EPL's greatness ruining their national team

Fra-dog Are you serious? The Sun? Who cares what The Sun says, most informed people think it is a load of rubbish, it's like the Daily Telegraph in Sydney representing the opinion of all Sydneysiders, don't be ridiculous. Everyone takes The Suns opinion with an extremely large grain of salt, i think you should too.

"Get your facts right, the sun in england were already figuring out who they were playing in semis 2 months before the tournament began. So it is an underacievement" It certainly was an underachievement, but no one realistically thought that England would reach the final and most people thought that the best England could do was a semi-final place. And that was only because the draw, had England finished top of their group, was kind for them.

Yes, that's what I said - the redtops - and the Sun is owned by whom again? Have you ever actually been to England - or do you just read the Sun online to get your "English" viewpoint? If that's the case, then people in England reading the Telegraph online must think every single Australian is a red-necked bogan.

I don't really know how you judge this... Spain France and Holland have all won realatively little, yet have produced some of the best players europe has ever seen. The bundesliga (whilst i rate it very highly) is seen as being 4th behind England, Spain and Italy. The Italians have had this problem of late, and when you consider the dominance of AC Milan and Juventus through the 1990's they have realitively little to show for it. I think the problem in england is the massively over-inflated prices of english players. How can Milner be worth 30m when Macherano is worth 25? Or Kaka is worth 50... The top clubs will always buy foreign talent, the best of the best end up at the best clubs. Football has always been this way, and nothing will change. the problem is that clubs like wigan can bring in south americans or continental europeans for far less than an english player of the same quality. If the premier league was to rely on english talent, then it would be a slightly better league than the championship...

Stephen Yeah, it annoyed me in the run up to the world cup with people stating that the English think we will win the world cup. It's a myth we think that.

Of course there were exceptions to the rule but your average English player is nowhere dear as technically capable as a French, Spanish or Argentine player. Let's not ruin things by talking about Forest! ;-)

Yes but you always had teams who could play the right way- e.g. Spurs, West Ham, Forest under Clough, etc. And you still find some that do.

"The English media, as well as their fans, have high expectations for the England side in both tournaments – anything under final four is considered to be an underachievement." This is absolute rubbish, but for some reason is a popular myth in Australia. Your London cabbie might still think England can win the World Cup (and the low quality redtops, who are curiously owned by an Australian), but most intelligent football fans in England don't believe for a minute England are one of the worlds best teams. Regurgitating stereotypes is the bane of the Australian media.

David V I think that was luck to be honest, it sure wasn't coaching because if you think Englands long ball tactics are bad now they sure were worse back in the day. It's interesting to note that (and i was only told this so don't have a reference) that Spain has more Pro-licence badge holders than we have coachs at any level put together. They don't chuck their young kids onto a full size pitch at an early age like we do in England, i think if this is true it is quite clearly shown at the higher levels in our lack of technical ability.

Technical skills were not lacking in past generations of English players, otherwise we wouldn't have had Hoddle, Gascoigne, Haynes, etc to watch. But you just ask yourselves if it was down to effective youth policy, or was it down to pure luck?

The English national team has very little to do with the EPL. The EPL is a seperate entity from the FA. Why do they care if England win the world cup or not? They are making heaps of cash, they have a great product that is admired (right or wrong) around the world. The players and coaches are getting rich as are the directors etc., thay are not going to change and the punters love it. The fact is that whilst there are less and less English players in the EPL the ones that are there should by logic be pretty good if all the hype is to believed, we only need eleven or so good enough players which we do have. However, they are good enough to represent England but not good enough to win the world cup or even get past the second round for that matter. Most English people (and a lot of other countries Australia too) have lost the skill to lose with humilty and grace, we like to blame everyone else..the EPL, the ref, the weather, the cheating foreigners, social problems, hooliganism. The fact is we were not good enough, some of the best players in the EPL were simply not good enough. Germany were better than us, it's not complicated. Fra-Dog I'm glad you enjoyed Englands failure, if it was half as much as my enjoyment of the Scots qualifying for nothing since 1996 then good on ya!

English football has still not recovered from the Charles Hughes era. He was the director of FA coaching for the Football Association He most famously concluded that most goals were scored from less than three passes and as a result, football was all about getting the balls in the right area with as few passes as possible. Or as Wikipedia quite succintly puts it - "Many British coaches advocated his long ball philosophy but critics have derided his philosophy for encouraging a generation of players who lack basic technical skills and have lack of understanding of diversity of different tactical playing strategies" There's your answer in a nutshell.

You forgot to add white, David V. - your tired rhetoric belongs on a BNP pamphlet.

No, England just needs to rediscover what made generations of talented players. Same goes for Scotland, mind you.

hmmm, but they won the World Cup in 1966..... therefore what is clearly required are further badly misguided policies. You could be onto something DV, though if I follow that line of thought far enough Tajikistan should be a world footballing power.

Most of the UK's problems go back to the 50s and 60s when governments pursued badly misguided policies, for instance in housing. Poor but close-knit and self-regulated communities were broken up when they were moved en masse to council estates, and resulted in a breakdown of social order as we knew it. The conditions for hooliganism were created there. Back in 1974, Newcastle played Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup quarter-final. The match was ended by a Newcastle pitch invasion and replayed at Goodison Park. This should never have happened- the FA should have thrown the book at Newcastle and if they had, the hooligans would never have been emboldened like they were. All this led to the mayhem we saw in the 80s, and hence the destruction of football's innocence. These days, leftist propaganda have tried to shame people for being working-class, British and male.

hmm...well, nobody is going to be too fat or happy there for the next 10-15 years; let's see if it improves the football...