Quote Originally Posted by redgunamo View Post
The essential problem we've always had is that, in Britain, sport and especially soccerball, is for everyone and not only those who are actually any good at it and most importantly WANT to play. Our best players have always been "good enough" but we're selecting from a pool who are mostly nowhere near good enough and not interested anyway and further on whom we are forced to waste an awful lot of valuable time, energy and resources. It's all good fun and everything but it does not help when trying to emulate the elite.

All-day schooling kills us. Kick them all out at lunchtime so they can go to properly organised clubs where those that want to and show promise can get at least semi-professional coaching, in whatever they want to do. How else to explain generations of English players all exhibiting that essential hesitancy on the ball and unfamiliarity in possession as a team. They simply haven't played enough and lack intimacy with the mechanics of a game of football.

The whole nonsense is rather like me visiting Crufts searching for decent hounds to buy. Out of the twenty-thousand or so entries, perhaps three or four of them could actually turn a hare as the best hunting dogs NEVER go to Crufts because they spend their entire lives out in the fields actually hunting and proving themselves, not posing in a show ring.

Gareth actually did a fantastic job in the circumstances, he understood our limitations and made the best out of them
Haven't all the current elite England players come through the Academy system?