We appreciate you guys being nice about England's chances, but really there's only one way it's going to go. This England team doesn't look especially strong, not at all. Our defence looked really poor yesterday, and that was playing at home in climate conditions we were used to against giants-of-the-game Peru. It's not going to be a glorious campaign.
Englands Chances In Brazil
- Thread starter lawson
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I struggle to see us advancing through the group stage, but I will be cheering us on regardless. I'm looking forward to the tournament in general though, not just because England are in it.
We'll finish bottom. And my other nationality will be knocked out in the quarterfinals.
It will be a sad tournament all-around for my family.
It will be a sad tournament all-around for my family.
Hahaha! Amazing how you called it!
It comes from years of experience, unfortunately.
Well, there's a tiny possibility England won't finish bottom if CR rests its best players, England really tries and whatever happens over in Uruguay/Italy.
I will say, depending on what happens in this round of Group G, if USA and Ghana don't take it to Portugal and Germany, gotta say, Group D -- England's group -- would be the real Group of Death.
Three out of four teams in Group D are former World Cup winners, and those same three are all in the FIFA top 10 teams. That Costa Rica has been thrown into that group and is yet proving itself to be even better than them tells you all you need to know about the scale of the challenge England had from the very start.
I was right about England but overly optimistic about Spain. Which is a bit humorous since I was shouted down by friends and family about being too pessimistic.
There's always the Euros. And I am of the belief that if a system or strategy no longer works it is best to learn that quickly and change immediately—hopefully this will help us avoid a slow, catastrophic decline a la England.
There's always the Euros. And I am of the belief that if a system or strategy no longer works it is best to learn that quickly and change immediately—hopefully this will help us avoid a slow, catastrophic decline a la England.
To all the british in here, I have a question:
England is having a bad time as a national team for a long time. Maybe it have any relation with the B-teams league you have? I explain myself:
Those young players play against each other, not in the real competition, so clubs can't barely see how they would play in the first team giving them few chances to make a debut. Instead of that, they prefer signing international young players.
If the young players can't play in the maximum level, national team won't have new players and England can't leave this hole.
May this have any relation with that?
England is having a bad time as a national team for a long time. Maybe it have any relation with the B-teams league you have? I explain myself:
Those young players play against each other, not in the real competition, so clubs can't barely see how they would play in the first team giving them few chances to make a debut. Instead of that, they prefer signing international young players.
If the young players can't play in the maximum level, national team won't have new players and England can't leave this hole.
May this have any relation with that?
It would be very difficult to make that work politically. We did field a Team GB for the Olympics and even that was problematic and ultimately unsuccessful. Scotland is agitating (rightly so in my mind, however controversial that is) for independence as we speak and Northern Ireland would rather continue to be UEFA qualifying fodder than join ranks with England (not to mention that it would take quite awhile before they had sufficiently skilled players to make the squad). I am sure everyone would love to see Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey, Emyr Huws, and Declan John playing alongside Daniel Sturridge, Ross Barkley, Raheem Sterling, and Joe Hart but even Wales would have a hard time with that integration (especially given they are in the best position to qualify without England).
It's not a bad idea from a sporting perspective but I am not sure there is an opportunity to make it happen right now.
As so many European teams fall apart in this Word Cup, maybe they should push for an EU squad...
This has been a long and storied debate in the UK. By and large, everyone is against it, but while for the English it's mostly just a case of "we don't want to play with them" for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland it's something deeper. You have to understand that the only reason that the four different UK "home nations" have their own teams is because of the historical connection - because we are the first four countries in the world to have had FAs and leagues and we formulated the rules of the game. Even today the IFAB (the board which votes on rule changes) is constituted of four FIFA members and the four British FAs, meaning that the UK gets equal weighting with all of the rest of the world combined on whether to make any changes to the laws of the game.
Thing is, FIFA doesn't like this. They've long had the opinion that there should be one FA, one league system and one national team per country, and that the UK shouldn't have its four FAs any more. There have long been accusations of FIFA being deliberately anti-UK because they want to get rid of the influence the UK has. The problem is that to get rid of the four FAs would do little damage to the English league system, but it would utterly wreck the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish leagues. Virtually none of their teams are of any standard at all - I'm being serious when I say that probably only two or three teams from the top Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish divisions would be able to play even at Conference level (tier 5) in the English leagues - and they're all Scottish - and the only way that the four leagues could potentially reorganise would be for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to join the English system as regional leagues, which would basically banish all of their clubs from Europe for All Time and would drive most of their clubs and leagues out of business as they lost their TV broadcasting deals and no longer playing at the top level meant all the money in the league bled out into the English game.
In other words, it would be the death knell for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football. They already despise us enough, we don't need the kind of endless hatred they would have for England if that ever happened sitting over us.
At the moment, FIFA can't do anything about it because there would be too violent a backlash - and after all, it's not as if the UK having four national teams and national leagues is allowing us to dominate world football, so the damage to FIFA is minimal. However, there is a strong suspicion - one that is probably correct - that FIFA is just waiting for the UK to slip up before pouncing and demanding "merge your FAs or be expelled from FIFA", and for that reason the other UK countries are unwilling to make even token commitments to cooperation. I mean, heck, Scotland and Northern Ireland take the threat so seriously that they told their players before the 2012 Olympics (when the UK was required to send a UK team) that any player who accepted a call-up to the GB football team would be banned from playing for their country ever again.
There's simply too much riding on it for this to ever happen, unless it was forced on us.
This has actually been debated quite a lot in the last few months. Basically, the Premier League is in favour but the Football League absolutely refuses. It has the potential to destroy the English league system, which is regarded by English people (rightly or wrongly) as the best league system in the world for the way that teams are competitive all the way down into the 4th and 5th tiers, and we regard it as the model all other countries should base their league systems on. The problem is that introducing B-teams would basically whitewash lower-league football and has the potential to drive clubs out of business and make everything below the Premier League pointless.
Take a look at this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...gue-B-teams-end-disaster-just-like-Spain.html
(I didn't deliberately pick the one highlighting Spain, it just happens to be a good article)
The other question that needs to be asked is why are the foriegn players better than ours, actually I think it was Falstaff that pointed out in another thread that perhaps it is grass routes football coaching.
Taking this a stage further it is possibly also something to do with the loony left and long time labour government who promoted taking part was the most important thing.
My son is now 24 had sports days at junior school that left out winners and losers, the kids basically just played physical games without score... This killed the competitive spirit of that (this current) generation.
In the old days we had the house system at most schools. This meant that the kids that were athletic excelled at sports days winning points for the house, and the academic won house points in different ways. Then the loony left decided the (sorry for not being politically correct here) the "fat kids" needed to take part in sport without being upstaged by the naturally athletic so took out winning and losing.
At the same time budgets were cut, and teachers lost incentive to do extra curricular activities, (such as after school football matches).... We now reap the rewards.... Tony "fucking" Blair has a lot to answer for.... He is a smarmy bastard who's epitaph should read "The man that screwed up Britain"
A much more thorough explanation of my earlier response. I would also add that it is a poorly kept secret that the English FA—and by extension the Premier League—would actually fully support such a merger for many of the reasons listed above and have quietly floated proposals over the last 20 years or so.
That being said, the above explains issues with disintegration of the three other Football Associations, and the respective league systems, which is not necessarily the only method of integrating the national team structures. However, as I and Falastur have said, any combination of the national teams would be very unlikely right now for political constraints from with the UK and pressures outside.
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NEVER! a uk team would have 1 vote at uefa/fifa level, something the corrupt mafia have been after for years!!!
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