- Our players just aren’t that great. Pundits and commentators bang on endlessly about how our players ‘do it at the very highest level, week in, week out in the Premiership’, but that doesn’t take into account the fact that they generally play alongside better, more tactically aware foreigners who make them look good. Only Rooney can lay claim to the coveted mantle of ‘world class’, and even he has been very shit at international tournaments.
Virtually all our TV and a lot of our radio pundits are failed ex-pros who entrench the status quo by dumbing football down to their idiotic, cliche spouting level. Shearer is particularly a dick, but he, like most ex-pro pundits, is merely incredibly boring and lacking in any kind of insight. Robbie Savage, on the other hand, is the biggest penis in the whole world, and yet we’ve had to listen to him ranting on about who should be doing what on BBC Five Live more than can be considered humane during this World Cup. Why do we listen to these idiots? Most of them haven’t won anything in their careers, they just happen to be able to barely string a sentence together while a camera is pointed at them and for this they get large salaries and to still be a part of football. Why this is damaging to England is because it adds to the general level of footballing incompetence and ignorance that festers at the heart of our national game. Come the revolution, these smug, moneyed scum will be the first to receive a smacky botty.- Fabio Capello looks like Postman Pat
Steven Gerrard has about as much tactical awareness as an amoeba. There’s a reason Capello plays Gerrard out on the left; it’s because he mistakenly believes he’s put the romping scouse dandy out of harms way, but like a moth to a flame Gerrard wanders after the ball, whatever position you put him in. Gerrard is obviously talented, but his immense ego demands that he be at the heart of every England (and Liverpool) move. This leads to him abandoning his position and destroying his team’s shape as he goes looking for the ball. His drive and ability occasionally lead to him scoring incredible goals, but it comes at the expense of his team, and in the long run, it’s not incredible individual goals that win you things, it’s how well your team functions. Poor little Ashley Cole was repeatedly left facing two or three German attackers on Sunday because Gerrard had gone all Roy of the Rovers again.- Our coaching setup is an embarrassing joke. Only 2,769 English coaches hold Uefa’s B, A and Pro badges. Spain has 23,995, Italy 29,420 and Germany 34,790. That is ridonkidonk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jun/01/football-coach-shortage-england