The reality is that England, as always, were ridiculously overhyped. Yes, no one had them going to the semis but almost everyone in England seemed to believe there was enough quality to get through this group stage. Ridiculous.
Where exactly is the "quality"? On his very best day maybe Wayne Rooney, but the Wayne Rooney of today should not be confused with the Wayne Rooney of four years ago, who was then a genuine world class footballer. That, he no longer is.
We can walk through the rest of the squad and find a few glimpses of promise -- Sterling and Sturridge in particular -- but overall this squad was no match whatsoever for any of the top 8 sides in this tournament and arguably in the bottom half of the tournament.
This was a World Cup for a rebuild, not to hang on by the fingernails for has beens like Gerrard or imposters like Hart. Go young, learn from the bruises that would have been incurred from the beatings by Italy and Uruguay, get the squad into reasonably competitive shape for the next Euros and then have a battle-tested squad in place for WC 2018.
Instead, Woy has a complete mess on his lap, a humiliation of a high order.
I'm going to have to disagree. Of course we had enough quality to get through this group. Italy undoubtedly are a quality side, we would have done well to get a point against them.
As for Uruguay, I've mentioned this in another thread but I'll touch upon it again. Lodeiro, the attacking midfielder behind Cavani and Suarez plays for Botafogo in the Brazillian league. The man partnering Godin is 19 with one cap for Atletico Madrid, replacing the injured Lugano who wasn't good enough for West Brom. They have a defensive midfielder playing in the Liga MX. Beyond that some half-decent players and then obviously Cavani & Suarez. Now Cavani is no better than Rooney, worse if we're going off this season. Suarez is pure quality, but he's one player.
If you don't think we have enough quality in a squad including multiple members of the Premier League team of the season, numerous players who challenged for the Premier League title and were key components in that side, Sturridge for example had 21 goals and was second top scorer in the league. Henderson was a key player in that Liverpool side, gaining a lot of praise for his massive improvement. Cahill was an absolute rock for Chelsea, Rooney got an impressive goal/assist tally considering how his team were playing. Gerrard topped the assist charts, other players like Lambert had 13 goals, only 3 less than Giroud who is at a better club yet started for France tonight.
Lallana made the league's team of the season, as did our back up left back Shaw, Gerrard and Cahill. Sterling was another key player for Liverpool, terrorizing numerous Premier League defences.
I'm sick to death of people making out we're some kind of pub side. There are championship level players in that Uruguay starting 11 for god sake, their bench has plodders like Gargano filling it. Our team may not be some kind of star filled dazzlingly brilliant world beaters but its more than good enough to be competitive.
I agree with you otherwise, Roy has totally fecked up this world cup with his total lack of tactical sense. Think about it, we equalized in both games, got ahead of ourselves and conceded on the break two times. That's down to the managerto calm down the players, get us back in to shape, instead we made silly errors and the opponent went up the field and smashed one in. His subs were totally ineffective "Oh, we're losing? Ip dip do, which young player the media likes shall I put on I wonder!", the team lacked any clear identity other than running in to brick walls or chucking in cross after cross.
Gerrard in a two man midfield where he was lost, there is a whole list of errors down to the management that led to our exit. The players themselves honestly weren't that bad bar a few (Jagielka, Gerrard, Baines were all woeful), our attacking play looked relatively promising considering a lack of any midfield or structure.
Pirlo was allowed to do whatever he wanted in the Italy match. When Costa Rica's midfield nullify him far more effectively, you know its not a question of quality. Uruguay barely managed to string together any passes, they looked woeful 90 percent of the time. They scored from their only two shots on target.
He's an idiot. Like Moyes, all he knows how to do is 4-4-2, chuck it in to the big man and to play park the bus. That's why we actually managed to top the groups in the Euro's, getting a draw vs. France, a better team in pretty much every way than Uruguay, as well as taking Italy to penalties and defeating a Zlatan led Sweden.
That's because whilst the direction was the wrong one, at least we HAD a direction. A way of playing, a system in that tournament, one that Hodgson knew how to coach well, its all he knows. We didn't here, thus despite some decent performances we are out. Other sides like Costa Rica and Chile have a system and work extremely hard.
Finally, the motivation. I think we are the least motivated team in the tournament. You look at some teams lining up and their players are in tears at the anthem, Suarez is all over the place after scoring two goals, they are hugging each other, running around like madmen. Our players mumble the anthem. We just don't want it enough I don't think. It's not a British thing, its something unique to our football side. Our other sports teams, as shown by the Olympics, don't lack this desire that other countries show.
We won't get anywhere till Hodgson is gone and a manager with a clear direction on how to play football is brought in and not a "safe option".
