of all evil"
That aside though,I think we need to have the same attitude to sport as the Australians do,winning is everything to them and they train their sports people intensely from quite a young age. We need better facilities for our homegrown talented kids to train to the best of their ability.

[Quizmonster]

Since they won the World Cup in 1966, England have only once got into the last four in that competition...in Italy in 1990...and came fourth! Countries which have reached that stage more than once in the same time-period are Germany 7, Brazil 6, Italy 6, France 4, Argentina 3, Holland 2 and Poland 2.
The best England can claim overall, therefore, is to be eighth-best-equal alongside Turkey, Croatia...not after last night!...Uruguay, Belgium, Bulgaria, Sweden, Portugal and South Korea. That is England's level on the world football stage...side by side with South Korea!
Despite the abundance of evidence, the "It's coming home, it's coming home!" attitude never seems to leave English fans in either World or European competitions. Barring a miracle, the heck it is!
So, it's about time that English football fans had the same revelation that Scots ones had in 1978. That is, the sudden realisation that their team is really rubbish. Then you can just sit back, relax and enjoy the games devoid of all totally unjustified hope. Try it.

[Dassie]

Too many foreigners in the Premiership. It's all about money and not developing the national team. And that applies to all professional sports including rugby union.

[topogigo]

I can agree with your assertion that our national team is crap QM, despite the apparent adulation folks like Beckham and Rooney get, but would you deny us a little faith? To be truthful, when we started losing last night i could not watch but i still try to beleive they could one day.
One thing that i think is going on is that we buy so many foreign players into our league, train them cossett them etc. and then send them back into the world to beat us in international matches!

[ludwig]

Look on the bright side - this way we get rid of McLaren. If they'd have sneaked through because of some fluke Andorra/Russia result we'd be stuck with him for another 4 years.

[Quizmonster]

Ludwig's answer seems to me to be a perfect illustration of the kind of thing I wrote about in my earlier response. In this case, "It's all the manager's fault. If we can only get that right, England will be world-beaters again!"
I don't know how many England managers there have been since 1966, but none of them achieved that goal. Why should the next one be any different?

[Oneeyedvic]

Quizmonster - look at England Rugby and what Sir Clive Woodward did. It was once thought that a Northern Hemisphere team would never beat a Southern Hemisphere team.

A good manager (plus good talent) is what is needed

[brionon]

Gordon Strachen said,recently that it has nothing to do with 'Heart' or 'Desire to win'. Of course our players aren't too rich to wish to win. It's the FA organisation that's at fault. That and teams like Arsenal who field 11 foreigners most weeks.

[jno]

why is it assumed that using foreign players is a one-way street, so that they learn all about English football (not a major subject, admittedly)? Why aren't local players similarly profiting by playing alongside them and learning how they play - and how to beat them?

[ludwig]

Quizmonster - The expectation we had is that England would qualify for the European cup finals - an entirely reasonable one considering the players available, the teams in the group, and England's world ranking.
Of course Scotland are hopeless - we all know that, but there is still a chance England will do reasonably well in these competitions, however much you may dislike the thought of that.

[Lucy Thomas]

I don't accept this argument that England fail because of the number of foreign players in the Premier League. England have achieved nothing since 1966 but the influx of foreigners only really began ten or so years ago. What then is the excuse for the previous thirty years?

[Quizmonster]

Ludwig, I have no dislike whatsoever for the idea of England doing well. To be honest, I have no interest at all in football. I used to have when it was a game, but totally lost that when it became just a branch of show-biz whereby, for example, we are supposed to be interested in what footballers' girlfriends' breasts look like when exposed on foreign beaches! That and the cosseted and grotesquely-overpaid 'stars'. I'll bet Stanley Matthews didn't even know he had a metatarsal!
However, despite being a Scot, I live in England and all my immediate friends and acquaintances in the pub etc are English. I invariably wish them well on occasions such as last night's and mean it. But their totally baseless and eternal optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence just makes me laugh.
You say, "Of course Scotland are hopeless." All I'm suggesting is that you begin to realise that precisely the same description applies to England! The latter team is assuredly a little better than the former, but not that much.

Brionon suggests above that this hopelessness is all the fault of the FA. Again...something/someone else...not the team...always something/someone else!

[brionon]

The Team ran themselves ragged. Can't you believe they Wanted to win ? Do you really believe they didn't care ?
What sort of people do you consort with that your opinion of your fellow countrymen is so low ?

[4GS]

Should we scrap the individual national teams and just go for a UK/GB team?

[anotheoldgit]

English football is akin to England as a whole, the foreigners are spoiling it.

[Quizmonster]

I'm not sure, Brionon whether the 'you' in your reply above was a reference to me or not. If it was, I utterly fail to see your point. I have said not a single word here about my "fellow countrymen"! All I have said - with ample backing-up evidence - is that the English football team is rubbish and that it is time for English fans to experience the same epiphany Scottish ones experienced in 1978...ie a sudden, blinding realisation of that obvious truth.
Here's a quote from The Times today...

"Jackie Milburn had it right when he said of the one successful England manager: 'Ramsey is like a good chicken farmer - if a hen doesn't lay, a good chicken farmer wrings its neck.' So who would be the best chicken farmer to take over this bunch of headless midfield players."

Note the phrase 'the one' as regards successful managers and 'headless' as regards the current team. In other words, the whole shebang is rubbish! And that's pretty well what I said. I have no idea and do not care what the writer's feelings are about his "fellow countrymen" either...just what he thinks of the side.

[Bazile]

i'm no expert when it comes to football - so the question that I would ask is this - have we got world class players to choose from , and are they the ones in the England team .

If the above is yes , then it seems to me that the problem is getting them to gel and perform sucessfully as a team
( and I emphasise a TEAM ) - rather than being just world class , individually

It appears to me that our sportsmen in other arenas do better when the nature of the sport is one which does not involve a team but an individual effort , at the point of delivery