...there was a long passage of Brighton possession with the commentator, as is customary, to name the player receiving the pass...every single player was foreign. People wonder why the national team are a joke, our young 'ens don't get a chance anywhere...apart from at the likes of Barnsley.
Agree with you, it's not good. I posted last week how proud I am that we've got a largely British squad. Even if we were to go up, there's no way I'd want a squad full of mostly foreign players.
Is that a joke? Or are you suggesting England were a great side before teams started signing foreign players?
The national team aren't a joke because Brighton, or anyone, field a 1st team of mainly foreign players. If anything, this should improve the national team. It should improve the quality of the leagues and as such, give the English players a more competitive competition for them to improve in. However, we have to wonder why the English players coming through are not good enough to get in these sides....
Because theres no room as they're full of foreign players from under 13s upwards. This may have something to do with more than half of the money in the transfer windows leaving these shores and being used in grass roots football abroad and not here.
Maybe not a great side, but we seemed to have a much better team when I was younger. Spain 82 is my first vivid memory of an international tournament. We destroy semi-finalists France 3-1 in our opening game and win the other two group games. We then draw with runners up Germany and hosts Spain, but because of the odd set-up of the competition we're going home despite never losing a match, scoring 6 goals and only conceding one in our 5 games. Mexico 86 and Lineker's hattrick against Poland then a couple more against Paraguay, before Maradona cheats us out of a a semi-final place against a crap Belguim side. It was a great second goal he scored, but he cheated and we battered them for the rest of the game. Then the two semi-final penalty defeats against Germany, Italia 90 and Euro 96. We're every bit as good as Germany in both games. Probably significantly better in 96, but we lose on penalties. No complaints, that's how it goes, but we have a comptetitive international team who can hold their own against the best teams in the world. We don't anymore. Germany are streets ahead of us. As are any number of other international teams. We're not unlucky when we come home from tournaments anymore, we get battered. We may never have had a great team, but we used to have a good team that stood a chance. Now we don't. Is that down to the number of foreign players in the English game? I don't know. But as the number of foreign players has increased the standard of our international team has got worse, so at the very least it needs discussing and investigating. The suggestion is certainly not a joke. (There were failures too in the period I have discussed, USA 94 and a couple of Euro Championships, I'm not glossing over them, but we tended to follow a poor tournament with a good one. Now it's just a procession of *****.)
A couple of our most succesful seasons ever were heavily influenced by having a good set of foreign players so I can't really knock other clubs doing it. Young British players go for far too much money when you can buy an established international from abroad cheaper.
It's down to one reason. The 'best' young English players sign big money contracts at clubs they know they will not even get into the squad at, the first few years of their careers, and the key learning period, is wasted rotting in the reserves until at 20/21 they get loaned out to a low league side and start off a few years behind. Ashley fletcher played his first competitive game at 20 years old, that's far too late but it's because he chose to sign for Manchester united and waste the start of his career in the reserves. There are many many players who have happily made that decision and it has harmed their career and the national team too. It can be argued that that is because their places in the 'big teams' is being taken by foreigners but that isn't the problem for me, the problem is their willingness to put money over football
Lloyd Isgrove prime example, seemingly more bothered about his huge wages at Southampton than joining a Championship team and playing. All very sad in my opinion. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Dont buy into this at all. Id rather have 30 really good English players playing in a league with world class foreign players than 200 average English players playing in a league thats got little quality or competitiveness. We always have quality players, the team at the minute is littered with quality players, the side of 10 years ago is probably the best starting 11 in international history in terms of individual talent. Our problem is that the national side is run by a group of middle aged business men who constantly appoint completely inept managers. Its as simple as that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Key foreigners in our promotion side - De Zeeuw Marcelle (when the weather was warm, in winter he was a bit gash to be honest) Bosancic Don't remember any more who had a massive influence. During our season in the Prem, most of out best performers were British. When we go to the playoff final under Bassett, Hristov was in and out of the side, Van Der Laan was very effective at times but hardly a key figure, and Tinkler was poor IMHO. I'm not knocking signing foreign players point blank. but building the majority of a side out of players who have very little connection even with the country, let alone the local area, would be not my preferred way of doing things.
Youve only got to look at all Fergies teams. All built on a core of British/Irish players with a couple of talented foreigners mixed in. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
From memory about 1/3 of the players in the EPL qualify for the national team. It's about 60% in Spain and Germany.
But we are constantly looking at these other countries and trying to emulate them. 4/6 years ago everyone wanted to replicate Spain, now its Germany. If France win the WC we'll all be talking about how to copy them. If we ever managed to organise a decent team out of the vast quality we have available then these countries will be talking about how to copy us. They'd be talking about the fact our players get to play against the best week in/ week out. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk