Is it just me that gets completely left cold by modern day international football. No doubt come Friday night I`ll tune in to Eng v Scot and then wish I hadn`t bothered. Interrupting the domestic season to watch a team play with very little passion (and not that much skill) just makes me wish for a rainy cold day at Oakwell.
In past seasons I would have agreed, but now find that the club gain by the break especially with having all these youngsters and the effort we are having to put into games narrdays.
I'm only interested in tournaments these days. I'd like tiered system where you play against teams of a similar quality & it has promotion & relegation. Say split it into 8 groups of 8 or however many's in UEFA. France, Spain, Germany, Italy, England, Croatia, Belgium, Portugal pot one Holland, Switzerland, Wales etc pot 2. Working down to pot 8 with your Malta's, San Marino, Liechtenstein etc. Top 2 go up, bottom 2 go down. Top 2 tiers all go to World Cup / euros. Be miles better than playing poor teams just playing a game of 'how long can we keep a clean sheet for'. And the poor teams can improve by playing each other & actually having some possession of the ball rather than just defending
Currently 55 countries in UEFA, including 2-3 from Asia, so 7 groups should do it. On current rankings, Group 1 would be: Germany Belgium France Portugal Spain Wales England Italy Group 2 would have Switzerland, Poland, Croatia, Netherlands, Iceland, Hungary, Turkey and Slovakia. The only problem I can see is that it would probably prevent rapidly improving teams from qualifying for the tournaments - teams like Iceland, Wales and Northern Ireland would probably be stuck in the lower groups for a few years and not qualify until their best players were past it.
agreed, the only good thing it does do is to give the players a rest and hopefully allow injuries more time..... other than that its *****.
England are currently ranked 7th in Europe. Saying that Argentina are #1 and they lost 3-0 last night to Brazil.
To be fair we always top our qualification group & I couldn't really justify putting Switzerland, Holland, Russia etc above us. Maybe should've put Wales there but at the same time they've only had one good campaign
Ye that's a fair point. I just think they need to do something. It might be a bit of a buzz for a fan of Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino to welcome England, Spain, Germany etc but the problem is they've still to sit 10 men behind the ball & cling on against teams like Albania, Latvia, Austria etc as well. Just think something needs to change
