So against the twin giants of football, Israel and Andorra, you manage to score 3 goals, well bully for you. :rolleyes:
Israel held you to a draw :smack: and against Andorra you couldn’t score until the second half. Holy shit you should have racked up a cricket score
Andorra is a country whose population could fit into Old Trafford, their footballers are part timers. They don’t have all the perks that you bunch of overrated, overpaid and underachieving twats have.
You should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you and that includes McClaren our wonderful manager who hasn’t a fucking clue.
You state that you played for free and that any match fees will be donated. If I had any say in it I’d make you fucking lot pay for the honour of playing for your country. You’re not fit to wear the shirt.
After both games you were quite rightfully booed off the pitch by your own fans
England have been shit for years now… I gave up caring whether we won or lost back in the Graham Taylor years.
The real pitting should be the stupid wankers that spent £100s on travelling to the games… how sad / gay do you have to be to chuck away your hard-earned cash watching a bunch of rich 25 y/olds in sweaty shorts kicking a bladder around some grass.
Are their lives really that empty that they can get upset over a game?
The sports editor of The Sun must regret his appointment of McClown already; I presume the hysterics will insist the FA go for a “foreigner” next time, before reverting to another King Kev/McClown Englander after that.
I mean, we’re no world power when it comes to football, but we’ve aquitted ourselves nicely on occasion. Your team is better than ours, yes, and they could have put on a better performance, but don’t diminish what *we * saw as a decent game.
My coworker and I were talking about this very thing earlier today. I don’t follow English soccer as closely as he does–I prefer the Spanish game, personally–but we concluded that England is underachieving at the international level for three reasons:
Steve McClaren has no place on a national team bench, especially in the nation that invented the game. He clearly wishes he were Eriksson, which is frightening considering how overrated (and boring) the latter was. The pigheaded English insistence on home-grown coaches is really holding them back. I don’t know if you’re one of those “English managers only” fans, but if you are, you’re part of the problem. Sorry.
There’s no cohesion among the individualistic superstars; or, as we say of underachieving American football teams here, the team doesn’t gel.
The English play like a Premeirship team: slam the ball forward from the back and hope it hits an attacker. That’s fine and dandy for Man U vs. Chelsea, but you can’t win in the international game like that. Possession isn’t everything, but you can’t ignore it against teams that play the possession game well. Israel ain’t Brazil, but they put ten men behind the ball and work it up the field, keeping it away from the defense. It works. You should be happy they didn’t score three.
That’s a big problem on “historic” teams full of superstars right now–not just England in soccer, but the US in baseball and basketball too, and both the US and Canada in hockey. They think starting on one of the best sports teams in history is no big deal, and not to be fought for. David Beckham was always going to be a star and he would’ve probably lived a pretty nice life even if he’d never been noticed. But you’d better believe Didier Drogba doesn’t take his current lifestyle for granted.
BTW, chowder, if you think England “should have racked up a cricket score” against Israel, you apparently are not watching the same Israel team that I am.
Um… I’ll second or third the point that lumping Israel and Andorra in the same group is not really fair – we pretty much cleaned Estonia’s clocks yesterday (4:0. W00t!! :D); so while Estonia isn’t exactly a football powerhouse, either, Israel is not Andorra, Malta or Faroe Islands.
I might add that quite a few of us were disappointed with our performance on Saturday and thought we should have taken the game to the English and tried harder to win the game. I can only imagine the tenor of the English press had Israel actually scored (let alone had we won…)
And – I don’t know about your team, but your **fans **who came here definitely seemed to be enjoying themselves when I saw a few of them on Friday afternoon, taking in the sun and the humus
I can’t speak for the England fans, but I know a lad who went over for the Hapoel v Rangers game, and he had a great time. He was a bit apprehensive (not really knowing what to expect, I guess) but is now planning a holiday with his family later this year.
Lucky bastards. You can’t get shwarma here (oh sure, it’s called shwarma, but it ain’t the same), and it’s damn hard to find good hummus.
Sigh…memories…
Edit: Struan, it’s really a wonderful country. It’s a little different for someone who didn’t grow up Jewish, but it’s still absolutely amazing. What surprised me the most–considering that it’s a country based on geography from the Bible–is that (outside of Jerusalem) the social mores are perfectly pragmatic. I really wish more Americans thought and lived the way Israelis do. I mean, take the idea of the kibbutz alone–how freaking cool is that? I’ll never forget my stay at Kibbutz Hagoshrim. I met the coolest people there and it exposed me to a way of thinking that really changed my life for the better.
Do yourself a favor and go to Tel Aviv–and then hit Jerusalem, Safed and Caesarea at the minimum, wander through some smaller cities if you have the time, catch the sunrise from the peaks of Masada and stay at a kibbutz for at least a couple of nights. If you can, go to the Golan Heights too; stand on top of the mountains and take a birds-eye view of Lebanon and Syria. God, that place is gorgeous.
It is frustrating sometimes to support England, but do bear in mind that there are ludicrously high expectations, fuelled by the press.
I watched the 1966 tournament :eek: where we won mainly because we were the hosts. Think of the saving in travelling time, the familiar surroundings and the massive fan support.
**Since then we have won nothing ** (I’m open to correction, but I can’t recall a single World or European Championship triumph). Teams that have won Europe since 1966 include:
Italy, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Denmark, Germany and Greece.
We have had a couple of excellent games (4-1 v Holland and 5-1 v Germany), but why on earth does anyone think England are a world-class team? It’s 40 years since we won anything!
“Ludicrously high”? The English invented the game and spread it around the world. Argentina–one of England’s most bitter rivals–has team names in the English language named after English people! Not to mention that the more renowned English players are among the most highly-paid salary workers in the world. I mean, I would pay a lot of money (if I had it!) for the chance to sit in my country’s dugout in a major international game. The coworker I mentioned earlier was on the US national U-17 team, and he told me that he never played a game or even suited up but that traveling the world, representing his country and having a US Soccer jersey were among his proudest moments and fondest memories. These jerkwads make millions of pounds every time they roll over like fat dogs in competitions that their team invented. I’m with chowder: they should be paying England millions of pounds for the honor of representing a country that is also an institution in the game’s history.
Fetus I was refering to Andorra not Israel and no ** Alessan** you aint bad at all.
Navaalmost being the operative word, don’t get carried away old son.
There were times watching last nights match that I almost wished Andorra would score, that’s how fucking disappointed I am at Englands performance, or lack of it
Elsie I couldn’t give a shit who manages England just so long as whoever it is gets us back on a winning streak again.
Finally: I’m convinced that Rochdale FC, the club who has won sod all since it was founded, could have equitted themselves better than England did last night
Absolutely agree with everything you say apart from this. The problem is that the national team don’t play like the Prem sides. In the Prem you will hardly ever see the ball lumped forward from the back - most play is pass and move, taking the ball up from the back, through the midfield (or wing) and into the forwards. That way the midfield are easily able to join in the attack. It’s no coincidence that all the England goals yesterday came from such moves - and Gerrard’s second was a classic example.
My firm belief, unfortunately, is that we struggle for three main reasons, all inter-related.
McLaren has no imagination and is scared to change the team too much.
As a result, too many players are complacent because they know they have no danger of losing their place (Rooney, for example, is terrible for England but excellent for Man U).
The Prem managers have too much influence over the FA and their players and are terrified of their best getting injured on international duty. It hasn’t been unheard of for managers to claim their players are injured, especially before friendlies, only to have them play in their club sides a week later.
