England Football

[UKLaxfan]

Football is the National sport in this Country

England qualified for the World Cup 2014 Undefeated

2 defeats later in Friendlies and suddenly the press are flipping out again.

What do you think are the problems with England's World Cup chances?

For me the fact that Germany took the tube to Wembley to practice on Monday says everything about the game in this country.

Things that wind me up about footy
1) British press (not Englsih)
2) Fear of failure / Fear of being slagged off
3) Prima Donnas - Professional Footballers being involved in anything other than football - who cares?
4) 18 yr old players who have never kicked a ball in the Premiership driving a £100K car
5) Lampard getting a Golden Cap for 100th appearance having won Nothing in his International career
6) Smalling getting head butted in Chile game but too thick to get opponent sent off
7) 5 mins after qualifying for Brazil - Space Monkey joke becomes racism witch hunt
8) A negative story(s) will be released in weeks before Brazil
9) Every single team on the planet is seen as technically gifted compared to England
10) St George's Park is seen as solution all it needs now is some coaches
11) Commission to look into what is best way forward for National Team is hijacked before it starts
12) Friendlies are seen as Full competitive Internationals instead of expensive scrimmages

Football is a fantastic game but as Professional level is full of BS in this country

Finally

Soccer Saturday
Only in England would this programme exist when on a Premium (Pay) Sports channel you get to spend hours watching people watch football on TV!

Bizarro World

US Football has Red Zone - facility to watch every single Touchdown LIVE
EPL has four ex pros squealing at each other watching the games with Jeff Stelling

[UKLaxfan]

nice article on the emergence of Southampton this season
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25040893

Radical idea that if your team is fitter that the opposition and work harder that they can have success

Southampton
- run further
- tackle more in opponent's half
- foul more in opponent's half
- have best defensive record in the league

as they used to sing at Maine Rd - "Alan Ball is a football genius"

listen to the twaddle that pundits spout about football or listen to Talksport (if you dare)

ProZone & Opta have started to shine a light on some of the myths of the game.

One of my favs is a natural born finisher, as though he doesn't have to work at it or came out of womb with boots on

Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi & Frank Ribery are 3 top players in the World at the moment and all 3 are incredibly hard working and able to play accurately at full speed.

English players work really hard until they make it and then develop into Prima Donnas with few exceptions
Gerrard (33) Lampard (35) where are the guys 20-30 who are attacking midfielders?

Andros Townsend (22) with 4 caps and shown no fear

World Cups should be where players earn reputations not some sort of retirement plan where all the biggest reputations are selected even if they are no longer at peak performance.

Paul Scholes is probably the best player England have produced in 40 years a complete footballer where are the players that want to emulate him?

Football is blown out of all proportion in UK

Where is the motivation for a 18 yr old millionaire surrounded by supermodels to work on developing skills?

What would you do?

exactly

[UKLaxfan]

Other things that wind me up about footy

Some footy players are THICK

eg: Everton v Liverpool today
1) If you are standing a yard behind goal line you are not in good position to clear the ball = Goal One
2) If you are in the wall at a free kick, do not try to get out of the way of the ball = Goal Two

£20K+ a week is not enough to compensate being hit by a inflatable plastic football

[UKLaxfan]

another excellent article on football by BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25055156

Jimmy Hogan influence on European footy

But this was to be no triumphant homecoming - his senior players decided they did not want to be coached and Hogan was sacked after only 31 games.

Brilliant

proper footy

[UKLaxfan]

England players not worried about going to play in the Amazon, as they already do most of their Christmas shopping there...

[UKLaxfan]

Penalty Shoot Outs

I witnessed one of the worst Penalty Shoot Outs ever tonight
Sunderland : 2/5
Man Utd: 1/5

Manchester United have scored a total of four penalties in their last three shoot-outs

think about that for a second 4/15 from 12 yards

the Football Experts spout the same rubbish
- "it's a lottery"
- "you can't practice penalties"
- "those guys aren't natural penalty takers"

it's as though every English team is suddenly surprised at the end of a game that they have to take penalties

the other excuse is the pressure... Madness

if each player took 1000 penalties each season in practice, they would be a lot more successful

think Free throws in Basketball where away fans are screaming insults up close and personal and trying to put them off in their eyeline

Make penalties part of every practice
incentivize them score 7/10 or run a suicide at end of trainng (or equivalent 2 laps?)

the idea that it is just pot luck is crazy

"the more we practice the luckier we get!" - Bill Shankly

[D99]

It's obviously difficult to fit in a bit of penalty taking practice into the 2-3 hours a day they actually work (sorry, train). Gotta get away to go shopping / test drive a new car / take the WAG out for a meal / read the abuse on twitter.....

[UKLaxfan]

Rooney getting all the credit for the Goal
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27858336

1986 they didn't even mention the guy who crossed the ball by name

[Stu76]

Football is the National sport in this Country

England qualified for the World Cup 2014 Undefeated

2 defeats later in Friendlies and suddenly the press are flipping out again.

What do you think are the problems with England's World Cup chances?

For me the fact that Germany took the tube to Wembley to practice on Monday says everything about the game in this country.

Things that wind me up about footy
1) British press (not Englsih)
2) Fear of failure / Fear of being slagged off
3) Prima Donnas - Professional Footballers being involved in anything other than football - who cares?
4) 18 yr old players who have never kicked a ball in the Premiership driving a £100K car
5) Lampard getting a Golden Cap for 100th appearance having won Nothing in his International career
6) Smalling getting head butted in Chile game but too thick to get opponent sent off
7) 5 mins after qualifying for Brazil - Space Monkey joke becomes racism witch hunt
A negative story(s) will be released in weeks before Brazil
9) Every single team on the planet is seen as technically gifted compared to England
10) St George's Park is seen as solution all it needs now is some coaches
11) Commission to look into what is best way forward for National Team is hijacked before it starts
12) Friendlies are seen as Full competitive Internationals instead of expensive scrimmages

Football is a fantastic game but as Professional level is full of BS in this country

Finally

Soccer Saturday
Only in England would this programme exist when on a Premium (Pay) Sports channel you get to spend hours watching people watch football on TV!

Bizarro World

US Football has Red Zone - facility to watch every single Touchdown LIVE
EPL has four ex pros squealing at each other watching the games with Jeff Stelling

This is a good post, i agreed largely with what was said. How would you reform the game? We need more people speaking about this I think. Have you considered blogging? I know I’d like to give it a read. Post your link in this thread if you already have one. I use wordpress for blogs.
http://www.1and1.co.uk/wordpress-blogs