Is England losing its identity while trying to adopt a continental style?

Okay good! Now that I have your attention, know that this isnt an anti Latin/ Anti continental thread.

So it starts out like this.

John Terry, Tony Adams, Sol Campbell, Jamie Carragher, Rio Ferdinand. These were household names of the previous years. And you could put these names among the best best of their era and they would not look out of place. Apart from Italy , I cant think of many other countries who churned up as many quality defenders as England (including full backs who I chose not to mention). So clearly their programs to scout and mould quality defenders was never in question.

Now somewhere along the way, this changed. Often thesedays, we hear about exciting English talents coming through.... and more often than not, many of the talents (who eventually make it to the national team as regulars) are midfielders or attackers.

What happened? How did we go from Adams-Campbell, Campbell-Ferdinand, Ferdinand-Terry to...lol Jagielka-Cahill?

I think the chance of coincidence is too high to draw any conclusions here.

Also, if you associate "John Terry, Tony Adams, Sol Campbell, Jamie Carragher, Rio Ferdinand" with identity, oh dear...

I bet if the England NT were told how dross English defenders would be in 20 years time, guys like Bould, Dixon and Winterburn would have been capped waaay more times than their combined total of........26

John Stones is a legit prospect, I can see him and Chambers being England's CB pairing in the near future.

In England if you don't play for the top clubs odds are you don't get caps.

These days the top clubs in England have so much money that they have little to no incentive to buy or play English players. So the defenderd who are actually quality are going unnoticed

Why is chambers only getting capped just after a few games with us? He's only continuing what he did last year.

England and the nt is a mess. I don't think anything has changed in terms of how they want players to play but in how they see and recognize talent has stayed the same.. But the young English players aren't getting the same chances to turn themselves into big names on the big teams at the same rates anymore

I dont think there are any reasons, those players you named were just better talents than the current crop.

Sort of like the state of Brazil's 9's.

There are lots of little reasons which dont help in both cases, but in the end the bottom line is the talent of the current crop are lower.

Happens I guess. Not long ago England really struggled producing players with improvisation and natural creativity. Joe Cole was seen as the only one. Now, there is Sterling, Sturridge, Oxlade and some others

Dani, do you agree Germany proved this summer that improvisation and natural creativity is overrated? Look at their team in most games last summer and bar Ozil the majority of the players were very "English-like".

It's why I always believe that with better coaching that Euro 04 squad could have been special.

what about our WC winning team was 'English-like'? whatever that's supposed to mean. lol.

I dont agree. For one, I dont see anything English-like in the Germany game. There was great combination plays, off ball intellegance and movement and tactical maturity I have NEVER seen from England. Will all that, I still dont think Germany played that well untill the Brazil game, or even in the final.

Dont get me wrong, they deserved to win, they were the "right" team to win it. But I dont think they proved anything because the performances was nothing special minus that Brazil game...which we cant forget was vs a severely hampered and compromised team.

I feel like people see one team win something one time and believe "thats what you need/dont need to win" and it would be that way if what you said is true.

As for England, I dont think there were ever capable of winning any competition in my lifetime. Every competition they were involved in, not for a second did I think they had a chance to win.

England as a national team has no identity at all.

On second thought, I do understand where your coming from though Gil. Muller, Schurrle, Kroos, Khedira, Klose, Basti...thats not the most intresting group of players, they wont do anything on an individual level which will get you up out your seat very often (pointing to the improvisation type of thing) but they offer things many England players do not. And not just now, I mean even going back to the England teams of some years ago.

If Müller isn't a creative and improvisational player I don't know who is. If you want to narrow it down to a certain type of skill that's something different.

Other than that I agree with your post before. In hindsight when a team has won it is made out to have done everything right.

We certainly didn't and we didn't always convince. We did play a couple of pretty good games though. Earlier winners didn't shine in every game either.

In the final, after Kramers injury (what 20th minute or something), our midfield was Kroos Schweinsteiger Özil Schürrle Müller lol.

Not exactly solid or conservative, more like gung ho.

After half time there were about 15 minutes where I was nearly shitting my pants because our midfield was so ridiculously offensive and there was huge space between it and the defense.

Whatever that has to do with 'English' I still don't understand Gil.

I dont think Muller is incredibly creative no. He is clever, he makes great decisions time and time again, but I wouldnt call him creative or genius.

I agree, many winners arent great for many games.

I dont think Gil, or certainly not myself was accusing Germany of being defensive or overly conservative. Not at all. I think the overall point was the type of players Germany have, are smart, are mature, are responsible...when you think of improvisation, you think of players who do things without conscience and are free of tactical restraints (not from the coach but from their own thought process) to a large degree.

Its like the difference between Iniesta and Xavi perhaps. Xavi does everything with a level of restraint for the team concept. Iniesta cares less (thought not totally of course) about that, he just plays his game. Iniesta is an improviser, I dont think Xavi is quite so much.

Connecting it to England and my original point. John Terry in 2010 WC remarked that he felt "Rooney and Joe Cole are the only two players who can open teams up". What he said to me was with a hint at this, that those two have a creativity and what I would call improvisation about them.

Gerrard, Lampard and some others are great players..better than Joe Cole for sure, but they arent improvisers.

England lacked these players for a long time, probably not since Gascoigne and Waddle. England to me have always been linear and rigid since those times and much of it is the types of players they have produced. But more recently I think there are more of these kinds of players, players like Sterling and Sturridge, maybe Oxlade and Wilshere.

Exactly. The only German player I would describe as an improviser would be Ozil. Reus was injured and Gotze only saw minimal minutes.

Anyway, the point I'm getting at is Germany's World Cup winning players (Kroos, Schweinsteiger, Khedira, Schurrle etc) were hardly superior the crop of Lampard, Gerrard, Scholes, Rooney etc in terms of natural ability.

We were constantly told we needed to produce players the ilk of Spain or Brazil succeed in International tournaments. Then Germany came along and won it without the "magicians" or "wizards" everyone was baying for.

I think people underestimate how important coaching is at the International level. Loew was heavily criticized this summer but the difference in his coaching ability and Erikkson's at the time is light years apart.

Yeah well it's true we don't have an Iniesta. That's because Iniesta is a unique talent and once in a lifetime player.

On Müller, well I guess we don't really disagree on him, only thing that I disagree is that the terminology is used to his disadvantage I feel.
If creative is having ideas that open things up, why can't we call his off the ball movement creative, for example?

Agree on England. Ox, Sterling, Lallana etc. Lack of creativity or technical ability is certainly no problem.

As for identity, I think they should go even further back, restore the identity of the empire.
By that I mean, reincorporate Wales already, they don't even have a proper own league ffs, why they need a National Team of their own.
Add Ramsey and Bale to this English team and it's a different beast.

Still doesn't solve the most glaring problem, the coaching, and the absolute toxic, passive-aggressive media and public environment.

Also the rivalry between clubs is far too fierce and mean-spirited.

NT captains are not respected by a majority of fans because they belong to a rival club etc.
Dortmund fans would never badmouth Lahm, Bayern fans would never bad mouth Hummels.
Not in a NT context I mean.

Another thing, connected to this:
Stop playing ONLY at Wembley. Use stadiums everywhere.
That way local fans get closer; plus at Anfield for example fans would have to applaud Rooney, and vice versa.
If they don't, or boo him, it would become obvious the rivalries are a problem and that would enter conversation.

Also make other nations travel to Stoke or Newcastle, and see whether they feel like upsetting England there and then

England needs revamp their leagues and follow Spain and German model. English clubs need to have a B team in lower divisions.

Hapless_Hans wrote:Another thing, connected to this:
Stop playing ONLY at Wembley. Use stadiums everywhere.
That way local fans get closer; plus at Anfield for example fans would have to applaud Rooney, and vice versa.
If they don't, or boo him, it would become obvious the rivalries are a problem and that would enter conversation.

Also make other nations travel to Stoke or Newcastle, and see whether they feel like upsetting England there and then

Don't know how serious you were upon time of posting with this, but I like the thought of it.

When football opened up where you could bring in kids from anywhere in Europe... The competition opened up from youth academies up. Whereas EPL has won the financial aspect of the modern European club era, it is dead last in terms of the youth academy aspect. As such, the top clubs aren't even tapping their own youth acedemies. Instead, they go after the top youth players in countries where the academies are the best: France, Germany and, to a lesser extent, Spain. Why less Spain? Because the kids there don't like to leave early so it's often a waste of resources to try. France and Germany are the top targets.

For France, it's become a problem since the best kids are getting paid a ton of money to leave before they even reach Ligue 1 (Pogba, Griezmann, Mangala, etc. You can put Coman and Rabiot in there too since they we barely saw them).

Competition is fierce. Personally, i like it.

For UK kids to develop properly, they should try and join academies in France, Germany and Spain imo. Go for the best. There's no reason to just go with local academies in this environment.

El Gunner wrote:Don't know how serious you were upon time of posting with this, but I like the thought of it.

I think he was very serious. There is a reason that Germany don't have a dedicated national stadium.

sportsczy wrote:For UK kids to develop properly, they should try and join academies in France, Germany and Spain imo.  Go for the best.  There's no reason to just go with local academies in this environment.

Many German academies (like Schalke's, for example) prefer to go for local talent, though, as they want to instill a local loyalty to their club so that they won't lose their players right after they were properly educated.

Well forget Germany then Go to French or German academies. They just take the best.

Seems that German football is very extreme nationalistic.

It's about keeping your investments. If you invest time and money into a player for several years, you want to reap the rewards, and it is more likely that a local lad stays with a local club than a foreigner.

(And it is not about nationalism - e.g. Sinan Kurt received lots of stick for "defecting" from Gladbach to München after he was educated at Gladbach for seven years. The clubs want to reap the rewards of their work and not lose it cheaply to some other club.)

Well it is if you also don't allow foreign investors to invest in Bundi, which is the case. Not sure how Bundi gets away that tbh since it goes against every free trade treaty out there lol.

Well, I guess the clubs know that it wouldn't go well with the fans and thus they do not really consider it in the first place. Oh, and they could invest, just don't get the majority.