England World Cup Discussion Thread

[nickgonewalkabout]

Maybe, but I'm curious....how do you rate the referees performance in the first half of our Algerian match? Do you think Coulibaly should be suspended after the USA match? I don't drink and am generally watching these matches alone, so I catch things others might miss or be talking through with their mates.

Well not wanted to sound too sad but I also watched the game alone and free from the influence of Alcohol and the referee of the England game last night was fine. As far as bad referee decisions are concerned I think South Africa, for the decision to send off their keeper and give a penalty, Germany for the ridiculous sending off of Klose, USA for disallowing a pefectly good goal all have a lot more to complain about than England. I think you need to widen your conspiracy.

Ok, I'll continue my search for rhyme and reason for England's performance 'way out here' in Isan,, though I think England was fouled off their game last night while the referee stood by and let it happen.

[nickgonewalkabout]

Maybe, but I'm curious....how do you rate the referees performance in the first half of our Algerian match? Do you think Coulibaly should be suspended after the USA match? I don't drink and am generally watching these matches alone, so I catch things others might miss or be talking through with their mates.

Well not wanted to sound too sad but I also watched the game alone and free from the influence of Alcohol and the referee of the England game last night was fine. As far as bad referee decisions are concerned I think South Africa, for the decision to send off their keeper and give a penalty, Germany for the ridiculous sending off of Klose, USA for disallowing a pefectly good goal all have a lot more to complain about than England. I think you need to widen your conspiracy.

tim cahill's sending off was a bit iffy as well.

there's no fifa conspiracy towards england. nickgonewalkabout is just odd.

right on!

[nickgonewalkabout]

Maybe, but I'm curious....how do you rate the referees performance in the first half of our Algerian match? Do you think Coulibaly should be suspended after the USA match? I don't drink and am generally watching these matches alone, so I catch things others might miss or be talking through with their mates.

Well not wanted to sound too sad but I also watched the game alone and free from the influence of Alcohol and the referee of the England game last night was fine. As far as bad referee decisions are concerned I think South Africa, for the decision to send off their keeper and give a penalty, Germany for the ridiculous sending off of Klose, USA for disallowing a pefectly good goal all have a lot more to complain about than England. I think you need to widen your conspiracy.

tim cahill's sending off was a bit iffy as well.

there's no fifa conspiracy towards england. nickgonewalkabout is just odd.

I think its very difficult to reconcile England's brilliance at the game at home, admired throughout the world (and I know this because I been there), and our routinely stunted performance in world-wide competition under FIFA. What's your theory?

[smedly]

Take Heskey and Johnston off the pitch and you will see a different team, Rooney needs someone he can rely on to feed him balls and Heskey isn't it, Rooney knows it we all know it, when a manager insists on putting the wrong players on the field it will ultimately spoil the party, that is what is happeneing with England, it's about time the players or captain spoke out before it's too late, the team selection is just wrong and swapping keepers was wrong, there is obviously bad feeling going on and is reflected in team performance, Heskey is useless why is he continuously selected, I just fail to understand this, it is obvious that Rooney doesn't want him there, something radical needs to happen quick or England will be going home early.

[nickgonewalkabout]

Heskey must be the most maligned player in the history of English international football (and the most racially abused, I read in a book somewhere)

Why bring race into this what has his race got to do with him being utter cr4p ... when they booo Lampard is that racist .... could you please tell me what im allowed to do without being racist.

He looked really tired to me.

[StevieH]

But no matter what you consider if you were born in England, raised there you are without doubt English ... though i could accept you saying im an Earthling and we're all one as opposed to English ... i could understand someone not caring about there results but prefering them to lose isnt right.

As for disliking the players rightly or wrongly most people these days think players are arrogant out of touch fools, the Irish im presuming are no better or worse then the English.

why are you so bothered?

[StevieH]

Maybe, but I'm curious....how do you rate the referees performance in the first half of our Algerian match? Do you think Coulibaly should be suspended after the USA match? I don't drink and am generally watching these matches alone, so I catch things others might miss or be talking through with their mates.

Well not wanted to sound too sad but I also watched the game alone and free from the influence of Alcohol and the referee of the England game last night was fine. As far as bad referee decisions are concerned I think South Africa, for the decision to send off their keeper and give a penalty, Germany for the ridiculous sending off of Klose, USA for disallowing a pefectly good goal all have a lot more to complain about than England. I think you need to widen your conspiracy.

tim cahill's sending off was a bit iffy as well.

there's no fifa conspiracy towards england. nickgonewalkabout is just odd.

I think its very difficult to reconcile England's brilliance at the game at home, admired throughout the world (and I know this because I been there), and our routinely stunted performance in world-wide competition under FIFA. What's your theory?

it's not difficult to reconcile. they can't play possession football. the majority of the best players in the premier league are not english. the ones who can play in a few different styles having played in a number of different countries are not english. the english game prizes blood and thunder, pace and physical power above things like keeping the football and being able to string moves of 8 or 10 passes together.

there is no refereeing conspiracy against england, you are imagining it.

[hansum]

But no matter what you consider if you were born in England, raised there you are without doubt English ... though i could accept you saying im an Earthling and we're all one as opposed to English ... i could understand someone not caring about there results but prefering them to lose isnt right.

As for disliking the players rightly or wrongly most people these days think players are arrogant out of touch fools, the Irish im presuming are no better or worse then the English.

why are you so bothered?

Curious as to why someone who likes football and was born in England wishes them to lose, youre the first person like this ive ever come across.

From a personal point of view i used to like all the British Isles teams to qualify for tournaments, but then this hatred of the English in all aspects of life seemed to go to a new level .. now the only team i like to see do well are the Northern Irish.

[madmitch]

Why bring race into this what has his race got to do with him being utter cr4p ...

Everything. He's English.

If he was from any other country he'd not be a footballer its only the English coaches that see talent in someone who you can hoof the ball up to so he can occasionally hold the ball up as he's twice the size of the kids around him.

I'd be willing to bet Messi wouldnt have made the grade as a 15 yo kid in England as he wasnt 180cm and 85kg and couldnt kick the ball as far as such people.

This is so true and one of the main problems of the English game if you don't get big and strong at a young age you don't progress through the game to the higher level. I went to school with Jason Roberts the Blackburn striker and I tell you there were 3 or 4 kids the same age in our area with far greater technical ability both with passing and running with the ball, but he was the one that made the grade because he was built like a brick shit house.

You have Wright-Phillips, Jermain Defoe and Aaron Lennon in the England squad, none of them built in the way you stated, showing that skilful small players can make the grade.

But if you are playing hoof and run, hold the ball up type football then your strikers do have to fit that bill.

[mommysboy]

England can play possession football and have proven talent at international level. It's astounding what has happened, complete disintegration of confidence.

I think Capello has to be pragmatic, and drop those most badly effected: for me that's Lampard, Rooney, Lennon, and Milner. In all honesty I'm not even so sure of Gerrard as he spills the ball too often. aybe starting off with Cole J, Defoe, and Crouch would be best. Fresh players with good nerve.

I'd slot Upson in for Carragher.

And if by some chance we do click, I don't think I want to see Carragher play again, sadly he's over the hill (albeit a good player over the hill).

[hansum]

Milner was ill apparantly in his 30 minutes, id agree with what you say i know this balls meant to be bad but Rooneys touch was dreadful.

[alfieconn]

If he was from any other country he'd not be a footballer its only the English coaches that see talent in someone who you can hoof the ball up to so he can occasionally hold the ball up as he's twice the size of the kids around him.

I'd be willing to bet Messi wouldnt have made the grade as a 15 yo kid in England as he wasnt 180cm and 85kg and couldnt kick the ball as far as such people.

Talking crap like that you must be Whichschool in disguise, was joe cole 180cm and 85 kg then .

[dave111223]

I'd slot Upson in for Carragher.

And if by some chance we do click, I don't think I want to see Carragher play again, sadly he's over the hill (albeit a good player over the hill).

I'd play Dawson instead of Carragher....luckily Carragher has managed to already pick up 2 bookings in 1 1/2 matches, so he's suspended for the Slovenia match. Hopefully England will win and his replacement (Upson or Dawson) will remaining in the starting line up.

Can you imagine Carragher facing the likes of Messi or Torres if we make it to the later stages...?

I will give Carragher that he's got heart, probably put more emotion into the game than anyone else last night, but he's just not physically competitive anymore... fact of life...we all get old.

[dsfbrit]

But no matter what you consider if you were born in England, raised there you are without doubt English ... though i could accept you saying im an Earthling and we're all one as opposed to English ... i could understand someone not caring about there results but prefering them to lose isnt right.

As for disliking the players rightly or wrongly most people these days think players are arrogant out of touch fools, the Irish im presuming are no better or worse then the English.

why are you so bothered?

Curious as to why someone who likes football and was born in England wishes them to lose, youre the first person like this ive ever come across.

From a personal point of view i used to like all the British Isles teams to qualify for tournaments, but then this hatred of the English in all aspects of life seemed to go to a new level .. now the only team i like to see do well are the Northern Irish.

I want them to lose as well. I am English, used to love the England football team, I remember shedding a tear or 2 when Gascoigne picked up that second yellow card in Italia 90 and would miss the final - which sadly we missed out on. Since then the England team has been taken over by non-english managers and the whole scene has been infested with WAGS and players who seem to spend more time with having affairs and managing their business affairs than thinking about football. Also, to add insult to injury, my all time favourite manager was Brian Clough - a great manager snubbed as England manager by the FA as he would not fit into their 'social' circle of 'prawn sandwich' eating sycophants.

I will start supporting the England team again when they start bonding like a team such as Algeria, USA, Slovenia - to name but a few teams worthy of the term 'team' and they have a manager with a name I can spell without looking it up on google and who actually speaks <deleted>*ing English as a first language.

Perhaps 'arry would like the job... lets face it - he got that bunch at White Hart Lane to stop bottling it - so he could do ANYTHING after that!!!

Until then, come on you Slovenia ... ABE...

[hansum]

Talking crap like that you must be Whichschool in disguise, was joe cole 180cm and 85 kg then .

This person sounds like a visionary.

Anway Alfie please read this, a very good article indeed.

http://www.dailymail...and-giants.html

Like most Football Association publications, 'The Future Game' is well-packaged and glossy. It is a substantial document, too, full of good ideas. For Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, it is the culmination of six years in the job.

To produce it, Brooking studied technical reports of England's under 17, under 19 and under 21 teams at recent tournaments. 'They were pretty consistent,' he said. 'If a player had a weakness in our back four, it was quickly identified by the opposition, so when we won possession our better players were marked and they let our weaker ones have it, so we gave the ball away.

'In tight areas our midfielders lost possession and in the attacking third, one against one, we lacked the ability to open up defences and the final ball wasn't good. When we didn't qualify for the 2008 European Championship it triggered a debate, but then Fabio Capello came along, we had a successful couple of years and it all went on the back burner.'

Well, not here it didn't. With three boys of school age, some of us have been banging on about the parlous state of youth football since first standing on a touchline watching a son, who is now a strapping 14-year-old, playing his first game as an under eight.

The root of every problem that Brooking identified is there almost from the start, which is why there remains a gaping hole at the centre of his treatise, however well intentioned. For nowhere does the director of football development mention pitch sizes or team numbers as a factor in youth football; and this is where the rot sets in.

Back in November 2007, I challenged Brooking, and any youth football administrator who fancied it, to a game. The goals were to be 3.057metres (10.029ft) high and 9.174m (30.098ft) wide; the length of the pitch was to be 150.4m (165 yards) and the width 112.80m (124 yards), making the total playing surface 16,800m sq; the penalty area alone would stretch for 20.68m (23 yards). Despite the increased dimensions, the teams would remain 11-a-side.

Expanded by ratio, this equated to the travesty of the average 11-year-old playing on a full-sized pitch, a corruption of common sense that occurs throughout the country each weekend.

Within days, Brooking's office proposed a chat. I took along Rob, No 2 son, who was a 10-year-old goalkeeper playing for Redbridge district on a man's pitch at the time. He wished to know why so much of his goal was physically impossible to reach. It didn't seem fair.

Brooking was nice, understanding, but talked like a man who was remote from the problem, rather than poised to conquer it. He talked committees, and professional game boards, and Rob soon bore the look of a boy who couldn't believe he had skipped double geography for this.

Brooking knew something had to be done, so why didn't he do something? Now, almost three years on, he has. He has produced a booklet called 'The Future Game' that, in essence, leaves youth football mired in its past.

'Is there anything in there on pitch sizes?' I asked the gentleman at the FA. 'No,' he replied. 'That's a rather abstract concept.'

But it isn't. It becomes finite, the size of the pitch, if Brooking makes it so. Were he to instruct that it should be made relative to the size of the players, instantly we would have a better quality, more technical game.

Ever notice the size of the pitches kids mark for themselves in the playground or the park? Not big, are they? Kids don't want some gruesome slog against the odds; they want a quick, fun game with lots of action and lots of goals. The faster the better, in fact: what do you think rush goalie is all about?

What is an entirely abstract concept is the vague notion, advanced by Brooking and others, that we should play like Holland or Brazil, France or Spain, Germany, Argentina, or whoever wins the World Cup this summer.

I've heard a million of these theories and they founder at the same stage: teach the Ajax method as much as you like, but if on Sunday the wind is against you, the pitch is sodden and the halfway line is 50 yards away, your 11-year-old goalkeeper will barely be able to get the ball out of his own penalty area, so the opposing forwards will push up and camp on the edge of the box, the wide players will close down your full backs and you will be trapped.

When small boys play on an oversized pitch, an opposition goal-kick is often a better attacking tool than a corner. It is a total perversion of the way the game is meant to be played. Each one of the failings Brooking identified in the young England teams can be traced back to issues in junior football. Those vast expanses of boggy, uneven parkland are where the agricultural central defenders with scant technique are created.

If you can't get the ball out of your own half, the quickest, easiest taught solution is not to coach the kids to knock it about like Barcelona and bamboozle the opposition - because that would take years and a far superior pool of talent than is going to be available to a typical under 11 coach - it is to get your two biggest kids, stick them at the back and tell them to lump it forward.

This is how we have produced generation after generation of clumsy defenders, the type our opponents want to have the ball because they know possession will soon be conceded.

If Brooking then wonders why, one on one, English forwards lack the ability to finish or open up defences, it is because they do not have sufficient experience of this facet of play.

Manchester United, who know a thing or two about nurturing young talent, made a study in this area and reported that small-sided games in restricted space produce significantly more passes, crosses, scoring opportunities, shots, one-on-one situations and goals. The optimum game for increasing the technical ability of five to 11-year-olds is four versus four. Obviously, Sunday clubs cannot be run on that basis but there is no reason why seven and nine-a-side football should not be standard until the age of 14.

Hockey is an 11-a-side sport with many similarities to football, but the majority of games played by children of school age are seven-a-side on smaller pitches. The alternative is that technique would go out of the window and circumstances would merely reward the biggest, earliest developers, who could hit the ball farthest. Brooking told me that his generation played on full-sized pitches, too, and the experience did not harm their technique. Yet this is not entirely true. For a start, England have won a single World Cup, in 1966, so for all the talk of the superior technique of previous generations, it has remained consistently inferior to their European and South American counterparts.

Indeed, a recent interview with Brooking opened with an anecdote about a match he played for England in 1977 when Johnny Rep, the great Dutch right-sided forward, began mocking the quality of the opposition minutes into the game.

Also, Brooking's generation had more open spaces to play football in an unstructured environment: in the road, the alley, at recreation grounds that are now housing estates. This freedom developed skill in the raw.

These days kids are coached to death by the dad of either the best (if he wants the glory for his son) or the worst (if he wants to ensure his son is picked) footballer in the team, often with one eye on the league table, plus an audience of belligerent parents.

As Brooking surely accepts, there is absolutely no reason why English footballers should be inferior. There is no genetic predisposition to lack of flair, so it must be a failing in our system, in the way our game is coached and run.

Watch a group of little kids playing football anywhere in the world and they look the same. It is ridiculous to imagine our seven-year-olds have less skill than tots in Spain. It is what happens next that holds them back and while Brooking has some bright ideas, he does not go far enough.

He has the power to change youth football in this country almost overnight, yet refuses to exercise it. An edict restricting pitch sizes, goal sizes and team numbers up to the age of 14 would be a radical start.

Instead what is being proposed is a very English revolution, in that it will look nice on an occasional table and you can always serve tea off it.

[IanForbes]

I've heard a million of these theories and they founder at the same stage: teach the Ajax method as much as you like, but if on Sunday the wind is against you, the pitch is sodden and the halfway line is 50 yards away, your 11-year-old goalkeeper will barely be able to get the ball out of his own penalty area, so the opposing forwards will push up and camp on the edge of the box, the wide players will close down your full backs and you will be trapped.

When small boys play on an oversized pitch, an opposition goal-kick is often a better attacking tool than a corner. It is a total perversion of the way the game is meant to be played. Each one of the failings Brooking identified in the young England teams can be traced back to issues in junior football. Those vast expanses of boggy, uneven parkland are where the agricultural central defenders with scant technique are created.

Excellent post, hansum. I think you nailed the reasons perfectly. I said the same thing when I helped coach my son's team. The game should be fun, with the emphasis on ball handling skills. That is why African American basketballers are so good at what they do. They play the game one on one on small courts. The African and South American kids fool around with the ball in the streets or any open area they can find.

[alfieconn]

Talking crap like that you must be Whichschool in disguise, was joe cole 180cm and 85 kg then .

This person sounds like a visionary.

Anway Alfie please read this, a very good article indeed.

http://www.dailymail...and-giants.html

Like most Football Association publications, 'The Future Game' is well-packaged and glossy. It is a substantial document, too, full of good ideas. For Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, it is the culmination of six years in the job.

To produce it, Brooking studied technical reports of England's under 17, under 19 and under 21 teams at recent tournaments. 'They were pretty consistent,' he said. 'If a player had a weakness in our back four, it was quickly identified by the opposition, so when we won possession our better players were marked and they let our weaker ones have it, so we gave the ball away.

'In tight areas our midfielders lost possession and in the attacking third, one against one, we lacked the ability to open up defences and the final ball wasn't good. When we didn't qualify for the 2008 European Championship it triggered a debate, but then Fabio Capello came along, we had a successful couple of years and it all went on the back burner.'

Well, not here it didn't. With three boys of school age, some of us have been banging on about the parlous state of youth football since first standing on a touchline watching a son, who is now a strapping 14-year-old, playing his first game as an under eight.

The root of every problem that Brooking identified is there almost from the start, which is why there remains a gaping hole at the centre of his treatise, however well intentioned. For nowhere does the director of football development mention pitch sizes or team numbers as a factor in youth football; and this is where the rot sets in.

Back in November 2007, I challenged Brooking, and any youth football administrator who fancied it, to a game. The goals were to be 3.057metres (10.029ft) high and 9.174m (30.098ft) wide; the length of the pitch was to be 150.4m (165 yards) and the width 112.80m (124 yards), making the total playing surface 16,800m sq; the penalty area alone would stretch for 20.68m (23 yards). Despite the increased dimensions, the teams would remain 11-a-side.

Expanded by ratio, this equated to the travesty of the average 11-year-old playing on a full-sized pitch, a corruption of common sense that occurs throughout the country each weekend.

Within days, Brooking's office proposed a chat. I took along Rob, No 2 son, who was a 10-year-old goalkeeper playing for Redbridge district on a man's pitch at the time. He wished to know why so much of his goal was physically impossible to reach. It didn't seem fair.

Brooking was nice, understanding, but talked like a man who was remote from the problem, rather than poised to conquer it. He talked committees, and professional game boards, and Rob soon bore the look of a boy who couldn't believe he had skipped double geography for this.

Brooking knew something had to be done, so why didn't he do something? Now, almost three years on, he has. He has produced a booklet called 'The Future Game' that, in essence, leaves youth football mired in its past.

'Is there anything in there on pitch sizes?' I asked the gentleman at the FA. 'No,' he replied. 'That's a rather abstract concept.'

But it isn't. It becomes finite, the size of the pitch, if Brooking makes it so. Were he to instruct that it should be made relative to the size of the players, instantly we would have a better quality, more technical game.

Ever notice the size of the pitches kids mark for themselves in the playground or the park? Not big, are they? Kids don't want some gruesome slog against the odds; they want a quick, fun game with lots of action and lots of goals. The faster the better, in fact: what do you think rush goalie is all about?

What is an entirely abstract concept is the vague notion, advanced by Brooking and others, that we should play like Holland or Brazil, France or Spain, Germany, Argentina, or whoever wins the World Cup this summer.

I've heard a million of these theories and they founder at the same stage: teach the Ajax method as much as you like, but if on Sunday the wind is against you, the pitch is sodden and the halfway line is 50 yards away, your 11-year-old goalkeeper will barely be able to get the ball out of his own penalty area, so the opposing forwards will push up and camp on the edge of the box, the wide players will close down your full backs and you will be trapped.

When small boys play on an oversized pitch, an opposition goal-kick is often a better attacking tool than a corner. It is a total perversion of the way the game is meant to be played. Each one of the failings Brooking identified in the young England teams can be traced back to issues in junior football. Those vast expanses of boggy, uneven parkland are where the agricultural central defenders with scant technique are created.

If you can't get the ball out of your own half, the quickest, easiest taught solution is not to coach the kids to knock it about like Barcelona and bamboozle the opposition - because that would take years and a far superior pool of talent than is going to be available to a typical under 11 coach - it is to get your two biggest kids, stick them at the back and tell them to lump it forward.

This is how we have produced generation after generation of clumsy defenders, the type our opponents want to have the ball because they know possession will soon be conceded.

If Brooking then wonders why, one on one, English forwards lack the ability to finish or open up defences, it is because they do not have sufficient experience of this facet of play.

Manchester United, who know a thing or two about nurturing young talent, made a study in this area and reported that small-sided games in restricted space produce significantly more passes, crosses, scoring opportunities, shots, one-on-one situations and goals. The optimum game for increasing the technical ability of five to 11-year-olds is four versus four. Obviously, Sunday clubs cannot be run on that basis but there is no reason why seven and nine-a-side football should not be standard until the age of 14.

Hockey is an 11-a-side sport with many similarities to football, but the majority of games played by children of school age are seven-a-side on smaller pitches. The alternative is that technique would go out of the window and circumstances would merely reward the biggest, earliest developers, who could hit the ball farthest. Brooking told me that his generation played on full-sized pitches, too, and the experience did not harm their technique. Yet this is not entirely true. For a start, England have won a single World Cup, in 1966, so for all the talk of the superior technique of previous generations, it has remained consistently inferior to their European and South American counterparts.

Indeed, a recent interview with Brooking opened with an anecdote about a match he played for England in 1977 when Johnny Rep, the great Dutch right-sided forward, began mocking the quality of the opposition minutes into the game.

Also, Brooking's generation had more open spaces to play football in an unstructured environment: in the road, the alley, at recreation grounds that are now housing estates. This freedom developed skill in the raw.

These days kids are coached to death by the dad of either the best (if he wants the glory for his son) or the worst (if he wants to ensure his son is picked) footballer in the team, often with one eye on the league table, plus an audience of belligerent parents.

As Brooking surely accepts, there is absolutely no reason why English footballers should be inferior. There is no genetic predisposition to lack of flair, so it must be a failing in our system, in the way our game is coached and run.

Watch a group of little kids playing football anywhere in the world and they look the same. It is ridiculous to imagine our seven-year-olds have less skill than tots in Spain. It is what happens next that holds them back and while Brooking has some bright ideas, he does not go far enough.

He has the power to change youth football in this country almost overnight, yet refuses to exercise it. An edict restricting pitch sizes, goal sizes and team numbers up to the age of 14 would be a radical start.

Instead what is being proposed is a very English revolution, in that it will look nice on an occasional table and you can always serve tea off it.

Sounds like sour grapes from a pushy parent, in one paragraph he is comparing Ajax with a sunday morning game so why doesn't he compare Ajax with premier league academies.

Most of his argument is with kids playing on full size pitches in 11 a side games but this doesn't happen in Football academies.

Like i said to you before Whichschool if a boy is good enough he will be spotted which obviously the reporters son hasn't and you never hear the parents of a boy at a football academy complaining , strange that.

See extracts about Liverpool's academy.

Scouts attend many local youth matches looking for talented boys. A boy will then be invited to attend training sessions at the Academy.

Between the ages of eight and twelve the boys play in eight-a-side games of three twenty-minute periods

There are four full-size grass pitches and one with a Polytan surface. There are also a further seven smaller pitches and an indoor arena

[suiging]

Perhaps it's time to close this thread. After all England and Football really don't match now do they..............

[hansum]

Sounds like sour grapes from a pushy parent, in one paragraph he is comparing Ajax with a sunday morning game so why doesn't he compare Ajax with premier league academies.

Most of his argument is with kids playing on full size pitches in 11 a side games but this doesn't happen in Football academies.

Like i said to you before Whichschool if a boy is good enough he will be spotted which obviously the reporters son hasn't and you never hear the parents of a boy at a football academy complaining.

I give up if you think the way things currently are, are to the benefit of English football.

[mr_hippo]

Breaking News

Slovenia v England

Team Selection

The first eleven England supporters who show up at the players' entrance with their own football boots will start the match; the next twelve will be on the bench. Prima donnas, cry babies and divers need not apply.

Tactics

Not to be confused with Tic Tacs! Put the round, bouncy thing (hereinafter called 'the ball') into your opponent's onion bag (also called 'the net' or the 'goal' as many times as you can. Please note, the word is 'goal' and not 'gaol'.

Your opponents will be wearing a different coloured outfit to you. You will have to note that your goalkeeper will be wearing a differnt coloured top to you but shorts and socks will be the same.

[noel2499rk]

Talking crap like that you must be Whichschool in disguise, was joe cole 180cm and 85 kg then .

This person sounds like a visionary.

Anway Alfie please read this, a very good article indeed.

http://www.dailymail...and-giants.html

Like most Football Association publications, 'The Future Game' is well-packaged and glossy. It is a substantial document, too, full of good ideas. For Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, it is the culmination of six years in the job.

To produce it, Brooking studied technical reports of England's under 17, under 19 and under 21 teams at recent tournaments. 'They were pretty consistent,' he said. 'If a player had a weakness in our back four, it was quickly identified by the opposition, so when we won possession our better players were marked and they let our weaker ones have it, so we gave the ball away.

'In tight areas our midfielders lost possession and in the attacking third, one against one, we lacked the ability to open up defences and the final ball wasn't good. When we didn't qualify for the 2008 European Championship it triggered a debate, but then Fabio Capello came along, we had a successful couple of years and it all went on the back burner.'

Well, not here it didn't. With three boys of school age, some of us have been banging on about the parlous state of youth football since first standing on a touchline watching a son, who is now a strapping 14-year-old, playing his first game as an under eight.

The root of every problem that Brooking identified is there almost from the start, which is why there remains a gaping hole at the centre of his treatise, however well intentioned. For nowhere does the director of football development mention pitch sizes or team numbers as a factor in youth football; and this is where the rot sets in.

Back in November 2007, I challenged Brooking, and any youth football administrator who fancied it, to a game. The goals were to be 3.057metres (10.029ft) high and 9.174m (30.098ft) wide; the length of the pitch was to be 150.4m (165 yards) and the width 112.80m (124 yards), making the total playing surface 16,800m sq; the penalty area alone would stretch for 20.68m (23 yards). Despite the increased dimensions, the teams would remain 11-a-side.

Expanded by ratio, this equated to the travesty of the average 11-year-old playing on a full-sized pitch, a corruption of common sense that occurs throughout the country each weekend.

Within days, Brooking's office proposed a chat. I took along Rob, No 2 son, who was a 10-year-old goalkeeper playing for Redbridge district on a man's pitch at the time. He wished to know why so much of his goal was physically impossible to reach. It didn't seem fair.

Brooking was nice, understanding, but talked like a man who was remote from the problem, rather than poised to conquer it. He talked committees, and professional game boards, and Rob soon bore the look of a boy who couldn't believe he had skipped double geography for this.

Brooking knew something had to be done, so why didn't he do something? Now, almost three years on, he has. He has produced a booklet called 'The Future Game' that, in essence, leaves youth football mired in its past.

'Is there anything in there on pitch sizes?' I asked the gentleman at the FA. 'No,' he replied. 'That's a rather abstract concept.'

But it isn't. It becomes finite, the size of the pitch, if Brooking makes it so. Were he to instruct that it should be made relative to the size of the players, instantly we would have a better quality, more technical game.

Ever notice the size of the pitches kids mark for themselves in the playground or the park? Not big, are they? Kids don't want some gruesome slog against the odds; they want a quick, fun game with lots of action and lots of goals. The faster the better, in fact: what do you think rush goalie is all about?

What is an entirely abstract concept is the vague notion, advanced by Brooking and others, that we should play like Holland or Brazil, France or Spain, Germany, Argentina, or whoever wins the World Cup this summer.

I've heard a million of these theories and they founder at the same stage: teach the Ajax method as much as you like, but if on Sunday the wind is against you, the pitch is sodden and the halfway line is 50 yards away, your 11-year-old goalkeeper will barely be able to get the ball out of his own penalty area, so the opposing forwards will push up and camp on the edge of the box, the wide players will close down your full backs and you will be trapped.

When small boys play on an oversized pitch, an opposition goal-kick is often a better attacking tool than a corner. It is a total perversion of the way the game is meant to be played. Each one of the failings Brooking identified in the young England teams can be traced back to issues in junior football. Those vast expanses of boggy, uneven parkland are where the agricultural central defenders with scant technique are created.

If you can't get the ball out of your own half, the quickest, easiest taught solution is not to coach the kids to knock it about like Barcelona and bamboozle the opposition - because that would take years and a far superior pool of talent than is going to be available to a typical under 11 coach - it is to get your two biggest kids, stick them at the back and tell them to lump it forward.

This is how we have produced generation after generation of clumsy defenders, the type our opponents want to have the ball because they know possession will soon be conceded.

If Brooking then wonders why, one on one, English forwards lack the ability to finish or open up defences, it is because they do not have sufficient experience of this facet of play.

Manchester United, who know a thing or two about nurturing young talent, made a study in this area and reported that small-sided games in restricted space produce significantly more passes, crosses, scoring opportunities, shots, one-on-one situations and goals. The optimum game for increasing the technical ability of five to 11-year-olds is four versus four. Obviously, Sunday clubs cannot be run on that basis but there is no reason why seven and nine-a-side football should not be standard until the age of 14.

Hockey is an 11-a-side sport with many similarities to football, but the majority of games played by children of school age are seven-a-side on smaller pitches. The alternative is that technique would go out of the window and circumstances would merely reward the biggest, earliest developers, who could hit the ball farthest. Brooking told me that his generation played on full-sized pitches, too, and the experience did not harm their technique. Yet this is not entirely true. For a start, England have won a single World Cup, in 1966, so for all the talk of the superior technique of previous generations, it has remained consistently inferior to their European and South American counterparts.

Indeed, a recent interview with Brooking opened with an anecdote about a match he played for England in 1977 when Johnny Rep, the great Dutch right-sided forward, began mocking the quality of the opposition minutes into the game.

Also, Brooking's generation had more open spaces to play football in an unstructured environment: in the road, the alley, at recreation grounds that are now housing estates. This freedom developed skill in the raw.

These days kids are coached to death by the dad of either the best (if he wants the glory for his son) or the worst (if he wants to ensure his son is picked) footballer in the team, often with one eye on the league table, plus an audience of belligerent parents.

As Brooking surely accepts, there is absolutely no reason why English footballers should be inferior. There is no genetic predisposition to lack of flair, so it must be a failing in our system, in the way our game is coached and run.

Watch a group of little kids playing football anywhere in the world and they look the same. It is ridiculous to imagine our seven-year-olds have less skill than tots in Spain. It is what happens next that holds them back and while Brooking has some bright ideas, he does not go far enough.

He has the power to change youth football in this country almost overnight, yet refuses to exercise it. An edict restricting pitch sizes, goal sizes and team numbers up to the age of 14 would be a radical start.

Instead what is being proposed is a very English revolution, in that it will look nice on an occasional table and you can always serve tea off it.

Sounds like sour grapes from a pushy parent, in one paragraph he is comparing Ajax with a sunday morning game so why doesn't he compare Ajax with premier league academies.

Most of his argument is with kids playing on full size pitches in 11 a side games but this doesn't happen in Football academies.

Like i said to you before Whichschool if a boy is good enough he will be spotted which obviously the reporters son hasn't and you never hear the parents of a boy at a football academy complaining , strange that.

See extracts about Liverpool's academy.

Scouts attend many local youth matches looking for talented boys. A boy will then be invited to attend training sessions at the Academy.

Between the ages of eight and twelve the boys play in eight-a-side games of three twenty-minute periods

There are four full-size grass pitches and one with a Polytan surface. There are also a further seven smaller pitches and an indoor arena

Alfieconn many of these kids who are at academies at 8-12 will be discarded while many other kids will be picked up at 15 16 or even older. Even the kids at the academy will be playing on full size pitches outside, at school or for local clubs. You seem to be agreeing that kids should play on smaller pitches and Hansun is arguing that this should be brought in nationwide for all kids. So if you believe it is beneficial for the kids at Liverpool to play on smaller pitches, how can you argue that this would not benefit all children across the whole country, if it is was brought in as FA policy.

[alfieconn]

Sounds like sour grapes from a pushy parent, in one paragraph he is comparing Ajax with a sunday morning game so why doesn't he compare Ajax with premier league academies.

Most of his argument is with kids playing on full size pitches in 11 a side games but this doesn't happen in Football academies.

Like i said to you before Whichschool if a boy is good enough he will be spotted which obviously the reporters son hasn't and you never hear the parents of a boy at a football academy complaining , strange that.

See extracts about Liverpool's academy.

Scouts attend many local youth matches looking for talented boys. A boy will then be invited to attend training sessions at the Academy.

Between the ages of eight and twelve the boys play in eight-a-side games of three twenty-minute periods

There are four full-size grass pitches and one with a Polytan surface. There are also a further seven smaller pitches and an indoor arena

Alfieconn many of these kids who are at academies at 8-12 will be discarded while many other kids will be picked up at 15 16 or even older

Yes correct but nothing to with the above.

. Even the kids at the academy will be playing on full size pitches outside, at school or for local clubs. You seem to be agreeing that kids should play on smaller pitches and Hansun is arguing that this should be brought in nationwide for all kids. So if you believe it is beneficial for the kids at Liverpool to play on smaller pitches, how can you argue that this would not benefit all children across the whole country, if it is was brought in as FA policy.

[smokie36]

Too little too late......Your team simply aren't good enough. Tinker to your hearts content gents but it won't make any difference at all.

All we need now is our German friend to show his face for a gloat. Perhaps he's too busy licking his own wounds.

I'm not gloating rix it was the worst England performance I can remember even the wally wiv the brolly era wasn't as clueless as last night.

Forget the tinkering tell the players who's in for the next match and have 'em train for it properly. Clearly defined roles and a bit more passion and you might even fluke a win....!

[craigm16]

Too little too late......Your team simply aren't good enough. Tinker to your hearts content gents but it won't make any difference at all.

All we need now is our German friend to show his face for a gloat. Perhaps he's too busy licking his own wounds.

I'm not gloating rix it was the worst England performance I can remember even the wally wiv the brolly era wasn't as clueless as last night.

Forget the tinkering tell the players who's in for the next match and have 'em train for it properly. Clearly defined roles and a bit more passion and you might even fluke a win....!

Agree 100% telling them 2 hours before kick off is stupid tell them a few days in advance so they can work together in training and hopefully be able to keep the ball for more then 4 passes.

[noel2499rk]

Just heard David James being interviewed after the game.

He was asked " Fabio Capello has said he thinks the teams performance was greatly affected by the pressure your under"

James response

"Does he"

Then asked when he found out he was playing

"5 mins before I got on the bus, same as always"

Things must be pretty bad when you have players making it so obvious to the press that they don't agree with what the manager is doing.

[smokie36]

Just heard David James being interviewed after the game.

He was asked " Fabio Capello has said he thinks the teams performance was greatly affected by the pressure your under"

James response

"Does he"

Then asked when he found out he was playing

"5 mins before I got on the bus, same as always"

Things must be pretty bad when you have players making it so obvious to the press that they don't agree with what the manager is doing.

Sack Capello.....Time for Bechkam to begin his new career....

[salty]

And recruit Posh Spice as a dietician.

[soihok]

Sack Capello.....Time for Bechkam to begin his new career....

The time when David Beckham is the England manager will come, but not for some time yet.

What actually is he doing sat in the box?

Teaching the players how to watch the game with one raised eye brow?

I agree with an earlier post that suggests that a coach from England should lead the team......maybe this is the issue.

The likes of Neil Warnock would be great at the world cup.

[dave111223]

Capello needs to step up and be a man; realize what he is currently doing is not working and change dramatically.

The 5 minutes before the match team sheet obviously one issue that none of the players are happy about...so why continue to do it? There is only one reason...pride...which comes before the fall.

I think he needs to show the players that he is willing to listen and learn also, and change this policy. Unfortunately he seems wayyy too headstrong to do something like that. He'd probably rather lose the next game than admit a mistake..

[tigerfish]

wayne rooney apologises about about his performance, rant and behaviour after friday nights game against algeria.

plus a few more things we diidnt know about the wonder boy in this years world cup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpH1yJDV-qA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNdLj62HwV4