As a nation Britain’s academy / pro youth system has been a failure, kids being pressured and turned into robots. Losing the ability to express themselves on the pitch and show any flair , it is happening country wide which indicates a government investment problem there is to much focus on academia in the school cariculum in a changing world if we want to be successful in sport it has to be addressed ,at present kids go abroad for education and sport in the form of scholarship
And yet England outperformed Germany, Spain, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Not sure how that is a failure. That match last night was a 50:50 game which on another night we might have won. It's as simple as that. This squad has achieved more than most expected and appears to have re-connected the public with the national team. There's every reason to think Gareth and the lads can do very well at the next Euros.
England are the World Cup holders at under 20 & 17. I agree with you that to a certain extent flair has been coached out of youngsters in the past.
It was there for all to see lack of technical ability and flair when required against the better teams
I heard someone say on Talksport yesterday that at WC 2010 the winners had 7 players currently being coached by Pep Guardiola. At WC 2014 there were 6 in the winning team. At this WC we had 3 coached by the great one. Answer's obvious!
Probably not necessary to know that to realise that we have outperformed the last two winners of the tournament. Although for what it's worth, those two are both regarded as having good development structures below senior level. And we outperformed them. So to me, ours can't be so bad.
I fancy if any of those teams had been gifted our route, they would have gone equally as far. I didn't watch it, and didn't even feel a curiosity to watch any of the games which surprised me, thought I might want to, I just can't connect to modern footballers who get paid obscene wages, who fall over, cheat and con and who just aren't that good sadly. Maybe if they didn't get ever increasingly pampered, they may improve technical ability. Well done that they got where they did, but let's be honest, given the route they were given, they've achieved the minimum.
The one thing i'm partly looking forward to is less cheating in League 1, and yes we saw plenty from the Fulhams which is such a pity. I've only seen highlights in news reels, but the glimpses I've seen, there has been some awful multi roll dives. Seems the higher you go, the more dramatic it has to be.
But (without wishing to set everyone off again) I do think VAR has at times highlighted the ridiculousness of certain players' antics - even several of the more talented ones. Sure, the panels and the refs didn't always act on that, but at least it was there for all to see?
It's always been there to see. Until the interpretation of what a foul actually is changes, I'm not surediving will be truly clamped down on. I'd like to see these players take a tube journey. The amount of bumping and contact just to travel around... the poor lambs would get terrible injuries.