England in major championships

[BillyStubbsTears]

Not be long till World Cup Fever strikes again. And I've just seen an article by Phil Neville saying that England has a terrifically talented bunch of players and could go a long way.

Which would be nice because we all know how far off the pace we've been over recent times.

Or at least I thought I knew. Until I actually went and had a look at the record.

Since England beat Cameroon in Naples in 1990 and we all thought we might actually win the bleeding thing, there have been 14 Euro and World Cup competitions. England have won a grand total of 16 games in the finals of those competitions (not including penalty shootouts)

World Cup
94 DNQ
98  Tunisia, Colombia
02 Argentina, Denmark
06 Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago, Ecuador
10 Slovenia
14 None

Euro
92 None
96 Scotland, Netherlands
00 Germany
04 Switzerland, Croatia
08 DNQ
12 Sweden, Ukraine
16 Wales

Just as a comparison, in that time, Germany have won 26 WC final stages matches and 17 EC ones.

[drfchound]

BST.

Interesting and not particularly good stats.

However the stats are all history and will have no bearing on the up and coming tournament.

[RoversAlias]

Very true Hound. I think all judgements for this one should be left 3 weeks until we see who we get in the Group Stage draw.

Are we likely to be top seeds or is it the second pot for us?

[drfchound]

England will be among the group of second seeds.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

No. But then when you hear folk saying we should play Ross Barkley or Jack Wilshere...

[drfchound]

Hound.

No. But then when you hear folk saying we should play Ross Barkley or Jack Wilshere...

I will be surprised if either of them play Billy TBH.

In the match against the Germans last week i was impressed with two or three of the young lads who came into our side.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound

I'll offer by biennial two-pennorth.

We'll have a press-fuelled orgy of optimism. We'll have St George's flags in every second car window.

And we'll be home before the postcards. Again.

[DMnumber4]

How many knock out games have we won?

[NickDRFC]

I'm not saying that Wilshere should definitely be picked but I have a few gripes about his situation... Dier and Henderson, both playing against a team like Slovakia, is negative. A player like Wilshere has so much more to his game than Henderson, and although he's had some rough luck with injuries he has performed very well for England in the past and the quality is there.

Secondly, Southgate's attitude that he won't pick him if he's not playing at Arsenal. Fair enough, but then don't pick Lingard who has played less football than Wilshere this season. I feel like Southgate is trying to make his mark by making "big decisions" but he clearly has certain people that he favours (seemingly those he's worked with at junior level before).

By all accounts RLC played well on Friday night (I didn't see it as I was watching the Knights) so maybe he could end up being a bit more of a dynamic option in midfield, but I don't think Wilshere should be discounted when we're still a long way from the World Cup and he's arguably our most gifted midfielder.

[BillyStubbsTears]

How many knock out games have we won?

2.

In 28 years.

Denmark in 2002. Ecuador in 2006.

It's truly pitiful.

Look at it this way. Since that Cameroon match, Germany, France, Brazil and Spain have all won as many or more TOURNAMENTS than we have won knock-out games.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Nick

I admire your interest in the detail. But it does seem like arguing over whether a Raleigh Chopper or a Grifter is the best form of transport available, in the car park of a Lamborghini factory.

[turnbull for england]

Its a Grifter, every time

[BillyStubbsTears]

Its a Grifter, every time

I wouldn't know mate. We couldn't afford anything poshy-uppy like that. I had a Black Hawk. Poor man's Grifter.

[turnbull for england]

Raleigh Grifter  sums  up my childhood  -  oh  you'd like campri ski coat / ultra burner /  adidas lendl ?

What you need( and got)  are sensible alternative ' full length black c&a coat with 'proper hood' / Grifter / clarks !'

Looking back you realise how lucky you were to get the alternatives but jesus h christ at the time !

     

[BillyStubbsTears]

Clarks?

Bloody luxury. I wanted a pair of Pods. I got a pair of £6.99 pVC beige monstrosities with a massive seam down the front of them, from The Chapel in Meccy. They looked like a pair of Cornish Pasties

[turnbull for england]

 not forgetting wanting a head bag  and getting the choice of one from Dougs up Thorne, scared for life I tell yer

[VivaRovers]

How many knock out games have we won?

2.

In 28 years.

As many as Wales have.

[NickDRFC]

How many knock out games have we won?

2.

In 28 years.

As many as Wales have.

At least we will have the opportunity to add to ours next year.

[drfchound]

Yeah but how many times have Wales managed to qualify in that time ?
Not many fingers needed to count that.

[Dutch Uncle]

But average number of knock out games won per major championship finals since 1994 = 2

And we reached the quarter finals of the World Cup last time we qualified........

[VivaRovers]

(insert image of man with fishing rod here)

Jokes aside, there's probably something in the level of expectation placed on teams in the knockout games; Wales were only expected to win one of their three knockout games at Euro 2016, and so under less pressure thrived as an underdog.

England are pretty much always bigged up to do better than their reputation in finals suggests they ought to, and as such have struggled under the sort of pressure where any mis-hit pass leads to a question over how much they get paid.

I'm not sure how you can change that mindset though.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Glen

Aye. But do you reckon Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and Spain aren't bigged up by their fans and press? Or that their players don't get paid a lot?

EDIT. Now I'll actually read what you wrote. Bigged up beyond what we rationally ought to expect. Yep. I'll buy that. I was thinking precisely that when I read Neville singing the praises of a squad that is likely to contain Diet, Henderson, Livermore and a couple from Delph, Wilshere, Barkley and Winks in midfield.

You can only change the mindset by collectively accepting that for a quarter of a century, we have consistently failed to produce reasonable numbers of players who genuinely rank in the top echelon. The odd one or two. For a couple of year at their peak. But not many. Which, if you draw the logical conclusion, says that we're not really a top rank football nation. And that's hard for us to swallow. And Murdoch won't help sugar that pill because he sells a lot of papers by whipping up the frenzy every couple of years.

[Dutch Uncle]

Completely agree with your post BST, but I am struggling to picture something being 'bigged up when it contains 'Diet' 

Don't you just love it when typos (of which I make more than most) take on a meaning of their own.

[VivaRovers]

Yeah, that's what I meant about not being sure how you change that mindset - as it's in the tabloid press' interest to keep that fervent expectation.

There's something to be said also about generating a team ethos, over a collection of individuals. Wales have taken that approach, and it's brought our most successful ever spell in international football. But again, for England that means overcoming entrenched attitudes around picking the best individual talent, rather than moulding the best team.

Southgate is perhaps the man most likely to deliver this kind of approach; though whether the patience is afforded him to do so is the sticking point, because he has to try and do it whilst also living up to the aforementioned weighty expectations.

[BillyStubbsTears]

There's no question that England typically underperform relative to the basic quality of their players.

Man for man, England should not have been struggling against Iceland, Slovenia or (if you'll excuse me) Wales. Or Costa Rica in 14. Or a whole host of previous failures.

I don't expect England to regularly match the best because our players, individually, aren't that good. But the fact that they rarely even play as well as the sum of their parts is the embarrassing aspect.

There's never the "We're a team and we're proud to be representing our nation and we will f**king we'll rise to this" feel about England. Roobey's entitked petulance in South Africa summed it up. Complaining about being rightly told by the fans that they were an embarrassment to the nation, instead of reflecting on his own failings and demanding better.

I can't see much of a change whilst ever we grossly over-rate the ability of really quite ordinary players. If we tell Raheem Sterling and John Stones that they are valued in the top dozen of players who have ever lived, how do you get them to form the underdog spirit that England really needs?

[RoversAlias]

I sincerely hope the country doesn't go into meltdown if we only get to the Second Round or something next year. Southgate is fostering a new way forward for the team, it is very young and inexperienced so needs time to develop. It'll still be a big work-in-progress come June 2018. I think we should put more hope in a deep run through the tournament at Euro 2020 instead, by which time the bulk of our best players will have matured sufficiently and gained valuable experience in big tournaments.

[Chris Black come back]

In nine tournaments at World and European level we have only beat three teams of vaguely top calibre?

Argentina, Germany and Netherlands.

First two were hardly top draw generations for their countries and the latter albeit an absolute hiding, was on home turf.

And if I remember correctly, only the Dutch was a knock out game? Indeed I cannot remember last time we bested a top team in knockout rounds of a tournament. 86 was Paraguay. 82 was? This is piss poor.

[DonnyNoel]

The Dutch game was in the group (if its the Euro 96 game?).

You could chuck Spain in there from Euro 96 albeit that was on penalties and this was the Spain that existed before tiki-taka came along and were themselves perennial disappointments in major championships.

For what it's worth I'm quite liking Southgate's approach despite finding his appointment underwhelming. The last 5/6 managers have been castigated for always picking the same faces whereas he's shown he's not afraid to think outside the box. There's an argument to say he's being coy with picking all the youngsters in an attempt to build up goodwill amongst the fans and to give himself more time in case we do bomb in 2018. I'd be tempted to let him roll with the current group of players to 2022 in the hope of integrating some of the more promising youngsters in that time.

[Filo]

In nine tournaments at World and European level we have only beat three teams of vaguely top calibre?

Argentina, Germany and Netherlands.

First two were hardly top draw generations for their countries and the latter albeit an absolute hiding, was on home turf.

And if I remember correctly, only the Dutch was a knock out game? Indeed I cannot remember last time we bested a top team in knockout rounds of a tournament. 86 was Paraguay. 82 was? This is piss poor.

In 82 we never lost a game, the 82 world cup had two stages of group games, the knockout stage did n't start until the semi finals

[drfchound]

Some of the young players on show in the last two games have been quite impressive.
Pickford, Gomez, Rashford,Loftus Cheek and McGuire have shown they are ready for regular games while for me, Stones has been a stand out player, his performance against Brazil was nothing short of brilliant.