If the best we can be is the lofty heights of quarter finals then so be it, just have to try and enjoy getting there whilst playing some half decent football and scoring more than 1 goal. We all want to be as good as Spain were and Germany currently are but that to me seems unrealistic and feel we are a million miles away from that standard.
I watched it on BBC purely because I couldn't be f*cked with the adverts, I bet a lot of others did for the same reason.
They're already lightyears ahead of us, their conveyor belt of talent is in full swing and will continue, just as Spain's will be. We'll be clinging on to Hodgson football until 2018, then a new manager will have 4 years to cobble together a team that actually plays positive football as we continue to drag our feet in revolutionising English football from grassroots to academies.
I`d have a question. How big of a competition are sports like Rugby and Cricket to football in England? Does it have an impact on discovering and developing young talent, because they are more interested in these other ball sports? I think it helps a lot in Germany that football is absolutely unrivaled as sport number 1. There is Basketball, Handball and in some parts (ie Bavaria) also Ice hockey. But I`d say 95% of children are really only interested in playing football.
This along with your population and talent is why Germany is so good. Imagine if only a 10% increase of people played football in America how much better we could be..
Wouldn't say it's much impact really, football is way way more popular. Perhaps one example though: I'm 29 now, so the age of a footballer, and we didn't even have a football team at my primary school (4-11), nor did any other primary school in the entire town of 50,000 people. Some of the dads ended up setting up their own team with the kids, only to find there wasn't really any teams for us to play against, so they had to set up a whole league! It's just a disaster, from crap school sport to the expense of using a council-owned pitch to the cost of doing a coaching course to foreign-owned professional clubs acting out of self interest and short-termism only. But we can still find players like Sterling and Shaw, while Belgium have simply just happened upon a load of players so a team can still come together now and then I suppose.
Yes for the US the competition from other sports is in a completely different dimension. I see. I always thought that at least Rugby was quite a competition to football in England.
Football is the most popular sport here, but it's fair to say Cricket and Rugby are also very popular so it probably has some effect. I remember when I was at secondary school, football was always popular but there was a stage where most people suddenly switched from playing in the football team to buying cricket bats and getting more interested in that. I'm personally not fussed about any sport other than football.
Who's taking part in what? (Amount of people who spend at least one day of the week on each sport) Apr 2012-Apr 2013 Swimming 2.89m Athletics 1.96m Football 1.94m Cycling 1.87m Golf 772,800 Tennis 424,300 Squash 257,700 Cricket 189,400 Rugby union 166,400 Boxing 150,100 Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/22806853 Although obviously this includes a lot of recreational activities, where they will never go professional and perhaps just doing it for exercise (Particularly looking at Cycling and Swimming). Football is the most viewed sport in England, by quite a distance, but there isn't a participation level that reflects that as much.
I don't know about other people but when I was younger I wanted to be a pro footballer and was pretty good technically but just lacked a bit of confidence; I would be the best player in training, but would be pretty ineffective in matches. Whenever people asked me what I wanted to do and I said be a footballer the reaction I would get every time was 'that's not going to happen, think of something more realistic', which lead to me stop playing altogether around my mid-teens. I think this probably happens to a lot of aspiring footballers in this country so maybe it could also be a cultural thing? People always comment on how the Germans have a stronger mentality than us going into matches.
Although English football has a pretty enviable pyramid system with enough professional and semi-professional players to rival any country, rugby does take its toll on the football talent pool, amongst other sports. Private schools and state schools in well-off areas play lots and lots of sport from a young age to 18, with generally much better facilities and a lot more personal coaching time invested, and they basically play everything except football (mainly rugby union and cricket). I don't think it's even in question that this demographic produces some top class athletes, and that many would be in football if there wasn't a class divide between itself and rugby. Cricket likewise, and athletics/track & field to a certain extent. When you look at other countries, a lot certainly have a high proportion of middle class kids playing at a high level, particularly in Europe. The ratio of kids playing football to kids playing rugby at school in Britain could be around between 10 and 15 to 1, but when rugby and cricket have all the private and personal investment at school level it's going to make a difference. Not that it matters to me particularly, but it's certainly true. You can't have your cake and eat it; the country's talent pool sustains four professional football leagues, two professional rugby union leagues, three professional rugby league leagues and two professional cricket leagues. In addition to this it came third in the medals table in 2012 Olympics and second in 2008. We're also highly competitive in lots of smaller sports that would just be considered niche and pointless in a lot of European countries, but take a huge amount of skill and athleticism nonetheless. So there's obviously a diffusion of talent. I'm sure if all the great future athletes from rugby union, league, cricket and athletics were to drop their own sport and take up football it would benefit English football noticeably, but I'd much rather have a selection of sports to follow and play rather than just one.
Messi fan boy? far from it lad. I'll leave the "cutting themselves up" to you as you whine about the nasty anti-Arsenal media
For me it was 50% adverts and 50% those utter morons ITV have had commentating. Commentators are usually pretty dire tbf but these ones seem to reach new levels of stupidity.
This is very true in Gloucestershire. I grew up in Gloucester and I never played football at school until the spring of year 8 (Aged 12/13) except for break-times There were some primary school teams (my cousin played for his) but it really was purely rugby through Autumn and winter, football was seen as getting in the way. In fact, I don't think we ever had football with a PE teacher, the school football team from year 8 onwards was run by a maths teacher. I don't recall there being a schools County cup either like there was for rugby (I actually played at Kingsholm as a result). EDIT: I should point out that I went to a comprehensive as well, not a private school.
