The world cup is finally starting to get interesting. Friday Portugal-Brazil and Germany and England will face each other in the 2nd round. Plus if Spain beats Chile they will face either Portugal or Brazil and there is a high chance of Italy facing the Netherlands.
Yeah, for all the criticism the top teams got for their poor performances, it looks like most will be going through anyway - just no France or Italy.
And England get to play Germany AGAIN. My prediction: 5-1 and even Heskey will score
Well your prediction wasn't that off, except the result was inverted.
However england has reasons to complain about the referee, lampard's shot had clearly crossed the line and if it wasn't for that moronic decision the game would be tied and england could go on and win the game.
Nah, England were outclassed apart from a twenty minute period either side of half-time. Germany deserved their four. Now perhaps we can let the over-rated Lampard, Gerrard and Terry retire from international football before the next big tournament.
In my view, we (the English) need to stop regarding our team as world class, and stop saying that our players "do so well for their clubs". The fact is, that without somebody doing his leg-work (usually the brilliant Alex, and before that Carvalho), Terry is an extremely limited footballer, who is often out of position and slow with it. It is not adequate to simply have "passion". Gerrard is also a player falsely lauded as one of the world's best, but his control is lacking and he makes poor decisions when in control (ie he shoots too much, goes for the wild pass instead of the simple one). Notice whenever Liverpool play a match against a big club how often Gerrard goes 'missing'. The same for Lampard at Chelsea. In fact, the only world class player we have is (potentially) Rooney, and he has been unfit/injured for the past four months. This makes him play badly, and this makes him frustrated, and this in turn exascerbates the problem. An unfit Rooney is worse than useless, he's a liability.
We should follow the lead of the Germans and start looking to the next age; Oezil was fantastic today, as was Mueller. So it's time to drop Lampard, Gerrard, Barry, Terry, James, Ferdinand and Heskey, and replace them with the best of our young talent. While the results might not be great at first, it will be better in the long run.
What the hell I am doing posting this on TDC is anybody's guess, but that's what I'd do.
You could certainly argue that had it been 2-2, then England could have been able to play their own game, instead of being forced to take such risks - the last two goals were unbelievably soft, and came completely as a result of not having defenders back.
Having said that, I don't think England deserved to win at all. They've been very poor in every game of this world cup - even the win over lowly Slovenia.
There's definitely a problem (and has been for a long time) with the English league being filled with foreign players - especially in the "skill position" (midfielders/forwards) - meaning teams aren't bothering to develop young English talent. This may get better as a lot of clubs are in financial difficulties, or it may get worse as more foreign billionaires buy clubs to play "fantasy football".
There's also a problem with the way England play - they've started trying to play through their opponents, like they're Brazil or something. It just doesn't work - even low ranked teams can defend against it (that's what we've been seeing a lot this world cup). Players like Lennon, Wright-Philips, and Joe Cole are useless - we need players who can hit accurate long passes (ie. David Beckham). We then need a forward who can win and hold the ball - like Heskey was trying to do, but a lot better (ie. Alan Shearer). It might be what Beckenbauer calls "kick and rush" but it works.
I think the premier league being over crowded with foreign players is not a bad thing, on the contrary it's a necessity to keep the league highly competitive.
Also I don't think it's the cause for england's recent failures at international level.
The biggest clubs already invest a lot on young players and youth teams but only very few make it into the senior squad, some of them getting loaned out to lower teams (and often settling in) if they are lucky enough.
I think it has a lot more to do with luck and having a good crop of young talent coming in, which is something that seems to be lacking in almost every major international team. Germany is a notorious exception, but they have been struggling with mediocre squads in the last 15 years or so, and if anything the german league has more foreign players now than they used to 15 years ago.
I believe england has another problem that, while it's not exclusive, it's way bigger than in every other country.
The media builds up a huge amount of hype and pressure on the players shoulders. Every failure and every achievement is felt twice as big, and that completely messes up with the players's heads. Usually when I see england play I feel like they either are over confident, or simply lack confidence.
There's little to be done about that, so the solution basically rests in waiting and hoping for some sort of miracle. Things are not looking bright, most finest examples of english talent are in their thirties already, and I don't see any rising stars taking their places any time soon.
English stars have always been greatly overrated. One thing's for certain... if you bet against England, you'd almost certainly make money. USA seems to be quite underrated, interestingly. They've grown a lot over the last 4 years, but still aren't much better than the English team.
England actually did play well in that match, but not enough to match German attacking power. They let their guard down, and Germans just blitzed their way around the defense. If I had to blame anyone, it'd be the head coach. Bad idea to not keep tight at the back. Had England played with the same style as Brazil yesterday, they'd probably have lost only 2-1 (and not had that disqualified goal at all).
I certainly didn't knock Germany off my list after that loss. I'd blame poor refereeing for their loss with Serbia. The referee interrupted the game every 3 minutes for a free kick, not allowing the Germans to get into their fast paced counter-attacking football. The referee was more interested in having a fair game rather than a good one, and a 1-0 loss reflected the poor football quality that day. I'm glad they managed to recover from it; the German team tears large holes in any team which dares to play attacking against them. It's going to be a great one against Argentina.. Argentina doesn't exactly play defensive.
I do agree that England hypes their team like crazy. All talk, no reality. Media seems to either have a deluded "we would've won 5-4 if it wasn't for that disqualified goal" or a critical "everyone played garbage" attitude. They've got to accept that their team's only as good as say, USA or Paraguay and build up from there. They're getting overpressured. They'd probably be better off if they didn't see the tie against Algeria or USA as so unexpected. They probably have more unnecessary pressure on them than any other country, even North Korea, and it'd hurt the way they play.
Rooney's got huge potential, but he's always very tightly marked. Argentina's Messi is always tightly marked too, but the rest of the team is almost as good as him.. he simply distracts the defense, passes the ball, and someone else finishes the job. England just doesn't have as many quality players as Rooney, similar problem with Portugal today.
England's got a long way to go, but first step is to try to fix it rather than laying the blame on everyone. Look at Brazil. They had a World Cup capable team 8 years ago, an aged team (similar to Italy's and France's today) 4 years ago. They replaced their first line up this year with new, low profile players and they have the strongest team yet again. It takes some guts to kick out some of the best players in history, like Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, but they did it, and they're stronger than before.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Yeah, and Holland are going to win for sure! I know you'll be happy about that...
Obviously England are overhyped - they always have been, but they've never played this badly before. Brazil are not stronger for getting rid of Ronaldinho, Ronaldo etc - as we will see when Holland crush them.
The comment about Rooney etc is right - he is always tightly marked. When he plays for Man Utd, there are other threats, but England don't have any other talented strikers. It's easy for teams to take him out of the game, the way the Bengals secondary always smothers the opponents' #1 WR, and forces you to beat them with other players (only OMC will appreciate that comparison).
I think most fans know England were never going to win the World Cup - they're not stupid - but you have to act like they will. Players might not like too much pressure, but I don't think it helps for everyone to think they're just a bunch of losers either.
I still don't rate the Germans at all (sorry if that sounds like bitterness, but it really isn't). They're a good team, but they won't beat decent opponents. They've just had it so easy - soft goals against Australia after they had a man unfairly sent off; more soft goals against England after they were forced to play all-out attacking after a goal was unfairly disallowed; and a loss against Serbia (whatever you say about the game itself).
I wouldn't say USA are under-rated. Most people have rated them quite highly since 2002, if not before.
Paraguay were deep sleepers coming into the tournament, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they go all the way. I had a couple of Paraguayan defenders on my fantasy team (didn't know who they were, but I liked Paraguay's soft group opponents) and they've been awesome - only conceded 1 goal in 4 games, plus Alcarez scored
I think Sketchy, that the way England play is definitely not "trying to play through people". The problems all lie at the back, and specifically the link between defence and midfield. Watch almost any other international team and the defence are happy to keep the ball and can control the ball under pressure from strikers - this eases pressure on the midfield and makes passes easier. England's centre-halves are notoriously poor distributors, because there is a "safety first" approach in the mindset of coaches and managers in England which obviously bears fruit at international level. The result is we have a lot of tall strong footballers who can't pass for shit. The midfield also has a problem with short passing and are in general too impatient; they end up passing too long and too quickly and this makes it impossible for the strikers to find space. The solution would be to encourage more skilful, smaller players to play in midfield, who would hold the ball longer and drag the defence around a bit more. Unfortunately, Joe Cole is the only such player we have.
@Johnny; Foreign players do have an effect on the international team, and usually a bad one. Young players in England very rarely make it to the first team because of the desire for instant success; it is easier to buy Carlos Kickaball from Colombia instead of to invest in youth structure. Your argument that the Premier League is highly competitive doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you consider that the same four teams have occupied the top four places in the league, aside from Spurs last season. As far as I'm aware, the only country to properly adopt laws which enforce the playing of home-grown players is Spain. Their national record recently speaks for itself.
@Muz: England should not have to accept that they're only as good as Paraguay or USA. The amount of money put into the sport here and the amount of players and fans is massive compared to the USA and Paraguay. It is a failure of English football that we are even seen as equals to these teams. I don't accept that England's players have more expectation put on them than other first-class footballing nations, like Brazil, Germany, France, Argentina. In fact, not many English fans were confident of anything beyond a quarter final place, and the reaction to the Germany defeat has been muted - we knew we were going to get beat.
PS, Paraguay will lose 1-0 in the next round and Brazil will win the whole thing.
" it is easier to buy Carlos Kickaball from Colombia instead of to invest in youth structure."
How so ? It's cheaper and therefore less risky to invest in a player from the youth team rather than buy a foreigner who might end up not adapting himself well to the english football and are usually quite expensive, either they are an established player or a promising one.
"Young players in England very rarely make it to the first team because of the desire for instant success"
I have my doubts about that since a lot of them end up being loaned to lower teams in the hope to make it to the first team some day, and if anything I think being ambitious is definitely not a bad thing.
"Your argument that the Premier League is highly competitive doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you consider that the same four teams have occupied the top four places in the league, aside from Spurs last season."
By competitive I don't mean internally, I mean competitive with the other leagues.
For instance, I'm sure that if it wasn't for all the foreign players(such as Ronaldo, Tevez and so on), Man United probably wouldn't have won the Champions league 2 years ago, ironically against another english side with a good share of foreigners (Drogba, Anelka, R.Carvalho, etc).
"As far as I'm aware, the only country to properly adopt laws which enforce the playing of home-grown players is Spain. Their national record recently speaks for itself."
Take a look at the biggest sides in Spain. From the Real Madrid squad only 3 spanish players are usual starters. At Barcelona it's more or less the same, there are usually 4 spanish starters.
The situation with the english teams isn't all that different in that aspect, the difference is, each of them (specially in the case of Barcelona) they are truly exceptional players that would probably have a place in any team in the world.
@Johnny: It isn't cheaper to invest in youth teams - they require large amount of investment put in over years to bear fruit, and even that fruit might not be the best. Consider Wigan's approach - to buy players from Central and South America for moderate prices instead of bringing up players through the youth system. It's easier to buy a Hugo Rodallega, or a Maynor Figueroa than it is to properly give youth players a chance. If it is "cheaper and less risky" to blood youth players, why don't many teams actually do it? It is a fact that English youngsters very very rarely make it to first team football compared with youngsters from Spain, Italy, France etc. It's not because the English youngsters are inherently worse players, it's because they aren't being trained right and they hardly ever get a chance of playing first team football.
Barcelona only have three or four Spanish starters? I count Valdez, Puyol, Pique, Busquets, Iniesta, Xavi, Pedro, Villa. You can add Bojan to that list on occasion too. There's only really Dani Alves, Ibrahimovic, Keita, Messi and Abidal that are foreign. Real Madrid definitely do have a larger amount of foreign players, but they are the exception to the rule in Spain. Take a look at the stats on this page http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/6975955.stm - 57% of players in the Premier League are foreign, compared with just 39% in Spain and 30% in Italy.
So Man Utd won the Champions League with a team full of foreign players? So what? What good is that when your country's national team has been knocked out because they couldn't beat Algeria and USA (30th and 14th in the world)?
There are big problems with the way football is run in England, and this obviously affects the national team. There are too many foreign players, too much money floating around and not enough patience.
Absolutely
Patience is a big issue, but that's not really surprising now that football is such big business - time is money after all.
I think a lot of it has to do with the relationship between clubs and managers.
As soon as a team has a bad run of results, the managers are getting sacked. It's pointless - a manager can only do so much with the players available to him, so replacing him isn't going to help. You look at most of the managers in the league, and they've managed maybe 10 or so different teams during their career. It's like they all just keep getting shuffled around every few months, and are never given a chance to build a decent team (which takes time).
Anyway, because of all that, managers are under huge pressure to get results *fast* - and that means buying in cheap (usually foreign) players.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the teams who have dominated the league for the longest (Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool) are the clubs who have made the fewest management changes.
What I find strange, is the way most defenders in the league are English, as are a fair few midfielders, but almost no forwards. It's hardly surprising we get 0-0 and 1-1 draws a lot, is it? Our defenders (when healthy) are up to international standard, but we just can't score goals.
EDIT: Another nice win for Germany today. They did exactly the same thing they did to England - get an early lead, then just defend well, and hit them on the break when they're forced to chase the game.
That's precisely why Lampard's disallowed goal was so important in the England game - as badly as England had started, at 2-2 the game could still go either way; but chasing the game, they didn't stand a chance.
Anyway, it's hard to see that tactic working against a better and more disciplined team like Holland (a Germany-Holland final is pretty much inevitable at this point).
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Edited by Sketchy
