England

[Temptation]

You know England had more talent in 00s, right?

Ummm.....Yes and no.

These are all massive names but.....

Many of their peaks came at different times, squad depth was weaker and the balance was off.

Beckham's peak was around 1999.

Scholes is massively overrated in retrospect due to some lovely quotes by legendary players and the humongous partisan United fanbase. He was a fantastic passer but was abysmal for England and never even finished top 3 in Manchester United end of the year player awards.

Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard all peaked around the same time.

Cole was mint obviously.

There was a lot of infighting within the squad. Zero harmony. Ferdinand and Terry hated each other due to the racism controversy against Rio's brother.

The playing 11 was unbalanced with no proper number 6. Carrick didn't get much game time.

And ofcourse, the managers performed very poorly.

The National Team just couldn't cope with the European teams playing in a 433 formation. England was stuck with 442. The diminutive Spanish(and others) midfielders would just have that extra men in the middle who would pass the ball around for fun in the middle of the park and dominate the archaic Brexit system easily.

Lots of other factors at play but I tried to summarise it to the best of my ability.

 

[Temptation]

I like Cole. Arguably the best LB of his generation. Incredibly smart of how he defends in a positional sense and 1-1.

His "lack" of success with only 1 CL and 3 PL pales compared to the other great LBs like Maldini, Roberto Carlos and Breitner

Maldini is the GOAT obviously.


Breitner? No clue. Might have to ask grandpa Fati about that one.


I feel Cole is more well rounded and complete than Carlos who's obviously the cooler and sexier name because of his shooting ability and flashy highlight reels. Genuinely rate Cole a bit higher.


Lizarazu definitely deserves a mention. He was phenomenal.

 

[soul24rage]

Ummm.....Yes and no.

These are all massive names but.....

Many of their peaks came at different times, squad depth was weaker and the balance was off.

Beckham's peak was around 1999.

Scholes is massively overrated in retrospect due to some lovely quotes by legendary players and the humongous partisan United fanbase. He was a fantastic passer but was abysmal for England and never even finished top 3 in Manchester United end of the year player awards.

Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard all peaked around the same time.

Cole was mint obviously.

There was a lot of infighting within the squad. Zero harmony. Ferdinand and Terry hated each other due to the racism controversy against Rio's brother.

The playing 11 was unbalanced with no proper number 6. Carrick didn't get much game time.

And ofcourse, the managers performed very poorly.

The National Team just couldn't cope with the European teams playing in a 433 formation. England was stuck with 442. The diminutive Spanish(and others) midfielders would just have that extra men in the middle who would pass the ball around for fun in the middle of the park and dominate the archaic Brexit system easily.

Lots of other factors at play but I tried to summarise it to the best of my ability.

Scholes is not tier Xavi and Pirlo, but he was still a fantastic player who is able to control the game. If he were Spanish, he would have been appreciated more.

Felt that the England 2004 squad should have won that Euro based on talent alone even though Ferdinand was suspended. The manager wasn't strong enough to build a balanced side and tried to shoehorn both Gerrard and Lampard together. A shame.

For me, the early 2000 England was the best group of English talent that I've seen with the current squad being 2nd.

 

[Temptation]

[TNT Sports] No player has created more chances than Trent for England at Euro 2024 so far. He’s yet to play a full 90 minutes 😲


@Jenks @fergus90

 

[KingLeo10]

Most English fans say that Ashley Cole is one of the greatest left backs of all time.

What's the consensus here regarding Cole? @soul24rage

IIRC, CR7 named him as the toughest opponent he ever faced.

He is. Cole gave early days CR7 (the winger version) all sorts of problems.

I think he even dealt with early days winger Messi decently.

I think he's in the class of Marcelo and R. Carlos.

 

[jamrock]

You know England had more talent in 00s, right?

Prime Rooney, Lampard, Scholes, Gerrard, Rio, Terry, Cole, Campbell, Beckham etc. etc.

I was saying the exact same thing to a friend earlier

 

[Birdy]

You know England had more talent in 00s, right?

Prime Rooney, Lampard, Scholes, Gerrard, Rio, Terry, Cole, Campbell, Beckham etc. etc.

Right, late 90s early 00s, after 04-06 all these were past it with few exceptions

And after that generational pool that were SEVERELY underutilized by the terrorist of the time, Mr Sven Goran Loserikson, now and since 2018 you have the next best generation of English talent in:
Harry Kane, Rashford, Saka, Sterling, Bellingham, Foden, MAddison, Rice, Walker, Stones, Shaw, Trent
(not to even mention talent now emerging like Palmer, Gueyi, Eze, etc)

These have been the backbone of Southgate's england since 2018 and it's the best talent England have since the time of prime Gerrard prime Terry and prime Rio

YET, that terrorist and loser coach is making all this talent play like 3rd tier NT that sits back to cover for their lack of talent

England deserves better.
Fire him immediately after the tournament ends. It has been 4 years too late ALREADY
Get in Jurgen, and England can cling WC 26 in USA
Time is ticking, that talent won't be there for ever

 

[KingLeo10]

Right, late 90s early 00s, after 04-06 all these were past it with few exceptions

And after that generational pool that were SEVERELY underutilized by the terrorist of the time, Mr Sven Goran Loserikson, now and since 2018 you have the next best generation of English talent in:
Harry Kane, Rashford, Saka, Sterling, Bellingham, Foden, MAddison, Rice, Walker, Stones, Shaw, Trent
(not to even mention talent now emerging like Palmer, Gueyi, Eze, etc)

These have been the backbone of Southgate's england since 2018 and it's the best talent England have since the time of prime Gerrard prime Terry and prime Rio

YET, that terrorist and loser coach is making all this talent play like 3rd tier NT that sits back to cover for their lack of talent

England deserves better.
Fire him immediately after the tournament ends. It has been 4 years too late ALREADY
Get in Jurgen, and England can cling WC 26 in USA
Time is ticking, that talent won't be there for ever

We agree on Southgate. Where we differ is that I think Deschamps is a much better manager than Southgate.

It's really hard to make back to back WC finals and win one of them (and lose the other on pens). The Euro final was a bad loss though, I think.

 

[Birdy]

We agree on Southgate. Where we differ is that I think Deschamps is a much better manager than Southgate.

It's really hard to make back to back WC finals and win one of them (and lose the other on pens). The Euro final was a bad loss though, I think.

It's not THAT hard when you are riding on a cheat code squad.
France can field 3 different WC XIs, when other NTs struggle to even field half

 

[Temptation]

Southgate and Deschamps are in principle the same kind of manager but the latter has a winning mentality and more clutch players alongside better squad depth.


Deschamps is a good International manager albeit very very boring given the resources he has.

 

[Morten]

Great analysis of the game yesterday

But then, Southgate fixing anything is reliant on him being a decent manager, and not being Southgate.

 

[Jenks]

Great analysis of the game yesterday

It's weird because in all of the friendlies before the game we were pressing high and basically pinning the opposition in their half. We did struggle to score goals though. Makes me wonder if Southgate altered the press to try and maintain space in behind and cover for our defence, which had looked a bit shaky.

 

[Messigician]

Deschamps is weird because he’s actually over qualified to be a NT manager, not that it mattered for Puis Penrique end of the day

 

[Maradona37]

Southgate is absolutely clueless, but to be honest a lot of their players are overhyped too.

All their best players (other than Kane) are wingers or attacking midfielders. And even then, the likes of Eze, Gordon, Bowen are players who do really well in the PL, but translating that for mid-table clubs to the grandest stages like this is completely different.

People going on about how many goals their forwards scored in league football. But football doesn't work that way - players performing well at club level doesn't automatically translate to international football. Especially when they're all now thrown together and don't have the luxury of their foreign team-mates. A lot of these players are in their comfort level in the Premier League and look like half the players outsides of its confines. I'd posit this is a bigger issue with English players than elsewhere, because the PL is very conducive to its best domestic players looking like world beaters in the Premier League. To reiterate - throw them all together and they look wank.

I just feel like they cannot play technical, passing football. People looked at names on paper - England are more hyped on paper than Spain, but we all know that if Spain played England the Spaniards would dominate the ball and the game. Rodri would piss on Rice and Bellingham, and players who don't get as much hype (eg Carvajal) would look better than the English players who get the hype (eg Walker).

Palmer, Saka, Foden, Kane and Bellingham are their best forward type players. I am really not a big fan of any of them other than Kane. Bellingham can burst into the box and score goals, but he's still more physicality than football IQ and technique. Saka is good but always liable to disappear. Foden is stuck out left and never performs for England anyway. Palmer doesn't get a chance. In midfield you have Rice who is a pretty overrated footballer and always liable to let you down. As an example of people making mistakes by judging on paper, I think Barella would dominate Rice even though the Italian is the far less hyped, far less famous player.

In short, I simply feel this is yet another phenomenon of English media hype and overrating their players.

 

[Maradona37]

You know England had more talent in 00s, right?

Prime Rooney, Lampard, Scholes, Gerrard, Rio, Terry, Cole, Campbell, Beckham etc. etc.

The problem with that is that none of those players were tempo setters or possession controllers. Other than Scholes every name on that list was more about power, athleticism, than high football IQ and technique. Beckham for instance spent lots of his years as an England player trying Hollywood balls constantly and surrendering possession, as did Gerrard. Remember a young Modric pissing on Beckham and Gerrard at Wembley when Croatia played England? Most of these players played fast counter-attacking football in the PL - but put Lampard and Gerrard as a partnership (without the insurance of Makelele, Essien, Alonso, Mascherano) into international football and ask them to control possession and play a smart, controlled, patient game and they got played off the park. The profile of those players didn't translate well to tournament football (and I think some were overrated anyway and more 'names').

Throw in Beckham destabilising the set up with his wag culture, as well as the media hype that led to insane pressure (same for other countries but especially bad in England), huge egos and buying their own hype, factions and wars within the team due to different club loyalties. Well, it's no surprise they crumbled.