Where it all went wrong for England at Euro 2016

We have Faddy.

Pacman - I was not denigrating your views on the England hierarchy at that time,it had long been appreciated that the establishment "discarded" any football "lessons" that could have been learned from firstly the Moscow Dynamos in 1945 when they toured Britain undefeated and of course Hungary in 1953 who were the first "foreign" national team ever to beat them at Wembley so it is understandable that they had their "high and mighty" views on where English football stood in the world rankings at that time.What you perceived as a "learning curve" for them would have to have been accomplished in a few months and I think that is a bit much to consider. By the way I am a great admirer of the investigative journalistic work done by Jonathon Wilson but remember, Jonathon was not born until 1976 almost 22 years after the event we are talking about, so had no "real-life knowledge" of what was happening at that time. You will also have read as to how that same "establishment" treated Jimmy Hogan when he approached them many years before and basically had to travel to continental Europe to begin his real coaching career,,where he was almost revered as the Father of "Continental Football" as it was known back in those days. Cheers .Thanks for the reply. jb

Yes jb, i was aware of Ramsey's involvement in the two matches against Hungary. Actually, i was alluding to England's failure to learn anything from the match at Wembley. They visited Budapest with no tactical changes, having apparently dismissed the 3-6 result as a "one off"! Jonathon Wilson has written most eloquently on this phase of England football, with no praise for NT or FA management. Cheers pc.

Usual rubbish from Faddy boy. Don't know if you are male or female Faddy but you sure have a chip on yout shoulder. The most biased commentator on this xenophobic site. Many of you have a real obsession with England. We're still in the completion on by the way. Britain has four teams where as you Aussies struggle to field one. You couldn't even beat England. Just imagine what we or Iceland would do to you.

And that's why England needs to look abroad Eddie Jones and Trevor Bayliss have had far better success with the Rugby and Cricket sides than any pommy coach.

Pacman =You were not the only one "gobsmacked" when England won the World Cup in '66 so were the hundreds of "experts" in the media who carried out an almost endless diatribe against Ramsey and his selections. By the way I have mentioned elsewhere that in his 10 year tenure in the job Ramsey took England to 3 World Cups and three European Championships.,not to mention his performance as a club manager when he took Ipswich Town, a rural minnow, from 3rd division to winning the first division. This was accomplished in 8 seasons. The connection???? You said England didn't learn from the two Hungarian "floggings". One obviously did for you are aware that Ramsey played in both matches. Cheers jb.

No system. No tactics. Wrong formation. Same old issues.

England should sign David Gallop as their new manager, so if they fail at Moscow 2018, they can blame the FFA, like everyone else does.

Best comment I've seem on Woy was from one of his former Club players, 'He makes bad players average, also makes good players average'. Crazy that in all of England there's not a single central midfield who can exert some control on a game, Milner probably the closest thing in this squad but hardly world class. No point having 3 forwards running around like headless chooks if there's no quality build-up play.

England lack skilful players, because they have not concentrated on promoting skill development at grass roots through to elite levels. The result is a squad made up of players who would not be selected by any other top quality nation if they happened to be eligible. For instance, name one English player who (just pretend they are all eligible) would gain selection in the German or French squads. Fadida looks at 34 years of England under-achievement. I can go back even further. How embarrassing when Ferenc Puskas's Mighty Magyars visited Wembley in 1953 and dealt their hosts a 6-3 flogging. Did England learn anything from that? Apparently not, for little if anything changed for the return match in Budapest four months later resulting, in my opinion, in England's most humiliating result ever, a 7-1 thrashing. Rarely mentioned in football history books. Puskas identified the England shortcomings in his autobiography "Captain of Hungary", particularly highlighting the inadequate ball skills of the average English player of that era. The better players, the likes of Stanley Matthews and company, were probably more skilful than their present day counterparts (judging by old newsreel footage), due to the fact that they spent most of their spare time with a ball at their feet. But their skills were not enough to carry the rest of their less skilled team mates to any great heights. I was absolutely gob-smacked when England won the '66 WC! Didn't think it was possible. Since that time, however, most England NTs have delivered the expected reality check, on occasions failing to even qualify for Euro or WC duties!. The current England squad "looks" exciting, but as more than one contributor on this forum has pointed out, they lacked a decent first touch and struggled to play quality balls throughout the tournament. How can a NT manager overcome such inadequacies? No wonder Roy was floundering! Would Ange take them on? Highly unlikely! The only light at the end of the tunnel for England is the possible success of their recently developed National Training Facility at St Georges Park (I think) at Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. Once upon a time that town produced some of the best beers in the world, so perhaps they can do something similar with footballers.

England should try and sign Pellegrini if he's still available.

Giaccherini has been out on loan throughout Sam's time at Sunderland. You never know, he might come back and respond well to the new regime.

Fadida - An interesting observation about England's "home ground" advantage in 1966. Ramsey had a ruthless streak in him that matched any of the world's coaches at that time and he was prepared to take every advantage he perceived as helpful to his team's task. But let us not underestimate the man, in doing so he burst the "fair play" syndrome that had dominated British sport for a century, a throwback to the "power men" in the game and their public school indoctrination. Ramsey also had to face up to a critical media who ostracised him for using "lesser" players to populate his teams,but men who could "play to order", and didn't they come up with the goods,even running the superbly prepared and disciplined German team into the ground in extra time. That same media were astounded with the selection and performances of players like Stiles,Jack Charlton,and Alan Ball, not to mention 3 players from the unfashionable West Ham.. Now the other thing not to forget about that same Ramsey,he also managed the unfashionable ,some would say "rural," team Ipswich United and took them from the third division to become the champions of the First division in 8 years. He then moved to the England job and inside 3 controversial years had won the World Cup and in fact during his 10 year tenure as England manager he took the team to 3 European Championships and 3 World Cups. A lesser known factor about Ramsey's philosophy was he was a great believer in playing football "on the break" oft times preaching the need for hitting team when they had just missed out on scoring and using a minimal amount of accurate passes to get to the opponents penalty are. Yes this was in the years 1955- 1966, 40 years before the emergence of Barca's tic-a- tac football. Cheers jb

Sam Allardyce is your manager is he not? I think thats your answer right there And there are some who think he should be England Manager And most of the Italy squad are not world class either - and yet they have one of the smartest managers in the game I wonder if that could be it?

Capello has the highest win percentage of any English manager And if it wasn't for a meddling FA and arrogant entitled players may have achieved even more

Ramsey - 1970? Woodward - 2004? They were one hit wonders

1. Players who think they are better than they are Witness Rooneys comments afterwards where he says England still have good players - more head in the sand refusal to accept the facts and understand that they actually have to work harder than their opposition if they want to achieve anything 2. Constantly choosing managers without a real pedigree of tactical nous - something that is extremely vital at international level - especially when the team is not full of world class players

Australian and Zimbabwe cricket coaches. Many of their Olympic programmes are run by coaches from other countries

Withdraw from international competition and just announce that they're the best anyway and don't need to prove it, like back in the 1930s. :D

Fair point HP. So it's probably a bit of both - coach and the players. so what's the answer then??