Well they play a very defensive game that is distinctly British, even under foreign managers. "Bottle" has little to do with it. Also grinding out results means little when you can't grind out results against top sides, which they have never been able to do. Bottle might give them a chance, but they still lose. They usually encounter a team that is better than they are when they go out. England are usually fortunate to even be in penalties. Take this past Euros for example. Italy should have beaten England handily. De Rossi missed one chance six yards out and another shot of his hit the post. That's not to say England didn't have chances that game, but they were thoroughly outperformed. Italy had something like 30 shots and 65% possession. England had nine shots. That indicates a vast gap in quality.

This next generation of players for England actually have the technical qualities to play possession football, or at least dictate play to the opposition rather than the other way around. England's biggest problem has been trying to fit square pegs in round holes in midfield. Gerrard and Lampard are too similar in style to play together, yet they've tried to play both players together for the last 9 years. They even dropped Scholes, whose technical qualities deep in midfield exceed both Gerrard and Lampard. That 2006 team is a much different team with Paul Scholes in it.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by RandySavage

9 Time Natty Winner

Member since May 2012

35637 posts

Posted on 5/21/13 at 11:30 am to acgeaux129

quote:
England should be competing with the likes of Spain, Germany, etc

Based on what? Spain is on the tail end of its golden age other than that England has outperformed them for years. Germany has 30+ million more people than England and haven't won anything in almost 20 years.

quote:
But they aren't really even close.

Based on what? Like I said, wen is the last time Germany won a trophy? Again, if you reverse PK results (which have nothing to do with how good a team is at soccer) then the argument is the opposite.

quote:
I might even take Belgium over them at this point.

At this point sure because the next generation of English players isn't nearly as good as the last. Also, Belgium need to actually do something besides have a bunch of young big names before we start crowning them.

I'm not saying England is anything special but they generally get more stick than they deserve. I'm very interested to see what they do in 2014.

Page 1 2 3