Why is England so bad at football?

Not technically good enough

Bulldog spirit only gets us so far in a game that requires technical ability

Italy produce Pirlos and utilise them, build a team around them

We get a similar player and ask him to run round like an headless chicken or don't play him

Grealish is a perfect example, yeah he's not the best but he's the best we have, and instead we go with a Lingard type

standby for even more " its coming home" bullshit from mid May till early July when we come up against the 1st half decent team we face - and yet we are favs for it

So many reasons
here are a few.

1 Bad coaching in the 70s  and 80s

2 Bad management, of the national team by weak individuals.

3 Bad leadership from the FA.

4 Over reliance on supposed superstar players. The Keegan/Beckham scenario.

5 What may be described as an anti-intellectual strain in english football. Resistance to any new ideas notably that you might need to train for a penalty shoot out.

6 An overlong and tiring club season in which the achievements of liverpool or manchester united take more importance than the national team.

7 Little englander mentality. Games versus germany and argentina become extensions of the country's last wars. Even at the last world cup the Sun newspaper managed to annoy the whole continent of south america after its Cocaine headline before the Colombia game.

I could go on.
Its a shame really. I think a couple of years ago there was a report that suggested that after Brazil, England were the second most popular team at world cups.
Its a 'brand' that the FA have failed to build on ever since the 66 tournament.
Signs are that under Southgate things may be improving. But its a long way to go.

The anti-intellectual strain is a great shout.  The old skool Italian players would talk philosophy and stuff.  I honestly thought it was a wind up or bad translation I was so used to the thick English players.
Graeme Le Saux read the guardian and the suspicion was that he was a p oof

I still think penalties are a lotto

I mean it does take some bottle as well, but we were utterly s*it at them for a long time

I literally fell of my chair when we finally won one against Colombia

Ffaith.
its interesting that Southgate formulated a plan to win a penalty shoot out v Colombia.
Maybe the worm is turning at last..

the greatest player of all time is ROBERTO BAGGIO

followed by LIONEL MESSI and TONY CASCARINO who are both of ITALIAN ancestry

afta the invention of var.....that worked perfectly well in Ruski 2018 .....well


its fookin off .....its fookin off  footballs fookin off

Enzo Scifo, Michel Platini, Enzo Francescoli, Gabriel Batistuta

all of these players are ITALIAN

Unfortunately beppe old son,
so are Jorginho and Bernadeschi.
And if England were to play the Azzurri tomorrow, the English would be bookies favourites

only because so many English MUGGS would back them

Schillachi was my favourite

England might have beaten Italy between 2010-18 when they were poor

We wont be beating should we meet them at the Euros

And just remembered we lost to them in 2012

Woys boys

And just been doing a bit of searching on the Euros

Why are we along with Italy etc playing all our games at home?

Whilst Croatia for example have to travel all over Europe playing there's?

because it is being held in pre-determined cities

including Dublin (despite Ireland not qualifying)

Ireland

So tragic at the minute that they've been given their own parody thread

Fair enough cheers

But we kinda knew who were going to qualify, barring 1 shock its easy to know who's qualifying, making qualifying games a bit pointless really

England in 2008 Italy 2018 two recent shocks I suppose

Maybe Holland as well ?

They don't play to their strengths, historically don't have a 'tournament football' mentality like eg the Italians, Argies and Germans, who are prepared to play turgid 0-0 style football if it's the smartest thing to do against certain opposition.

A combination of arrogance and an unjustified inflated sense of footballing and general superiority over other nations, whipped up by a media that works against the team/manager and/or disrespects/motivates the opposition 90+% of the time, and colonialist/war history means that most teams are super-motivated to get one over on England.

In the last World Cup alone you had the media leaking team details, spying on the manager and his notes, and Modric coming out and saying that the England players were overhyped by the media and it motivated Croatia. Bilic also said something similar in 2007 when Michael Owen came out and said none of the Croatian players would get into the England side after they beat them home and away in the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

colonialist war history, as if Tunisia, Panama, Belgium, Sweden, Colombia and Croatia players all that in their minds during the match ffs this is completely nonsense

The rest mostly true, Modric came out and said the journalists were arrogant, which tbf they are and they do work against England, every 2 years at a tournament or in general, they come up with some way to destabilise the team, the expose on Sven, dressing up in arab gear offering him a fake job, getting Big Sam pissed, then sacked, putting Stuart Pearce on the front of papers when he got the job, highlighting some racism incident wit Ince 20 year prior that everyone knew about and was dealth with at the time, but it made front page news 20 years later!
hostility towards Hodgson during his first presser because the old boys network in the media couldn't get Redknapp appointed, that must of hurt, etc.

England fans rated Croatia however.

There has been a lot of bad luck over the years in fairness

1990 / 96 / 98 / 04 / 06 / 12 were all tournaments lost on penalties

86 was lost to Maradonna scoring with his hand

94 / 08 didn't qualify

2000 and 2014 bombed in the groups, 2016 the worst ever tournament loss. 2010 well beaten but manager barely spoke a lick of English.

2002 lost by 1 goal to winners Brazil, flukey Ronaldinho goal

Why would any of the countries you listed have colonialist/war history in their heads? What colonial/war history is there with them?

I gave you first hand evidence that Croatia had lack of respect as motivation. I don't think the thread is about one world cup where you failed to beat anyone you weren't expected to either. The likes of Croatia and Belgium look at the English team sheet and how overhyped the players are and are licking their lips at the prospect of playing them, especially when they play technical football.

Colonialist/war history would apply to Ireland, Argentina, Germany etc

you said

and colonialist/war history means that most teams are super-motivated to get one over on England.


now you're saying Ireland, Argentina and Germany, from most to 3 ? bit of a comedown

Argentina is a country that was colonised itself and now populated by people's who ancestors were colonisers.
Germany as you may have a heard, has a bit of a chequered history with invasions as well, killing 6 millions jews and all, but they use Britian's colonial past as a motivational tool?

So it comes down to Ireland, I can only assume that's where you from.


I already said Modric was talking about the journalists, he specifically stated this in his interview, on youtube

I said 'A combination of....' If you read that as meaning that colonialist/war history motivates countries which have no colonialist/war history with England then there is no helping you

you also said most teams in the same posts and super motivated

which is just boll0cs

then using Germany of all countries FFS

Argentina wasn't colonised by Britain. It went to war with Britain. Even Maradona said the 86 win was for the Falklands.

Germany doesn't have a colonialist history with Britain or England. It has a war history. Why would they use Britain's colonialist past as motivation when it's irrelevant? The history between the countries on and off the pitch is relevant, which includes numerous meetings at majors but also two World Wars. England would be just as motivated to get one over on the Germans given the history. It's ingrained into the psyche and is not at all unusual for former war enemies or former colonies to see things that way.

you said Colonialist/war history would apply to Ireland, Argentina, Germany etc

why would Argentina and Germany be motivated to beat England because of their colonial past, given their own past

The point is that no team uses colonial history as a motivational tool and to cite Germany as one example is ridiculous.

1986 was 4 years after the Falklands in which the Argentinians, who derived from Spanish colonists, invaded an island that didn't belong to them, in the same way their own land did not belong to them given they were not the indigenous population, no doubt the Argentinian players used that period as motivation as the Argentinian government are very good or were, at pulling on nationalist heartstrings.

England have failed at tournaments mostly because collectively they are not good enough combined with the fact the manager has been below international standards as well, in most instances, that's the long and short of it, most countries that Britain's' elite raped and pillaged have not played any part in England being useless at tournaments, all countries that have knocked England out have not used any motivation related to the empire considering they were not affected.

why were English club sides able to dominate UEFA competitions in the 70s and 80s, while the national team continually underwhelmed?

I'm not sure if it's to do with getting older... or just getting familiar with the disappointment..

.. but England losing in tournaments doesn't "hurt" like it used to.. I can remember being gutted about not qualifying for 74 & 78 .. distraught  about 86, 90 & 96 ... a few quarter finals with Sven hurt a bit....
Obviously wanted them to win that semi final 3 years ago... but not that bothered really

i'm guessing italia 90 was the worst

in retrospect that was a great team - barnes (maybe past his best?), waddle, gascoigne, lineker

platt, beardsley

Tony .c.
Cheers made me laugh!

In answer to the question about english club dominance of europe in the 70s, the fact that english clubs were able to select players from england, both irelands, wales and most importantly scotland led to the success. Most other european clubs either only had home grown players or a maximum of 2 foreigners.
I believe one of liverpools european cup winning teams had no englishmen.

the five countries combined had similar population to Italy, France, West Germany

the english clubs usualyy had 6-8 english and 3-5 non-english

not enormously different to continental teams

i think you're talking about 1988 fa cup final

only english-qualified player was craig johnston was from austrlia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FA_Cup_Final

At the time I think  english clubs access to scottish footballers would have been akin  to german clubs having an unlimited choice of dutch footballers.
I dont think Serie A allowed foreign transfers until the early 80s. Though of course the Italians always had access to various naturalised south americans.
Took your mob a few years to get your heads in front beppe but when they did they completely dominated the 90s. To some of us of a certain age, those golden years of Serie A on channel 4 was as good as the jogo bonito ever got.

England should have won the 90 World Cup, we had the best team easily.

They might have won it in 1990 if only they knew their way round a penalty shoot out.
Someone made the point that Bobby Robson had only used one sub and had the giant Dave Beasant on the bench. Dear old shilton, as good as he was got no where near any of the German kicks.

Yes i remember the German kicks "Bang, bang, bang" in both corners.  Shilton may as well have not been there.

Chris Woods was on the bench.... Shilton went the right way for all their pens .. but got no where near. He should've saved their goal, even with the unlucky deflection off Parker

Shilton was about 84 years old in 1990

The Germans lost their first ever shoot out in 76 (the panenka final)
They have never lost another one, if memory serves.
Its called learning from failure.
Something England have not managed at all well.