Euro 2012 Final - Spain v Italy

[who are ya?]

With defenders like you we'll never win another tournament again.

But then what would the England whingers do if we did?

[Royal Rother]

Not really miles better at the aim of the game then.

They played better than us on the day yes, not disputing that. Miles better? Not really no. Does that one off day make them a miles better team? No, of course it doesn't it.

We weren't crap, we aren't crap, and we're very unlikely to ever be crap. The sooner idiots like you realise that then the sooner the national team will be able to go about it's business a bit more effectively.

It's complacent idiots like you that have held us back these last 30 years. "We're as good as them, we just play differently." Smell the coffee (or your own fart). Look at the Premier League. The top teams are made up of mainly foreignplayers because the English aren't good enough. I've had my fill of your crappy posts over the years. There's one idiot between us and it ain't me. With defenders like you we'll never win another tournament again.

[Maguire]

Look at the Premier League. The top teams are made up of mainly foreign players because the English aren't good enough

Of course the top scorers in La Liga last season were Argentinian and Portuguese. The top scorer in Serie A was Swedish. The top scorer in the Bundesliga was Dutch and the Bundesliga player of the season was Polish. Only one of the top five goalscorers in Ligue 1 was French.

[frimmers3]

is not the obvious point the international game no longer holds the import it did in days of yore?

[Hoop Blah]

Not really miles better at the aim of the game then.

They played better than us on the day yes, not disputing that. Miles better? Not really no. Does that one off day make them a miles better team? No, of course it doesn't it.

We weren't crap, we aren't crap, and we're very unlikely to ever be crap. The sooner idiots like you realise that then the sooner the national team will be able to go about it's business a bit more effectively.

It's complacent idiots like you that have held us back these last 30 years. "We're as good as them, we just play differently." Smell the coffee (or your own fart). Look at the Premier League. The top teams are made up of mainly foreignplayers because the English aren't good enough. I've had my fill of your crappy posts over the years. There's one idiot between us and it ain't me. With defenders like you we'll never win another tournament again.

1) I've never said we shouldn't be looking to improve or that we're as good as we could be (see the thread the other day where I was making the point that we do underachieve as a nation)

2) The last 30 years we've gone from not qualifying consistently through the 70's and 80's to making the quarter finals on a regular basis. We've only been knocked out by very good sides, and often on penalties, so we aren't doing all that bad.

3) There has been a lot of work going on to restructure the game to give us a better chance of turning those quarter final appearances into really challenging to win a tournament. Yesterday saw the completion (at last) of St Georges and the technical ability of the players coming out of our youth system is better than it was 20 years ago. We aren't producing as many maverick creative players, who never really did it anyway, but we are producing good players. Hopefully that will improve but there is no "we're as good as them" so we don't need to improve mentality, even amongst those like myself who can see that we're nowhere near a "crap team". You, and numpties like you, call for an overhaul of the game every two years or every time we lose. The facts are that things are changing but it's a long job, one that is, IMO, getting done and we're seeing some successes.

4) As Mags suggests, the top teams across all the leagues are made up of foreigners to varying degrees. So English players aren't good enough? Or is it just that our clubs can afford to attract the very best of the worlds talent and so it's unlikely that the 2million footballers in England are going to represent the majority of the best players available amongst the 250m footballing population!

5) If you don't like my posts then point out where and what you don't like about them. Perhaps if you suggest what the problems are and how we fix them you can teach me a thing or two.

Ultimately, to suggest we're crap is just daft. We're rightly placed in the top half a dozen or so footballing nations around the world. Could we produce a higher number of top quality players? Yes and hopefully we will. Are our players generally less technically proficient than some other countries? Yes they are. Can we do anything about it? To an extent yes, and we are.

Do we have a right to be expecting tournament wins? No, we're just one of a dozen or so countries who love the sport and have massive numbers playing and supporting it. If expectations and reactions to defeats are realistic then we will never move forward.

[Hoop Blah]

is not the obvious point the international game no longer holds the import it did in days of yore?

By what measure?

A peek of 23m people watched England vs Italy, with an average of 17.4m viewers.

10m watched the final that England had no interest in.

The Champions League final, with an English team playing, maxed out at 10m.

Looks like the public interest is still there.

[frimmers3]

the public at large may still tune in...but club football rules the roost.

[Hoop Blah]

England U19s will play in another semi-final tomorrow, with a pretty good chance of making the final. They beat a pretty decent looking French side earlier in the week to top their group and avoid playing Spain in the semi's.

I watched some of the France game, and although we still looked sloppy in posession too often, we never really looked under too much threat.

I was quite impressed by Chalobah this time around (I haven't been when I've seen him for England before) and he was possibly the best player on the pitch.

We seem to have a decent enough record in this competition, and this age group won their U17s Euro tournament a couple of years ago (with a supposed stronger set of players than those at this tournament), so fingers crossed they get to their final and more importantly produce a few decent players over the next few seasons.

Benik Afobe is with this squad, as is Nathan Redmond who played against us this season. It's also the squad that Jordan Obita was involved with but failed to make the trip this year.

[Alexander Litvinenko]

The odd thing is that up to U19 level English kids are just as good as any other European team - its after that age that they consistently lose out to the likes of Spain, Germany & France.

Is it because we play the kids who grow quicker and so are bigger and stronger, or are there reasons about how we develop players after 19 that make a difference.

[Wax Jacket]

probably loaning them out to the lower divisions to 'toughen them up' - they come back having lost the basics of decent football

[John Madejski's Wallet]

probably loaning them out to the lower divisions to 'toughen them up' - they come back having lost the basics of decent football

^^^ seems reasonable

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

probably loaning them out to the lower divisions to 'toughen them up' - they come back having lost the basics of decent football

^^^ seems reasonable

Yet some have suggested that playing regular football against lower division clubs would be a huge boost to development - remember the old "should we have reserve sides in the lower divisions?" discussions?

If clubs were finding that loaning players out to lower division clubs results in them coming back as worse players, I dare say clubs might stop doing it.

I'd suggest that we are far better at packing youth teams with "effective" players, rather than talented ones, and they fall by the wayside as a result.

[Hoop Blah]

probably loaning them out to the lower divisions to 'toughen them up' - they come back having lost the basics of decent football

^^^ seems reasonable

I think it's more likely a couple of things, firstly that our advantage in numbers plays a bigger part in age group football because we do have one of the larger footballing populations. It probably limits the effectiveness of the Dutch, Croations, Scandinavians etc more than it does at Senior level where you only need fewer quality players to compete. That pool of 30 from 18-35 year olds can be stronger than the similar relative pools from a specific age group.

Secondly, I think so much of the problems we have at the top level is mental. The expectations and pressue, media exposure and mollycoddling of our players are much greater once they hit the big time and I do think that works against us.

However, although we do ok at international level through the younger age groups, we still rarely win anything. So do they really tail off so much or is that just another bit perception being worse than reality?

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

England U19s will play in another semi-final tomorrow, with a pretty good chance of making the final. They beat a pretty decent looking French side earlier in the week to top their group and avoid playing Spain in the semi's.

I watched some of the France game, and although we still looked sloppy in posession too often, we never really looked under too much threat.

I was quite impressed by Chalobah this time around (I haven't been when I've seen him for England before) and he was possibly the best player on the pitch.

We seem to have a decent enough record in this competition, and this age group won their U17s Euro tournament a couple of years ago (with a supposed stronger set of players than those at this tournament), so fingers crossed they get to their final and more importantly produce a few decent players over the next few seasons.

Benik Afobe is with this squad, as is Nathan Redmond who played against us this season. It's also the squad that Jordan Obita was involved with but failed to make the trip this year.

Watching England v Greece Noel Blake has got England U19s playing some really nice football. Maybe all the proposed reforms are working, after all.

Greece, a man down, are resorting to some embarrassing play-acting to try and get the match back to 10 v 10, after having their keeper sent off (penalty missed, so not everything is changing). The low crowd allowed the microphones to pick up Noel Blake shouting "Don't breathe on him or he'll fall over!"

[Hoop Blah]

And they ended up losing in extra time!