What have England won since 1966 ? Look at the players,...and the coaching system. It's all past it's sell-by date. Wenger exposed it in the mid/late 1990's. And we've done sweet FA about it since.
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Then the Sky money destroyed any hope

Edited by Forest Hillbilly (27 Jul 2023 11.06am)

"The facts have changed", Rishi Sunak

I like that ASCPFC a good point.

I have my own too however:

I still play football now and two decades ago I was playing to a decent standard at youth level, so not ancient history by any means.

From my experience, long after Dutch 'total football', the Italian and German schools were established, Argentinians were mixing flair and aggression, Brazil were boggling minds/dominating the world with their samba style, the Spanish played tiki-taka football and the French led the charge on all other nations slowly catching up, we were still insisting on throwing the ball down the line, putting it in row z, crossing the ball at every available opportunity, playing it long and generally employing halfwits within the game who would elsewise be unemployable.

As the 'British' we have traits that allowed our tiny percentage of the world's population to dominate a significant area of it. We've had Industrial revolutions, won World Wars, contributed disproportionately to literature, art, economics etc etc given our size. All our aggression, determination and hard work however has not leant itself to football. We're still without an identity we can call our own and oftentimes look as though we're trying to imitate others whilst being mentally crushed by the burden of expectation on ourselves. That's why we're not looked to, nor produce, any real 'great minds' within the game, consistently anyway. There have been the like of Sir Alf, Clough and Ferguson, but these are more anomalous individual talents that do not speak to a wider, cultural advancement.

Just a thought, you know, but that's been my experience

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

If Gareth Southgate is supposed to be England's finest manager then there's not much to say really. I personally wouldn't let him manage an Iceland. And I don't mean the country.

Red and Blue Army!

in the 1960's , 70's and 80's there was always an illogical emphasis when a ball was kicked high "to be first to the ball". So players jumped high, got elbows to the head, and if they were lucky got a glancing head to the football which pinged-off in a random direction. In a nutshell, too many bangs on the head has seen British football development stunted.
That's my theory

"The facts have changed", Rishi Sunak

I think there is still a hangover from the old British footballing mentality - 110% sweat and effort, fist shaking whop it up 'em aggression, managers smashing cups against the dressing room wall, and a distrust of anything that hints of being a bit soft (e.g. foreign ideas, dietary considerations etc.)

However, as new generations of British players come through the system and are exposed to more enlightened philosophies hopefully attitudes will change (and are changing), and should they follow a path into coaching, will embrace these more progressive attitudes and practices. However, I still fear that there may be an cultural antipathy towards anything too "intellectual" that may hold them back.

I think it's there in that phrase - but it's not just footy where the coaching is bad: tennis, rugby, cricket, and these are 'posh' sports, and posh people don't like anything too intellectual either! You listen to people like Alastair Cook and they're so head boy Tom Brown's Schooldays, so polite and obedient, there is no audacity, no 'can do' - that has too much commonality, so you either get anti-intellectualism or people who compare themselves to the more pragmatic types so as to feel a false sense of intellectual superiority - we not only have a class system but a class culture and it inhibits us in all sorts of ways, including football, other sports and industry.