The difference between England and Wales

[Copps is Magic]

We've heard that England need a radical overhaul from the bottom to the top. But Wales provide some food for thought

a) The movement from set-pieces. Simply not comparable to England who had Cahill basically standing still 8 yards out the whole tournament. Wales have 4 players running in opposite directions to create space.

b) The quality of free-kicks. Plainly there to see by the fact Wales actually get theirs on target.

c) Ramsey/Allen the movement in midfield. England play along the line not in-between the lines like Wales do. When it doesn't work we revert to long balls. Wales stick with it.

d) Working as a team and not as individuals.

There might well be something fundamentally wrong with the structure of English football and the mentality of the players. But until we exhaust the possibility that there is something wrong with the tactics and management we should continue with that line of inquiry. To me, we haven't exhausted it yet.

Finally, I hope Wales reach the final. I lived in Cardiff for three years and there is a stereotype that they hate the English but let me tell you, once they hear a northern accent they treat you as one of their own. I saw the video of the Wales players but it doesn't bother me personally. I think a lot of people in England can see beyond that and cheer them on.

[IDM]

Point d says it all.  Wales have played like a club side since their first kick at the tournament.

Let's hope Iceland can give France a good game now.

[Copps is Magic]

I think what also helps is that Ashley Williams is the best British CB in the competition. By a long stretch. Him and Allen have been immense.

[mrfrostsdad]

Hmmmm.
Maybe I dreamt that England beat Wales just 2 weeks ago in this very competition. I was on holiday and I was pished so maybe it didn't happen

[Copps is Magic]

Hmmmm.
Maybe I dreamt that England beat Wales just 2 weeks ago in this very competition. I was on holiday and I was pished so maybe it didn't happen

and?

We also beat Portugal and Germany before the tournament? What's your point?

[Lipsy]

They're a team. Simple as that.

[dickos1]

Up until today I thought Wales had been very fortunate, lucky to beat Slovakia very lucky to beat northern Ireland but they were outstanding tonight
All credit to them

[steve@dcfd]

English FA talk about academies. Yet Wales players have come through the same process. Talk about Winter break yet the Championship players have played more games and they still going.

The Welsh team work for each other they have leaders. They have played better football than England. Each player know their roles and have done it successfully. They are organised and work as a team.

Let's hope they can get to the final.

[Jonathan]

Wales' first big test of the tournament tonight and I thought they were superb. Showed everything that England lacked and they fully deserved the win.

On another note, it's very hard to determine who is currently the most arrogant, lazy and underwhelming striker on Merseyside. Lukaku and Sturridge both giving each other a run for their not inconsiderable money.

[Sammy Chung was King]

Boy, Did Wales get the rub of the green tonight!. I have never seen a game like that, little bounces of the ball, tight decisions and chances. Has anybody ever seen a 'cruyff turn', bamboozle three defenders all at once?.
Wales deserved it, because they stuck in the game, and took the chances that came. You very rarely get feelings like it, but i'm starting to wonder, are the fated to win it?.

Whoever of you lot, who run kids teams, when you want to show how far being a team can take you, record that game, and show it to them.
It's no longer 'Bales', it's definitely Wales.
Determination, team ethic, sacrifice, cool heads, the welsh team had all those, well done to them, football and the world in general is very strange at the moment!.

[IDM]

. Has anybody ever seen a 'cruyff turn', bamboozle three defenders all at once?.

Salford FC, first round of the FA Cup last season??

[Sammy Chung was King]

. Has anybody ever seen a 'cruyff turn', bamboozle three defenders all at once?.

Salford FC, first round of the FA Cup last season??

I can't remember that, who was the goalscorer?.

[Mustapha-Dump]

Is one difference that tonight 3 Englishmen scored for Wales, and at no point in this tournament has a Welshman scored for England?

[IDM]

. Has anybody ever seen a 'cruyff turn', bamboozle three defenders all at once?.

Salford FC, first round of the FA Cup last season??

I can't remember that, who was the goalscorer?.

Here, maybe 35 seconds in... http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36343087

[The Red Baron]

Wales - a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.
England - a team that is less than the sum of its parts.

See also Doncaster Rovers 2012-13 vs Doncaster Rovers 2015-16.

[drfchound]

I had forgotten about that Salford goal IDM.

[Bentley Bullet]

Hmmmm.
Maybe I dreamt that England beat Wales just 2 weeks ago in this very competition. I was on holiday and I was pished so maybe it didn't happen

and?

We also beat Portugal and Germany before the tournament? What's your point?

Maybe his point is that England have far better players than Wales, and when they perform to their full capability England are far superior.

If he does mean that I fully agree with him.

[ravenrover]

Up until today I thought Wales had been very fortunate, lucky to beat Slovakia very lucky to beat northern Ireland but they were outstanding tonight
All credit to them

You've missed out the fact that the Belgium defence was so inept that ours from last season was better!

[mrfrostsdad]

Hmmmm.
Maybe I dreamt that England beat Wales just 2 weeks ago in this very competition. I was on holiday and I was pished so maybe it didn't happen

and?

We also beat Portugal and Germany before the tournament? What's your point?

My point is: England are a far better team than Wales and would beat them 8 times out of 10 of there abouts. I thought we played very well against Russia and Wales without having that final ability to score as many goals as we should have. For that I blame the manager. Everyone in the country except Woy could see that Kane was out of touch and Vardy should have been playing and that Sterling shouldn't even have been in the squad.
We were total garbage against Iceland admittedly. Again, the team selection and formation/tactics were all wrong. Why did Rashford come on with 4 minutes to go for example?? I think we would usually beat Iceland 99 times out of 100.

Our players are an overpaid, namby pamby overpriveledged set of *******. Wales have played out of their skin and good luck to them but no way are they better than us. I also agree with Sammy Chung. They had a couple of decisions that really went their way last night at crucial times. A stone wall penalty, a foul just outside the bad that should have led to a sending off just being two.

[Donnywolf]

On the subject of Officials I DO think they made some very poor decisions and that favoured Wales on balance. Penalty not given - Yellow Cards NOT given - and though they did not benefit from it the foul on the kid with the Mohican just outside the 18 yard box that led to the shot and great save

On the other side I though (for about the 50th time) that Fellaini should have been sent off either with a straight red or certainly for 2 Yellows. Is there a bigger Kitson playing at the moment ? (Rhetorical question)

[Copps is Magic]

Hmmmm.
Maybe I dreamt that England beat Wales just 2 weeks ago in this very competition. I was on holiday and I was pished so maybe it didn't happen

and?

We also beat Portugal and Germany before the tournament? What's your point?

Maybe his point is that England have far better players than Wales, and when they perform to their full capability England are far superior.

If he does mean that I fully agree with him.

I don't even...

That was my .... I don't even... does..

any f**ker even ... read?

[Copps is Magic]

Hmmmm.
Maybe I dreamt that England beat Wales just 2 weeks ago in this very competition. I was on holiday and I was pished so maybe it didn't happen

and?

We also beat Portugal and Germany before the tournament? What's your point?

My point is: England are a far better team than Wales and would beat them 8 times out of 10 of there abouts. I thought we played very well against Russia and Wales without having that final ability to score as many goals as we should have. For that I blame the manager. Everyone in the country except Woy could see that Kane was out of touch and Vardy should have been playing and that Sterling shouldn't even have been in the squad.
We were total garbage against Iceland admittedly. Again, the team selection and formation/tactics were all wrong. Why did Rashford come on with 4 minutes to go for example?? I think we would usually beat Iceland 99 times out of 100.

Again, I don't even.

That was my point in the original post. Although, I've said it without reverting to the England should beat Wales, Iceland, Costa Rica, Uruguay, USA, Algeria mentality. What should happen and does happen is two different things. Unluckily for us a tournament can't be won over one game.

You have to be tactically good over a prolonged period of games. And here's where the 'my England dad is bigger than your Wales/Iceland etc. dad' argument breaks down. Over the tournament Iceland and Wales have been far better teams that England.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Yep, it's a team game and they are miles better than us. Zero character in ours, bundles of it in theirs. For me, Roy didn't attempt to establish a 'team' as he kept messing about with it and resorting to picking failures when better players were on the bench or at home.

Yet another missed opportunity but, I so enjoy watching Wales show what can be done.

[NickDRFC]

Roy's biggest failing was he didn't go for one or the other. Either go for the form players and build a system round them, or stick with the system that's served him well in qualifying and the form players miss out. He did a messy hybrid and it failed miserably.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I'm still hearing that "Our players are head and shoulders better than theirs" meme, which defies all experience.

The obvious, inescapable fact is that, when we get into international tournament football, our players are NOT better than those of most other countries.

And it's NOT about the managers. We've tried every sort of manager and none of them has got our players to over perform, other than in Italy90, when we stumbled our way to near-greatness.

I'll give you my take. Our players are fine when they are coached in a system that they know, day in, day out at club level. But they have neither the flexibility not the intelligence to adapt to the rapidly changing situations of a tournament.

I can't see any other explanation. They ARE better players than the Welsh or Icelandic ones IN CLUB FOOTBALL.

But, time and again,our players demonstrate an inability to react to the changing requirements of tournaments. They are flat. Wooden. Lacking sophistication, intelligence and guile.

I think at the base level, the problem is that we produce footballers who are pig thick. 

[The Red Baron]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3664847/JAMIE-CARRAGHER-S-DAMNING-VERDICT-English-players-weak-think-making-men-creating-babies.html

I know it's in the Daily Fail, but this gets to the nub of it.

Not so much thick as not being able to think for themselves.

[Alan Southstand]

Your 4th para is spot on, BST. However, I am firmly of the belief that our managers and coaching teams have not even tried to engender that team ethic and basic understanding of what to do if......

I think there is too much left to the players to think their way out of it.

The number of times I have heard DS say it just shows what you can achieve when you have a system and stick to it, with the right pegs in the right holes.

I think we do have some good players but they do have to get picked for the squad and then they have to played and played in the right place.

You cannot possibly have the managers and coaches not take any responsibility. Especially this last tournament - Woy didn't even know what his best system was, never mind who should play where.

[The Red Baron]

I DO actually put a lot of blame on the manager in this case.

Going into the three pre-tournament friendlies it was clear he had no idea what either his best team was, or (more crucially) what formation he would play.

By that stage there should perhaps be a couple of places up for grabs, and it should be very much a question of A or B. But there really is no excuse for still tinkering around with formations. And if certain players can't operate in the formation that the manager considers optimal for the players he has, they shouldn't be on the plane.

That said, I do agree with Carragher's comments. When push came to shove that squad was woefully short of leaders.

[BillyStubbsTears]

But international football is inevitably more fluid than club football. The players aren't coached into a bespoke club style. They don't have long together to have systems drilled into them.

So you need intelligence. You need flexibility. You need the ability to take on new ideas quickly and still perform.

Look at Italy against Spain. They changed formation and approach three or four times during the match. With the same 11-14 players. Because they are brought up expected to think about the game, to be flexible footballers.

I don't know what goes on in our coaching at academies and clubs, but it's patently obvious that our players are not thinkers about the game. Apart from their palpable failings in international performances, ask yourself who was the last England regular to mature into being a really first rate, successful manager at the highest club or nation level.

Spain does it. Italy does it. Germany does it. France does it. Argentina does it. Portugal does it.

England?

Not one of our regular international players of the past 50 years has gone on to make a top manager. The last one was Bobby Robson.

Speaks volumes about the culture of our game. 

[IDM]

Keegan didn't do too bad - not in Fergie's or Wenger's league, but not bad.. Trevor Francis managed for ages too, but yes - there are not many..