England V Poland U21's

Bednarek (Saints target) starts for Poland.

Just about to kick off.

Gray puts England ahead.

Redmond underwhelming so far.

Love that Poland fans, who see their team bottom of the group with 1 point, are creating a better atmosphere than you get at most Prem grounds on a weekly basis. Absolute nutters.

Bednarek looked solid so far btw - Redmond getting very frustrated coming up against him.

Fuck that. They’re getting rinsed at set pieces.

The Polish keeper has pulled off assume good saves to deny England extending their lead.

We’ve steped back a bit.

Come on England…2-0…Murphy…JWP playing like a super star. :laughing:

JWP subbed…MOM…wrapped in cotton wool for semi…Great game skipper. :smile:

Redderz already off at half time…Slight knock/strain…also Chambers playing well.

Bednarek sent off

Mawson (good player) out of semi…bookings…Jack Stephens should play…hopefully. :laughing:

Some debate about that. Might be only his first booking.

Stand corrected…my informant is useless…commentator :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

England 3-0.

Good summer for England’s kids

u17s reached the euro final and lost on penalties

u20s won the world cup

u21 got to the semis of their euros

Is this the start of something bigger? Has the vast sum of money poured into premier league acamdies finally beginning to pay off at a national level? Will the PL fuck it up by sitting these kids on the bench and playing foreigners?

1 Like

The answer to that question is undoubtedly.

Given the “want it now” culture clubs would rather play “proven” players than risk “unproven” youngsters who, in all probability, are way better than they’re proven counterpart.

I was thinking last night that Saints should buy up the whole U21s sqaud and play them alongside the likes of Romeu and Cedric and VvD and Gabbi. We’d have a cracking squad then.

2 Likes

See, its an interesting one because I don’t think that’s exactly the issue and I don’t think the reverse is the solution: that is, favouring English players because they’re English and because of a self-sacrificing loyalty to the National Team.

I think more-or-less every club in every country tries to recruit and play the best players they have available, in that I don’t think Spanish or Italian clubs would pick an inferior Spaniard or Italian over a foreigner out of sheer favouritism - and I think if most clubs saw their academies as potentially being hotbeds of talent, they’d be more than happy to invest further in youth development. So I wouldn’t point the accusing finger at the clubs.

The issue with the senior England team isn’t the quality of the players on paper and never has been, the issue is that we time and again pick the 11 most high-profile players that the combination of the English media have selected (normally those from the big clubs) and cobble them together in a mish-mash and hope it works - rather than doing what successful national teams do - which is to spend the qualifying campaign building a team like you would a club side, with a fairly solid first XI and a playing style which players are comfortable in and in which other players breaking into the squad can slot in seamlessly.

After winning the World Cup in 2006 - Marcello Lippi was asked what his secret was, and his response was “I picked the best team, which isn’t necessarily the best 11 players”.

In 2006, Italy had two fantastic number 10s in Del Piero and Totti who I think anyone would consider to both be in Italy’s top 10 available players. But there was only room for one of them in the team, so Del Piero had to make do with the bench whilst Totti started.

Now if England were in that situation with two English duplicates of Del Piero and Totti, we would, 100%, cast-iron certainty, have tried to shoe-horn them into the same side, played the most retarded formation and played other players out of position to accomodate them, and have gone into the tournament not knowing what our best team was and essentially having a bunch of square pegs in round holes and exploitable weaknesses all over the pitch.

4 Likes

This golden generation looks so promising I’m absolutely certain that we will the World Cup in four or eight years time, probably both - and there’s nothing you can say that will discourage me from this conclusion that I’ve reached on the back of very limited and unreliable data, ignoring history and experience.

3 Likes

4 Likes

That ongoing competition to find me an avatar - finally we have a winner!

5 Likes