Trouble is in qualifying you're generally playing teams made up of mainly football league class players at best, the tournaments are several levels above. Also doesn't help that some of our best players over the years just seem to go missing on the big stage.
If you don't count Messi, Ronaldo, Bale & Neymar as they are wingers then Kane is certainly on par with the rest.
It's a good stat that. Unbeaten in 8 years of qualifiers. We've played 32 games, won 24 and drawn 8. The teams we've remained unbeaten against are: Montenergro Switzerland Wales Bulgaria Ukraine Poland Moldova San Marino Slovenia Estonia Lithuania Scotland Slovakia Malta We've been in the same group as a number of those above twice. Our performance in the finals since then isn't so impressive P11 W3 D4 L4 We've beaten Sweden, Ukraine and Wales Drawn with France, Costa Rica, Russia and Slovakia And lost to Italy twice, Uruguay and Iceland. I suppose you could argue one of those losses to Italy was a draw as we lost on penalties, but we still lost. When did we last beat anyone that was any good? A team with a realistic ambition of winning the tournament. In these last 8 years, how many times have we thought 'what a cracking result'? The draw against France? Is that the highlight? We like to think we're in the same category as France, Italy, Holland,Germany, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Argentina - the Premier League of World Football. But we've only come up against two of those teams in the last 8 years and still failed to progress beyond the second round. We don't have to meet a quality side anymore to be dumped out of championship football, any country capable of qualifying to those championships will do it to us. And the cherry on the cake is that not only are we ineffective against any half decent side, we're mind numbingly boring to watch too, playing a brand of football that is 8 years out of date, trying to emulate what Spain did at the turn of the decade when the fast attacking football of teams like Germany (and in England Leicester) has proved both more effective and far more entertaining. Germany have scored 38 goals in their 9 qualifying games. We've managed 17, less than half. I don't expect us to win tournaments. We never did when watching England was fun. But in 86, 90 and 96 we at least competed with the best in the world. We may have been a little bit short, or a little unlucky, I'm not sure, but we were in the same league. Now we're miles away and watching us is a chore. If you're a small nation, or a small club like Barnsley, you take the rough with the smooth, you expect losses, expect poor seasons, even poor decades. But England aren't a small nation in footballing terms, our players are amongst the highest paid in the world and no human being enjoys watching the elite, the privileged, the lucky produce what is essentially a bucket of ****.
I can think this is the worst England side in my living memory and still watch their games and want them to win. OnGoingCloud1887 seems to think it's one or the other.
And amongst all this there's the the ever optimism...that our young ones may be different. Our young lions have done well in tournements in the past 2 years....is this the early signs we need? Im told we have great facilites but not enough qualified and "just good coaches" to facilitate any kind of major improvement any time soon. I find this.. the unacceptable side of football in this country. All that money and..........
I agree with the OP here to a certain point... Lets not forget the main aim to begin with, and its that we/England have won our group and we're going to another World cup. Dont we all love an Intl summer tournament when our clubs arent playing, and the WC means a lot more than the Euros doesnt it. ?. The group isnt even finished yet so why dont we wait until the last game tomorrow before totally tearing apart the team. I know it wasnt a good perfomance against Slovenia but I still say we deserved to win, and even though we allegedly did badly away to Malta we still won there 0-4, whether the goals came late on or not. I realise though that the hard work starts now and we have to wait and see what sort of draw we get in the Finals to begin with. At least this one is in Europe, and surely we wont get Italy & Uruguay again!!.
There’s a glaringly obvious issue with England. The players are in theory good enough. We’ve had worse squads. But we have had lot better, especially in recent years. The quality of player available isn’t the issue. There are teams with less players available and with less ‘stars’ who will do better next year just as Iceland and wales did last year. We do not have an inspiring leader, someone who will make these millionaires scared to underperform rather than scared to perform, make them want to go out and be better than they are. We haven’t had a good international manager since venables. Hoddle was ok but a weirdo. Eriksson got to quarter finals but had great players and a brilliant leader by example in beckham. The rest? Woeful. The current incumbent? Worst of the lot. By a long way. Gareth Southgate has had one club job. He relegated the side that Steve McLaren won a trophy with and took to a European final. That’s Steve mclaren, probably the second worst of all since 96 to manage England. In Germany, Spain, Italy, a ‘manager’ with such little experience and even less success wouldn’t be near the National sides at the u17 and u19 stage. U21’s? Never. Senior side? You’re having a laugh. But there’s the difference. The Germans and Spanish appoint coaches to be successful on the pitch. The English fa appoint the right face and voice. The German manager is on video scratching his balls and sniffing his fingers, eating his nose pickings and raking clinkers out of his arse. They don’t give a ****. He’s won the World Cup. Vicente del bosque has won the champions league, the World Cup and European championship, league titles. He dropped iker casillas, left Diego Costa out of his Euro’s squad. Made decisions. The new fella has worked in age groups a lot but he’s been out in Porto and has a good record. Our manager looks good in a suit, speaks well in interviews and once missed a penalty. Nothing else of interest. No sign of any ability whatsoever, and can’t even make a basic decision like who his captain is, showing no leadership. Motivates his squad be telling them they don’t deserve to be there. As if he does himself!! Gareth Southgate wouldn’t get a managers gig at any club in our top two divisions or any top division team in the seven or eight best leagues in Europe. Maybe more. We have players who would get into all or most other international teams. Harry Kane is the best proper number nine in the game. John Stones gets vilified but if he was German he’d be playing sweeper and being nicknamed Beckenbauer. Hate to say it as a dee dah but there’s few better attacking right backs than Kyle walker. Can’t defend for **** but he’s plenty quick enough to cover his inadequacies there. We have four goalkeepers who would play in most international sides (obviously not all), but look at some of the so called big guns. Brazil’s keeper Alisson Becker couldn’t get a game over schezny at Roma last season. Argentina play the fella who’s barely second choice at Man Utd. Spain, Germany, France have a good keeper of course, (don’t think lloris is as special as he’s made out to be though), but in all seriousness there’s a lot of countries would love hart, butland, pickford. Even fraser Forster and Tom Heaton would get into at least half of the sides that will be in Russia next year I bet. The manager wouldn’t be sought after by any single other side though. He should be replaced now. They wont. But after next summers embarrassment they will likely have to. He will not get another job. Roy hodgson and Graham Taylor were good club managers who weren’t good enough at international level. Keegan and hoddle were mercurial figures trying to create a team in their own image and ideals - but failed. They knew what they were trying to do though. I don’t get the impression that Gareth Southgate has the first clue as to how to try to extract even 75% of the potential of the players he has.
Germany and Holland consistently appoint managers with little experience they just make sure they are good ones.
Given that the Dutch are about to fail to qualify for their second tournament in a row I’m not sure it’s the best example! In Germany Eddie Howe or Sean Dyche would have the job though. But the fa will never learn.
I’m not saying it’s always successful just that they do it! Germany especially don’t appoint bas3d on experience.
Like I’ve said though, it’s not just experience. Southgate just doesn’t have it. Whatever ‘it’ is. I went to his first game in charge against Malta last year. Third game at Wembley for me and my son that year. First ever England game, booked before Allardyce got the boot. The writing was on the wall. It was awful. Never felt he was the right man but didn’t write him off after one game, figured he needed chance. He then failed to beat Slovenia. Got a great on paper looking 3-0 win against Scotland which in reality though we were poor in and could have lost, and threw a two nil lead away in the last five minutes in a friendly. Distinctly poor. Was given the job permanently anyway. The fa were desperate for him to get it after Hodgson, knew there’d be uproar. Got shot of Allardyce at the first opportunity (I still think they had something to do with the sting), and got their man in. It’s us as the supporters that are short changed. Greenwood over clough. Taylor over venables. Mclaren over Allardyce. Keegan because a lot of the country asked for it - even though it was obvious he wasn’t going to be an international manager and he didn’t even really want the job in the first place. We deserve better. They need to get their heads from up their arses and stop playing politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...rld-cup-2018-lithuania?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other Seems even Southgate doesn’t think we have any world class players...
Gary Cahill is world class? I can’t believe what I’m reading. He’s never been close. He wouldn’t have got near an England squad if he was in his prime 10 years ago.