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England continue to struggle

Roar Rookie
7th September, 2016
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Big Sam Allardyce is in a relegation battle all over again. (Image: Ben Sutherland - Creative Commons, Flickr. )
Roar Rookie
7th September, 2016
13

On Saturday afternoon England’s blushes were spared thanks to a very late Adam Lallana strike giving his country a 0-1 win over minnows Slovakia.

After a disappointing European championship performance, in which the Three Lions were knocked out by tiny Iceland in the last 16, it seemed like déjà vu for the fans. Their side struggled to break down Slovakia, who played for over 30 minutes with ten men after Martin Skrtel saw his second yellow card.

After yet another disappointing performance one is forced to ask the question, why do England perform so badly on the international stage? How is it that the supposed inventors of the beautiful game have only won one World Cup?

The manager
Many critics will claim that England has always been let down by the tactician leading the squad. Despite a revival of English football under Bob Robson in the 80s, since then the only manager to lead the Three Lions who held the international credentials to manage such a proud football nation was Fabio Capello.

How the likes of Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Steve McClaren, Hodgson and most recently Sam Allardyce have been placed in such an important role by the FA is questionable at best.

Over half the names lack the credible experience on what would normally be expected for such an important role. Case in point being ‘Big Sam’, who over the past 15 years has earned himself a reputation of instilling boring, defensive football and managed the likes of English minnows such as Bolton, Blackburn and West Ham.

When compared to other recent top national team managers, such as Vince Del Bosque for Spain, Tony Conte for Italy and Didier Deschamps for France, it is painfully obvious just how out of depth Allardyce is.

Foreign influence in local game
Many pundits have claimed that there has been a massive drop in local talent ever since the Premier League was launched 20 years ago and took the world by storm, bringing in a record TV rights deal this season.

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There is no doubt that the likes of Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Aguero have helped increase the worldwide popularity of the Premier League however this influx in overseas talent would have undoubtedly limited the space available for local, upcoming players.

Despite some experts blaming the dwindling talent pool on foreign imports this does not explain England’s poor historical record, meaning the national team’s struggles on the big stage has been occurring well before the mass influx of overseas talent.

The media
In recent history some people have gone as far as to blame the lack of success on the media, which has been described as being overbearing and also setting out unrealistic targets.

The problem could be linked to the large number of popular tabloid newspapers within the British media which are renowned for printing inflated articles and also singling out individual players and coming down very hard after a poor team or individual performance.

The team
Passion is another part of the puzzle some pundits claim that is missing from the England squad, with some commentators going as far as saying that the squad much prefer going on a summer holiday than represent their country on the big stage.

In a lot of cases the England squad has had a large array of talent, including the likes of Frank Lampard, Dave Beckham and Wayne Rooney, however they have failed to show real fighting grit when it counts on the field.

In the past 20 years the Three Lions have never made it further than the quarters in both the Euros and World Cup, while smaller footballing nations have performed much better and gone farther. The likes of Denmark, Greece and more recently Portugal, have won the European Championships.

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I think it’s clear that a number of factors have affected the success of the English national football team, with the FA’s choice of managers and also the team’s lack of passion and talent being two of the strongest.

England seem a long way away from competing with the likes of Spain, Germany and Brazil and unless a realistic national strategy is conceived by the FA things are likely to improve for the Three Lions.

Perhaps the FA can learn a thing or two from the Great Britain Olympic team, who are fresh from an extremely successful London and Rio Olympic games in 2012 and 2016 respectively, in which they punched well above their weight finishing third and second in the medals table.

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