England - the future....

[Kitsondinho]

England are pointless.

[From Despair To Where?]

To be fair to the Mail, His Royal Kanuness didn't discover he was Welsh until 2010. Before then he was as English as summer rain and below average temperatures - he even played for the England U18s in November 2007

It's more a dig at these sort of articles in general. They crop up every time there's a crisis of confidence with the England set up in general and almost without fail, it's all just pissing in the wind

[Hoop Blah]

Pretty irrelevant stuff at the moment, but the England U20 side beat Uraguay 3-0 in a warm up match (really was just a training game I believe) for their World Cup Finals that kicks off this week.

I've not seen Peter Taylor having a bitch and a moan that the best U20 players were with the 21s and so not available to him either.

[6 Million Dollar Man]

U20's draw 2-2 with the mighty Iraq. Blew a 2 goal lead. Are we any good at tournament football at any level???

[ZacNaloen]

U20's draw 2-2 with the mighty Iraq. Blew a 2 goal lead. Are we any good at tournament football at any level???

Did you watch the game?

Iraq were extremely good technically and for obvious reasons particularly up for the game. They essentially threw the kitchen sink at England, with what was essentially a home support, for the last 15 minutes. Better sides have crumbled under that sort of pressure.

England looked quality for 75minutes, they need to focus on that and beat Egypt and Chile.

[Royal Rother]

Unfortunately there aren't that many nations that don't look technically good when put up against England. Many of them will be undone by naivety, fitness, professionalism etc. but they rarely look technically inferior to us.

[stealthpapes]

Ugh, I think it was a 0-0 draw with Macedonia or Montenegro and England got out passed for a 10 minute spell. Commentator said something along the lines of "You know what, these guys can play a bit".

They were all professional footballers. A good half were in decent if not the very top leagues.

What did you expect?

[LUX]

bet it was ITV

[stealthpapes]

It was probably Lawrenson.

[ZacNaloen]

Unfortunately there aren't that many nations that don't look technically good when put up against England. Many of them will be undone by naivety, fitness, professionalism etc. but they rarely look technically inferior to us.

Exactly.

[Hoop Blah]

Unfortunately there aren't that many nations that don't look technically good when put up against England. Many of them will be undone by naivety, fitness, professionalism etc. but they rarely look technically inferior to us.

Exactly.

From the little I saw we didn't look technically worse though, hence being well on top and 2-0.

The opposition might have surprised a few but I don't think we should take their decent technique as a chance to further criticise our boys.

[ZacNaloen]

We were better for 75 minutes, then they just lumped the pressure on. They were just good enough that that caused real problems.

[Royal Rother]

Unfortunately there aren't that many nations that don't look technically good when put up against England. Many of them will be undone by naivety, fitness, professionalism etc. but they rarely look technically inferior to us.

Exactly.

From the little I saw we didn't look technically worse though, hence being well on top and 2-0.

The opposition might have surprised a few but I don't think we should take their decent technique as a chance to further criticise our boys.

So, has the day really arrived when we are asked to take a positive from England's young footballers not looking technically inferior to Iraq's young footballers.

That's something pretty special.

[Hoop Blah]

That's not what I said. It was sounding like people were saying we were tactically inferior to them, when in reality we weren't.

Why should we expect to be technically better than a country that apparently have been making lots of effort with their football?

[stealthpapes]

Tactically =/= Technically

we're also not very good at tactics either, so I guess it doesn't matter.

[ZacNaloen]

Tactically =/= Technically

we're also not very good at tactics either, so I guess it doesn't matter.

This.

Their tactics at the end consisted of pressure pressure pressure. Which is really just our tactics, except they are also good at football.

[stealthpapes]

There's no point of just pressing if there's no structure to it. Otherwise its just chasing after the ball and dogs can do that.

[Ouroboros]

Why should we expect to be technically better than a country that apparently have been making lots of effort with their football?

Dunno, perhaps there is a perception that we have been making lots of effort with our football as well.

But obviously not.

[ZacNaloen]

There's no point of just pressing if there's no structure to it. Otherwise its just chasing after the ball and dogs can do that.

That's where Iraq were going wrong in the first half, they were much more structured second half and looked really good.

It almost seems like we've spent so long teaching our young players what to do with the ball that we've utterly neglected teaching them what to do without it.

[Hoop Blah]

Why should we expect to be technically better than a country that apparently have been making lots of effort with their football?

Dunno, perhaps there is a perception that we have been making lots of effort with our football as well.

But obviously not.

There's room for improvement obviously, although I don't think players actual abiilty is that bad, but the way we organise and encourage them to play the higher up they go holds us back.

There's also only so far you can improve players and only so good you can get the majority of players. We're almost at that point and getting that last bit is tough. Iraq have seemingly got their players up to a similar standard pretty quickly because that's easier than turning already good players into world beaters (which is where we're at).