Greg Dyke and the future of the England team

[Riandor]

As an ancillary issue, England needs to be decoupled from the batty British state, to some extent at least, so that it can develop its own identity as a nation. National football in Germany is important partly because German national identity is strong. It's all a but wishy-washy in England where people seem to censor themselves into talking about being British rather than being English.

What the feck? I am English when at home, I am British when abroad, i am proud to be British and I am proud to be English when it comes to sport where GBR isn't the norm, i don't get this whole Identity crisis issue? Germans are only JUST becoming proud again as a nation but they aren't unified with anyone else, so they don't get the same choice anyway.

Why would this argument have any bearing on our pool of English players? It Doesn't.

 

[ItsBoris]

Why should the national game, basically 10 games plus tournaments every 2 years be prioritised over the performance of league teams ?

I'm all for improving coaching methods for kids to produce technically better footballers, but The FA constantly assume that the ultimate goal is producing a better national team. Frankly the performance of the national team is way down on my priority list compared to my club and the quality of the league they play in in general, pretty much always has been and always will be. So I'm fine with the FA introducing guidelines for coaching etc, but I don't want them meddling with clubs and quotas and all that bollocks.

Yep baffles me too. They would ruin the Premier League in exchange for the possibility that England becomes better. It wouldn't even matter as long as they keep putting idiots like Hodgson in charge. England wouldn't win anything with him even if we had a squad as good as Germany or Spain.

A big problem is the price being asked for younger English players. Wasn't it 16 million that United payed for Zaha? That is just ridiculously overpriced for a player who won't even get many games this season. The FA should subsidize the purchase of English players if they want to encourage PL sides to buy English talent. Something like 10% of the transfer fee should be paid by the FA, up to around £1.5 million, conditional on the player getting a certain minimum number of minutes in the Premier league. Otherwise of course clubs are going to buy players from abroad, where you actually get decent value for youth. If there was a 21 year old English player as good as Eriksen, there is no way that we would have got him for the price we paid.

 

[talkshowhost86]

Why are English players so overpriced compared to the rest of Europe?

 

[Kendall]

We need to throw money at grass roots people from Germany, Belgium and Spain. Utilise the experience and skill of top local academies like Southampton and put real emphasis on touch, close control and vision rather than scoring goals and winning matches. I remember playing Sunday league as an 8 or 9 year old on a full size pitch in freezing weather. How utterly pointless - you learn nothing doing that.

I learned more in terms of technique and vision playing football at school in school shoes with a tennis ball in an area the quarter of a size of a full pitch, with 30 lads running around.

 

[Kendall]

Why are English players so overpriced compared to the rest of Europe?

I don't think they are, it's just the Premier League is a rich league. Generally once a foreign player has a decent season in England, they become very very expensive too. The clubs just don't see a need to sell low/normal european value.

 

[Azazello]

Why are English players so overpriced compared to the rest of Europe?

It's a question of supply - if there were a steady stream of technically proficient players coming through (such as in Croatia), then the price for English players would be lower. As we have seen elsewhere, there is no reason not to create such.

I'd like to see a coaching and technical management academy as well, perhaps get a few bright English guys like AVB on the go.

 

[talkshowhost86]

I don't think they are, it's just the Premier League is a rich league. Generally once a foreign player has a decent season in England, they become very very expensive too. The clubs just don't see a need to sell low/normal european value.

I think that's probably right and that may be one thing that is harming development of English players.

On the other hand it's not as if foreign clubs are knocking on the door for these English players, even on loan, so I still think it's largely an issue of English players simply not being good enough at the moment.

 

[Kendall]

I think that's probably right and that may be one thing that is harming development of English players.

On the other hand it's not as if foreign clubs are knocking on the door for these English players, even on loan, so I still think it's largely an issue of English players simply not being good enough at the moment.

A lot of these English players are on stupid money by the time they get to the fringes and I think our culture is such that English players are usually scared of going abroad. If we're going by ITK and reports, Carroll turned down a move to Ajax this season for QPR. Whilst I like Harry and think he will want to make Carroll a main man, I can't help but that that was a brilliant opportunity passed up, not fot footballing/career reasons but for convenience/fear issues.

 

[talkshowhost86]

A lot of these English players are on stupid money by the time they get to the fringes and I think our culture is such that English players are usually scared of going abroad. If we're going by ITK and reports, Carroll turned down a move to Ajax this season for QPR. Whilst I like Harry and think he will want to make Carroll a main man, I can't help but that that was a brilliant opportunity passed up, not fot footballing/career reasons but for convenience/fear issues.

Agreed. If he passed up that move he's an idiot, and I think more young players should be encouraged to go and play abroad. You can almost count on one hand the number of English players who have played in foreign leagues in the last few years.

Part of that, I suspect, stems from a general view in this country about working abroad, whereas it's encouraged a lot more in many European countries. But that's a far wider issue about our island mentality that I'd rather not get into.

 

[Kendall]

Agreed. If he passed up that move he's an idiot, and I think more young players should be encouraged to go and play abroad. You can almost count on one hand the number of English players who have played in foreign leagues in the last few years.

Part of that, I suspect, stems from a general view in this country about working abroad, whereas it's encouraged a lot more in many European countries. But that's a far wider issue about our island mentality that I'd rather not get into.

United have a good relationship with Belgian clubs and send their kids over there quite regularaly. IMO, we should be trying to get a 'special relationship' going with someone like Ajax and do regular youth player trades for a half a season at a time. Even if they don't get much game time, they could benefit from different coaching at a young age.

 

[Azazello]

What the feck? I am English when at home, I am British when abroad, i am proud to be British and I am proud to be English when it comes to sport where GBR isn't the norm, i don't get this whole Identity crisis issue? Germans are only JUST becoming proud again as a nation but they aren't unified with anyone else, so they don't get the same choice anyway.

Why would this argument have any bearing on our pool of English players? It Doesn't.

I'm English at home and English abroad. If I were a Scot, I'd probably be in the SNP.

Look at the comments you get here about the England team (not a scientific survey of course). I don't believe that the Irish, Welsh or Scottish guys on here would sneer at or stop supporting their countries' team simply because they don't like a player or because the team's not done as well as the press says they should.

I believe that a strong sense of nationality is part of the equation (by no means all of it, of course) for having a successful national team. You can see how weak the FA has been in this regard.

 

[Riandor]

I'm English at home and English abroad. If I were a Scot, I'd probably be in the SNP.

Look at the comments you get here about the England team (not a scientific survey of course). I don't believe that the Irish, Welsh or Scottish guys on here would sneer at or stop supporting their countries' team simply because they don't like a player or because the team's not done as well as the press says they should.

I believe that a strong sense of nationality is part of the equation (by no means all of it, of course) for having a successful national team. You can see how weak the FA has been in this regard.

But that to me is another issue of the EPL and club culture vs National success and less so about nationalism.
I hear far too many people slag off the England team for having players from another team, whereas in Germany (where i currently live) club culture is replaced mainly by a coming together when the country plays and mutual support of all players. In fact most, though not all, people i know here actively cheer rival club teams in Europe as they do Germany proud.

But that is not for an issue with the English not being English enough, that is a factor of us being bred to HATE our rivals and is compounded by the EPL becoming a league that is inherently non English in its ownership and running. The FA have F-All power because the Premier league is borderline no longer an English league, with it's money sourced almost predominantly from outside of the UK.

So we don't enjoy Chelsea winning the Champions League for multiple reasons, even begrudgingly... Yet so many Bayern Munich fans love what Dortmund achieved (aided by Bayern themselves winning the lot mind, but still). German clubs doing well, a sense of unity within a competitive sport.

Of course there is still animosity even here in Germany, but across Europe the family culture is to favour your own, but respect the rest, whereas in England we think it is totally acceptable to not just laugh at our rivals misfortunes but actively want them to fail and fail hard and old hatreds die far too slowly.

Spurs vs Arsenal should be a rivalry, it should be fierce on the pitch, but it should be hand shakes afterwards on and off the pitch at a battle hard fought. I congratulated (sure, begrudgingly) my Arsenal supporting friends after they won. The didn't gloat, they were relieved and praised their team and Spurs for an intriguing match.

But too often the bile and hatred within the fans of this league is what comes to the for and therein the antipathy towards the England team... that and they are average.

It doesn't help that our own media harp on at how great we should be, could be are when there is 0 evidence to back it up, so the common fan falls for this sense of failure rather than achieving what is actually within our means.

One thing we are not is against being proud to be English, but when it comes to football the tribalism is what is killing us at a national level. Doesn't solve the players issue, but was in response to this sense of waning national pride.

The Olympics showed what can happen when a Nation, a Great Britain, unites and takes real pride in its achievements at an international level.. supporting its athletes regardless of whether they are from Wales, England, Scotland or N.Ireland... shame the same is usually not the same when we talk about the England team and where it's players are from.

 

[Gassin's finest]

So by all this reasoning of English players in the top flight decreasing over the years contributing to why we're shit now, we must have been amazing back in the early 90's then... that's why we won the Euros' in '92 and the World Cup in '94 of course. And all those amazing victories in the 70's and 80's.

Oh, wait... could be that apart from two decent tournaments we've always been mostly average?

 

[HobbitSpur]

I'm such a child, I can't even see his name without thinking of a beastly looking lesbian

What is it about the name Greg that leads you to these thoughts??

 

[absolute bobbins]

What is it about the name Greg that leads you to these thoughts??

The beastly ones are always called Greg

 

[lenny7]

2022. A 9 year payday for Dyke then.

 

[teok]

But We Were Rubbish In The 70s Too...

So England's woes now are because of the foreign players? So who was to blame in the 1970s when we were even worse? Greg Dyke knows as much as a taxi driver...

Grey Dyke is chairman on the FA. Do you think he knows anything about football? Okay, he does have a voice which echoes Roland Rat a little too accurately to take him at all seriously, but worse than that is what he had to say about the state of English football.
"The real challenge for us (middle-management-speak alert)looking forward is that we've gone from 70% English players in the Premier League to 30% and it's still falling. If that continues, we won't have a chance in hell in future tournaments. We have got to stop that decline and we've got to get more English players playing at the highest level."
Let's say this clearly, it's bloody nonsense, son. Shut up, go away, think about it a little more deeply and then try again.
This is the sort of old rubbish that a lot of people who think they know about football will tell you, usually while they're driving you around in a taxi. On the surface it might seem to make sense, which is why people like Dyke who knows nothing about football outside of shallow, received opinion reiterate it as though it is some sort of wisdom. This blithe assertion is infuriating because it so damned stupid.
When the Premier League started as The Premiership in 1992, England were world beaters due to having such a large amount of Englishmen in the league, were we? No. We were not. We were probably worse than we are now. In fact, all things considered there's a case to say that since the number of Englishmen have diminished, England have done no worse or a little better, especially when we don't employ an English manager.
So a word to the wise, Greg. When England's leagues were largely populated only with Englishmen, we didn't win anything. We failed to qualify for tournaments between 1970 and 1982 and in 1994. We were, by and large, no good. We were outplayed on a regular basis because we had arcane tactics, relied on physical strength too much and paid little attention to technique. On top of that, despite the images of players bleeding from head wounds, our teams lacked composure and basic bottle.
Our so-called legends were donkeys and often showed up as such. None of this was anything to do with the number of players available to choose from for the national side. It was to do with our football culture and the quality of our coaching from junior sides upwards.
You only need 11 players for a team, 22 for a squad. The volume of players to pick from isn't important. Listen to me carefully now, Greg, it is the quality of players that matters. Hear that word? I'll say it again. Quality. Not quantity. Got that? It's not hard to understand.
But in Greg's simple mind, more is better per se. This is the man who is charged with running the national game. And apparently he consulted widely to come up with this old guff. Worse still, he doesn't have a clue about how little clue he really has.
http://www.football365.com/john-nicholson/8907364/John-Nicholson

 

[Misfit]

Did Carroll really down a yr in the Dam? Pillock. Still a good move for him but mofoing Ajax and a yr with Dutch maidens in Amsterdam - sign me the hell up! They all speak better English over there than little Tommy likely does anyways.

 

[LSUY]

When the Premier League started as The Premiership in 1992, England were world beaters due to having such a large amount of Englishmen in the league, were we? No. We were not. We were probably worse than we are now.

No we weren't. Two years previously we made it to a World Cup semi final. We may not have got out of the group stages of Euro '92 but the football we were playing was a million times better than it is now. Back then England played exciting and attacking football and if it weren't for the crossbar against France or Peter Schmeichel England would have qualified from that group. Watch the England goal against Sweden, the finish wasn't the finest but the build up was pretty decent. When was the last time England passed the ball so well against decent opposition in a competition?

When England's leagues were largely populated only with Englishmen, we didn't win anything.

Apart from the World Cup in 1966.

Our so-called legends were donkeys and often showed up as such.

I agree the 'Golden Generation' have been shown up but some of England's legends were among the best in the world. Gordon Banks pulled off one of the best saves ever to deny Pele, Bobby Moore took the ball off Jairzinho as easily as taking candy from a baby, Gary Lineker played over 100 games for Barca, anyone who saw Sir Tom Finney play compares him to Pele, Best and Di Stefano and Sir Stanley Matthews was described as almost unstoppable by Franz Beckenbauer.

The low standard of coaching in this country is a problem but so is the dwindling talent pool. How many English left backs play in the top flight? (Off the top of my head I can think of six and most of them don't play regularly.)

 

[Misfit]

Agreed, LSU. Even old Steve Bull from Wolves back then came in and did well when needed.

I guess the closest we came was under Glenda? Not too successful but we played some nice stuff. Under Svengali we had a blinding game about every 18 months which kept things ticking over during the rest of the largely turgid shite served up.

The state of the game over here gets worse with every yr for the national side. Not that I'm that bothered tbh, and maybe that's the problem.