How long until England can compete with the best?

[Hoop Blah]

Surely the book is detailing reasons why we underperform in relation to our relative resources.

You seem to be arguing that we're not underperforming because there are reasons to explain it.

To my mind we have underperformed. Football is our national sport and we've got massive footballing resources yet we're not as successful as our peers, and the likes of the Dutch out perform us.

No, the title is deliberately misleading and plays on the assumption/feeling/instinct that England under-perform. That's actually only one chapter but it also talks about other football myths/assumptions and uses statistics quite playfully and creatively to demonstrate that traditional or received wisdom in football can often be quite misleading and incorrect. Another chapter tests the idea that the English are the most passionate footballing nation (and it comes out with some surprising results).

So you're saying we haven't under-performed?

We've got a population of 60m, football is our national sport, with in excess of 2m people playing football on a regular basis, and yet the Dutch, with a 16m population have a better record in international tournaments.

Our resources are comparable with Italy, France, Spain and not too far behind Germany yet they've all got better records of reacing the latter stages of tournaments let alone winning them.

That's underperforming.

[Jackson Corner]

Surely the book is detailing reasons why we underperform in relation to our relative resources.

You seem to be arguing that we're not underperforming because there are reasons to explain it.

To my mind we have underperformed. Football is our national sport and we've got massive footballing resources yet we're not as successful as our peers, and the likes of the Dutch out perform us.

No, the title is deliberately misleading and plays on the assumption/feeling/instinct that England under-perform. That's actually only one chapter but it also talks about other football myths/assumptions and uses statistics quite playfully and creatively to demonstrate that traditional or received wisdom in football can often be quite misleading and incorrect. Another chapter tests the idea that the English are the most passionate footballing nation (and it comes out with some surprising results).

So you're saying we haven't under-performed?

Not to mention the small matter of inventing the game!
We've got a population of 60m, football is our national sport, with in excess of 2m people playing football on a regular basis, and yet the Dutch, with a 16m population have a better record in international tournaments.

Our resources are comparable with Italy, France, Spain and not too far behind Germany yet they've all got better records of reacing the latter stages of tournaments let alone winning them.

That's underperforming.

[Jackson Corner]

Not to mention the small matter of inventing the game in the first place!

[Ian Royal]

Our European peers, in terms of population and participation are the French, Italians and Spainish. Germany are quite a bit bigger in terms of population, and so presumably in number of players.

Although I kind of agree with the point about being unlucky in shoot outs making our record look worse than it could be (although our record compared to the Germans would say it's more than just luck at play) we haven't performed as well as our peers when it matters.

I think that's the point being made. We should have a better record, long term, than we do. It's not just about lower expectations for this, or any other group of players, it's about how we're turning our resources into success.

Personally I'd separate shoot outs, not because it's about luck, but because it's an entirely different skill set to winning a game in normal / extra time.

We should focus on improving in that area, and if we could, as you say, our record would look a whole lot better. I think the majority focus should be on developing the right defensive and midfield players to be able to retain possession and be more patient and creative though.

I'd also say it's a bit silly to look at our record as a whole. Clearly we had a massive superiority complex historically which was utterly unfounded and resulted in a fair bit of under performing. Personally I wouldn't go back any further than 20 years to look at a trend of performance... much more than two to three generations of players and I think you stop comparing apples and apples so much.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

It's not luck as such that someone scores or misses a penalty, it's just the way things work out and, of course, how you deal with the pressure at the time to recreate the right strike.

We could easily have won a few of those shoot outs, but we didn't.

One win out of 7 or 8 suggests either we've been extremely unlucky, or it's not luck. I'd put money on the latter.

A good penalty is one that's put in such a place that even if the keeper goes the right way, he still probably won't save it.

I could be wrong, but I always get the impression that when we "train" for penalties, we just go up and take a lot of shots at the keeper. Hart even said in one interview, I believe, that he went a bit "easy" on saving them, as he didn't want players to lose confidence. That's exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. If they are hitting penalties that are relatively easy to save, they should be practicing placing them better.

Mind you, our keepers have a particularly poor record at saving kicks, which doesn't help. You'd think they could enlist the help of keepers who are good as saving penalties to give advice.


For years you had English experts saying there's no point practicing penalties because you can't recreate the tension on the training ground. Isn't the same true of every single skill in the game?

[Hoop Blah]

You look at the pens we missed this time around though, and one was about 3 inches away from being almost unsavable, and Cole's was pretty poor, but a real 50/50 penalty looking to presumably send the keeper the wrong way.

I don't really subscribe to the idea that luck plays a part (it was the wrong choice of word) but those two pens could quite easily have gone in on another day and, certainly in Cole's case, the player has proved he's capable of putting them away when it counts.

Why do we have such a bad record? I have no idea, but it must be a mental thing really.

[Alexander Litvinenko]

There's also a problem that because the PL is so valuable and such a high-profile, international brand, in the minds of many players it is bigger than the international team. So their motivations and priorities tend to be much more related to their club rather than their country.

It's not such a big thing to play for England as it once was, because you get seen by more people and greater acclaim - as well as pots more money - playing for one of the big PL teams.

[Ian Royal]

You look at the pens we missed this time around though, and one was about 3 inches away from being almost unsavable, and Cole's was pretty poor, but a real 50/50 penalty looking to presumably send the keeper the wrong way.

I don't really subscribe to the idea that luck plays a part (it was the wrong choice of word) but those two pens could quite easily have gone in on another day and, certainly in Cole's case, the player has proved he's capable of putting them away when it counts.

Why do we have such a bad record? I have no idea, but it must be a mental thing really.

But if you absolutely leather it like Young did, you lose some accuracy. Absolutely no need to hit it anywhere near that hard if you are going high, because the keeper will be nowhere near it. If he'd just hit it firmly, it would have been absolutely unsaveable, not 3 inches from it.

[Ian Royal]

3. The problem is not limited to players, all of society is rotten with bingedrinking and unhealthy eating, parents send their children to school with Walker's potato chips for "lunch", which is just ridiculous - and children at the age of 14-15 are having liver transplants due to their excessive drinking, YES, that DOES happen in ENGLAND.

I'm sure they make up a massive pool of untapped talent, you mental nordic loon.

[Hoop Blah]

You look at the pens we missed this time around though, and one was about 3 inches away from being almost unsavable, and Cole's was pretty poor, but a real 50/50 penalty looking to presumably send the keeper the wrong way.

I don't really subscribe to the idea that luck plays a part (it was the wrong choice of word) but those two pens could quite easily have gone in on another day and, certainly in Cole's case, the player has proved he's capable of putting them away when it counts.

Why do we have such a bad record? I have no idea, but it must be a mental thing really.

But if you absolutely leather it like Young did, you lose some accuracy. Absolutely no need to hit it anywhere near that hard if you are going high, because the keeper will be nowhere near it. If he'd just hit it firmly, it would have been absolutely unsaveable, not 3 inches from it.

Depends what the keeper does really. If they stay relatively still then hitting it with power makes it a lot more difficult to save.

Yeah you could lose some accuracy, but sometimes it's actually easier to hit that penalty with power as your not doing it half hearted. Similar with a golf shot, if you don't commit to it 100% it's easier to get it wrong.

[Ian Royal]

I'm not saying dink it... He just seemed to me to put power over accuracy. IMO Young's pen 0s <<<<< Cole's. You have to hit the target. If Buffon went the wrong way Cole scores, even if it was a terrible penalty.

[Hoop Blah]

Ideal, you really should stop reading the Daily Mail and get out in the real world a bit more!

[Ian Royal]

Ideal, you really should stop reading the Daily Mail and get out in the real world a bit more!

Don't encourage him to get out more, Norway hasn't recovered from Frisk yet.