Redinthehead -at least we didn't finish 13th (U1860) posted 4 minutes ago
We had an excellent coach in Hoddle, but because he made one media slip up, he was cast out.


Never excellent was ok...ask any of my fellow wolves fans what they think of Hoddle

"We didn't qualify for Euro 92"

Yes we did.

"The german national team is filled with foreign players as well."

Erm, what are you talking about? Do you mean players like Gundogan who although is of Turkish decent was born and bred in Germany. It's called ethnic diversity and what has that got to do with anything?

"How many spaniards for instance play for Madrid? Bayern as well?"

Off the top of my head
Real - Casillas, Ramos, Alonso, Arbeloa, Albiol, Callejon, Lopez
Bayern - Schweinsteiger, Neuer, Lahm, Boeteng, Badstuber, Muller, Kroos, Gomez.

"We do nto actually need hundreds of players available to pick a national team that will do well. You need roughly a pool of 50 players to achieve that."

Wow!

We do nto actually need hundreds of players available to pick a national team that will do well. You need roughly a pool of 50 players to achieve that."

I think what he's saying is but I could be wrong is that you can do well with "just" 5 or 6 "world class" players and add another 5 or 6 very good players, he used Italy's 06 winning squad as an example, off the top of my head the only genuine world class players we had then
Buffon,Nesta,Cannavaro,Pirlo,De Rossi,Totti, (6 World class players)

futsal and 5 a side isn't used enough to develop players technique. Seriously, i'm 19 and its only this year that i've played futsal and 5 a side regularly and i can feel huge improvements in my game. i only wish i played at a younger age.

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sack Roy!!!

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Metro

This is nothing to do with Sunday League football.

People who play Sunday League football are not going to be making it as internationals or even league football. As a rule.

It goes far deeper than that.

We do have the talent pool for youngsters out there, we just don't have the right people to nurture it at the mid to higher echelons of the game. And that is the problem.

Look at who the FA have appointed as their main men. Hodgson and Peirce, and they have surrounded themselves with the wrong people to coach our youth.

We need people like Gaza, Scholes, Hoddle, Mcmanaman, John Barnes, Beckham etc coaching these youngsters.

I second MUDD's points on the Premier league. It's easy to demand a quick fix with quotas and maybe that would help English players get more experience, but when there are such clear shortcomings in our youth development, it's foolish to suggest that this would magically transform our game.

Yes, England fought its way to the SF of the 1990 WC. But we played well maybe twice in the whole competition. We got through the group with a solitary win (1-0 against Egypt). We were unimpressive against Belgium and Cameroon.

I'd also question whether the influx of foreigners could have immediately affected the England side to the degree that we were dreadful in 1992 (before the launch of the Premiership, incidentally) and failed to qualify for 1994. At this time, the number of foreigners in our league was relatively low, though rising. If this were a key factor in the quality of the England team, you'd expect to see a correlation between proportion of foreigners and bad results. In fact, as the 1990s proceeded, we saw a talented England team knocked out on penalties in '96 and '98 (having given a good account of themselves against talented sides), and Sven-era results that compare favourably with the heyday of the English league featuring only domestic players.

The 1970s and 80s were not glory years for the England team. From memory, we failed to qualify for the '74 and '78 WCs as well as the '76 and '84 Euros. In the '80 and '88 Euros we failed to get out of the group stages.

I do think the key has to be improving the quality of the raw material. Getting good, skill-based coaching to lots more kids at an earlier age. The benefits might be further amplified by measures to give them more chances to get experience at the start of their careers. This could include quotas for Premiership squads but also schemes to encourage youngsters to take up opportunities abroad - just like foreign kids do.

Redinthehead

'You're probably not informed as to current rules.
U8's play maximum 7 a side on smaller pitches.
U7's currently play 7 a side but from next year it's changing to 5 a side on smaller still pitches.
The issues this causes is there are plenty of kids that want to play football, but you can only register a maximum of double the amount of starters (7 + 7) or new rules for u7s (5+5)
What happens to the kids that can't find a club, there simply won't be enough FA qualified coaches.'

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'Rules' (or rather 'guidelines' are all very well and improving them is a good first step. But as the quoted post kind of acknowledges, it's not that simple to turn around years of bad practice. We have decades of unhelpful ideology around football and we also have less resources than many of our competitors: not enough coaches to go around, not enough of the right kinds of pitches, not enough playing fields thanks to Thatcher (and successive governments) selling them off.
It's good that the FA seems to identified some of the root causes but this isn't something that can be turned around at the wave of a magic wand.

not enough playing fields thanks to Thatcher (and successive governments) selling them off.

................

That was Major. He started that. Not Maggie.

There seems to be a bit too much naval gazing at the moment.

Back when English clubs has mostly homegrown players it didn't stop us winning the European Cup and competing in the World Cup.

The reason we look so rubbish now is that we refuse to play to our strenghts using pace and power to counter the superior technique of the continental teams it worked before it can work again.

comment by Greatteamswinit4times (U6008)
posted 24 minutes ago
Roy should never have got near the job. It was made for Redknapp to go in to.

...............................

I think just about every football fan in the country apart from the sp uds wanted that.

think it was Major,

i left school in 91 and the school i went to had 3 football fields,tennis courts,cricket pitch and running track.

now it has 1 football pitch and fenced off all round to keep the pedos out,looks more like a prison nowdays, sad really.

local council sold it all off, then they tell you no ball games every where!

this isn't something that can be turned around at the wave of a magic wand

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That's correct. It takes a long time, and hard dedicated work.

Most coaches of young players are volunteers who love the game.

Under 7s now will need ten years of development before its seen to have an effect on the u21's.

Then you've got premier league clubs that take on a load of players to release them a year later and they have to find a club again.

Mums and dads can't wait to post on Facebook that their little boy has been "signed up" by whichever football club and so don't resist or think for the long term.

It would help if clubs would stop buying 16-20 year olds from say league 1 and then just chucking them in the reserves or only playing the odd cup game. Young players need game time to improve and would benefit much more playing a full season in the lower leagues than getting the odd game for united, liverpool or whoever.

I posed this question earlier but with the number of responses it looks like it went innoticed. I was wondering when you guys play football, what is your mentality like? do you want get the ball and play on the ground, lookf ro 1-2's, combinations or is more like go for the 'beckham. cross field, pimg down the line to chase or hit the striker ASAP?

RE: Thatcher / Major, I wasn't totally sure of my facts so I had a look. I can't find a good historical account of this but there are plenty of passing references to Thatcher selling off school playing fields. It certainly started under her. Whether Major sold off more in fewer years I don't know. Anyway, John Major himself acknowledges the legacy and claims to be doing something about it here - http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page2164.html - not very long before his lot were voted out.

It's simple.

Kids from a young age are taught to play 180 mph football. Running down the byline and smashing the ball in. This promotes high level of fitness and strength. But the down side, is that your ball work, and passing suffers.

English players just don't look up, and play with their heads down.

If they were instead taught to hold on to the ball, meanwhile staying composed and looking for options, they'd be totally different.

It's all down to the coaches, and the mentality they instill in these kids.
Look at the players now. They just don't want the ball. They have a look of disgust on their faces.

comment by manutd1982 (U6633)

ManUtdDaredevil

Of course it matters, there is simply less to choose from. Say for example there are 25 players in every team, that would mean there are just 175 English players to choose from, while Germany (18 team league) have 351 and Spain 315.

I would say the influx of foreigners came at the beginning of the PL in 1992, the World Cup in 1990 2 years prior we finished 4th with quality throughout our squad.
_____________________

Sorry but this is rubbish imo. I'm with daredevil on this point. You cannot blame foreigners for our own lack of talent.

According to your own argument we became poor as soon as th PL was formed, despite being wonderful just two years earlier!! It took many, many years for foreigners to "invade" our league, it did not happen overnight. So why did we fail to even qualify for the WC in 1994 if we were so great in 1990? And how come we narrowly missed out on the getting to the final of Euro 1996? Your argument makes no sense at all.

The problem is we don't create enough top quality players in the first place - not that some foreigners have stolen their places in the league. We all know hat English players are more expensive but that is precisely bcause they are so popular with British managers. I.e. if you have two players of equal ability, a PL manager will always prefer the English guy - that's why he is more expensive!

The only world class player we have ever created in my lifetime, in terms of skill, is Gazza. And he was a drunk. Others have been great players but not with the same sort of attacking skill. We just don't produce enough of that sort of technical player who is comfortable with the ball at his feet.

If anything, England overachieved at WC 1990 and Euro 1996 because those minor successes were exceptions, not the norm.

I agree that it is more of a tactical and technical coaching issue and that this needs to start at a very young age.

Every single criticism of the national team today is the same as what my mates and I were saying about England back in the 1980s. Nothing has changed and that is depressing. Foreigners are just a convenient excuse - they weren't even here when this problem was first identified!!

RR

It was pretty much all Major's legacy.

At the time it was an absurd thing for him to do, because of his love for all things spoert, especially cricket.

They are limited because they play one way. It is that simple really.

One can pin the blame on the 'foreigners' and them taking up all the spaces at the club.
But at the end of the day you're living in denial.

If a kid is good enough, he'll force his way in, ala Wilshere, Joe Hart, etc.

I don't blame foriegners for the decline of players ability. I reckon they have made us realise more that we require more technique.

You could argue that they have taken up some places which our young players could have taken because they are technically better but that is a knock on affect of our coaches plus our mentality on the way we play.

redmisty

And how do you create these players?

By giving them the opportunity to play and develop which we don't do. More home grown players are given a chance to play in Spain and German meaning there is more of a chance of them creating these players.

It's quite simple logic really. I'm not saying that's the only problem we have but it is most definitely a problem.You cant just look at these percentage of foreigners playing in leagues stat and dismiss it. If you don't allow a player to develop between the years of 16-24 then no matter how good their potential is they will never reach it.

Where do you start, there's so many thing wrong.

At grass roots the coaching is inadeqaute. Bigger stronger kids are chosen above the smaller players. Tactics are old fashioned kick and rush. Pitches are too big. Not enough emphasis on ball control, passing, movement, technical skills.

At a more senior level, the academy systems are wrong. I think there should be a rule that a percentage of the kids in the academy of a club have to be from a prescribed radius of the club and there should be a limited number of foreign players allowed. This would mean that we would get a bigger crop of homegrown players.

Also clubs shouldn't be able to buy a youth player before they are 18. I've seen far to many players show talent at a young age,who get picked up by a bigger team and they basically rot in the academy, when they could have been playing regular, competitive football in the lower division. John Bostock is a perfect example of this. He should have stayed at Crystal Palace and worked his way up , like Zaha has done. Instead he was poached by Spurs, who then sent him out of loan to several clubs. How is a young player supposed to settle and learn.

And I don't even want to start on Stuart Pearce and Hodgson and teh FA in general.