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Vandenburg · Futures level

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Vandenburg · Futures level

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7608125/England-least-patriotic-country.html

Salmon · Tennis legend

Should get Andy Flower as the coach, in my opinion.

Ratty · County player

Vandenburg wrote:

in a recent survey it was revealed that england is the least patriotic nation in europe, im sorry but the players just dont care,no one is proud to be english anymore,did anyone see the north koreans crying as thier national anthem played? nuff said.

Here's my chance to be Ben Goldacre ...

The "survey" was carried out by This England magazine with a very small sample size in 7 countries, and asked fairly pointless questions like "Would you fly the national flag on your house?" and "When is your patron saint's day?".

The most patriotic country in the "survey" was Holland. Rounding the scores, Dutch people scored 7/10 on the "patriotism index" and English people 6/10. Hardly a meaningful difference.

So we have a tiny survey, with carefully chosen questions designed to push the agenda of the magazine, and a statistically meaningless result.

Yes, the England football team were utterly crap. But nobody really knows the reason, as demonstrated by every armchair pundit in town coming out with a different theory.

Here's another to throw in the pot.

IMO, the England football team tend to perform at their expected level, which averages around 10th place in the FIFA rankings over the last 17 years - equating to getting to the last 16 or 1/4 finals in the World Cup, which is more or less what we tend to do. So the perception that our "star" players usually underperform when they put on the white shirt is nonsense.

And there is no "reason" for the poor performance in South Africa - it is just purely random. Like Greece winning the European Championships a few years back, when they were nowhere near the best side.

It's an old cliche, but the line between success and failure is a narrow one. The obvious example is the disallowed equalizer. Everyone says it would have made no difference, because Germany were so much better. But that is a completely fallacious argument with the benefit of hindsight.

Just as relevant is the USA scoring in the last minute against Algeria. If they had not, England would have topped the group, played Ghana in the last 16, and have had a decent chance of beating Uruguay for a place in the semi-finals.

Oh well, the search for meaning and reason in the Universe, it's a modern manifestation of religion, I guess ...

-- Edited by Ratty on Wednesday 30th of June 2010 05:26:04 AM

seagull · Hall of fame

Blimey that was a good post

Count Zero · Tennis legend

i always get the feeling that you are only allowed to be patriotic (ie by displaying the St Georges Cross etc) around the time of major sporting events, any other time its frowned upon, and almost considered racist, possibly it has been taken over by the BNP etc. do others feel this? is it the same in other countries?

Akhenaten · Pro player

seagull wrote:

Blimey that was a good post

Indeed. Excellent post Ratty.

steven · Tennis legend

Ratty has expressed extremely well many of the things I was thinking (and was thinking lonmg before Saturday when the hype machine was in overdrive) and I think it's fair to say that football is pretty random. It was a pity that England weren't able to carry their qualifying form over into the tournament, but there doesn't appear to be much linkage there generally, e.g. Argentina only scraped through and they look like world-beaters.

Just to throw out a couple of encouraging (if no doubt meaningless!) stats that I haven't seen elsewhere yet - of the last four countries to win the World Cup, three failed to reach the QFs four years earlier, and the only other time England went on an unbroken run of qualifying for the finals at four times in a row (1954-1962), they also reached two QFs in those four times they qualified and then won the whole competition in their fifth successive appearance in the finals.

However, they didn't have to qualify for 1966 and next hosts Brazil (in Sweden 1958 and Japan/Korea 2002) are still the only country to have won the World Cup in a country they couldn't have reached overland. Given the South American dominance this time, it's hard to see the 2014 winner coming from outside that continent.

indiana · Tennis legend

I'm afraid so many folk in England get over-confident about their chances and that includes TV pundits.

I remember Euro 2000 when England had struggled to even qualify ( they beat Scotland in a play-off to qualify cry

) and then went out in the group stage of the finals.

Mick McCarthy was on the TV panel and he basically said that given England's players and form going out at this stage was no great shock. I still remember the other panellists looking at him as if he had dropped in from Mars, and Lineker or someone eventually saying something like "but surely you thought we'd at least finish 2nd in our group". McCarthy gave a sort of grudging maybe but I still thought it was almost to stop the other poor guys getting too depressed about hearing the truth as others sometimes see it.

In this case, a rooky in international terms centre half combining to make a pretty slow central defence, a midfield ( and defense ) who are not generally great passers ( big failing in today's game ) including an arguably not fully fit holding midfielder ( well he didnt really help hold back the storm ) and a star forward also not fully fit and / or off-form. Defeat to Germany was to me the most likely result, the margin was unexpected but I hadn't counted on such comedy defending.

By the way, I wanted England to do well in South Africa, and yes being from your friends to the north, I also for that get occasionally looked at as that aforesaid guy who had dropped in from Mars smile

Re Ratty's post, much of it I agree with although not really re "random" performances. Clearly luck and bad decisions play their part. But Greece winning Euro 2004 was an exception, it certainly doesn't prove any rule. Brazil must be dead lucky to win the World Cup so often

Generally the cream rises to the top and that cream is rarely England. Football contains random elements, but it is not generally fair to say as Steven does that football is pretty random.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 30th of June 2010 11:28:53 AM

steven · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Generally the cream rises to the top and that cream is rarely England. Football contains random elements, but it is not generally fair to say as Steven does that football is pretty random.

Yes, you're right, I should have qualified that. Clearly the best teams will win most often, and if they're better by enough distance, almost always, but the fact that scores in football games are so low and goals tend to result from a flash of brilliance or, far more often, a defensive mistake, does make it more random than a lot of sports, especially when the teams are fairly evenly matched.

Btw, I think this article hits the nail on the head about England's weak spot in the big tournaments perfectly http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2010/article-1290667/MARTIN-SAMUEL-If-England-brain-dangerous.html

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 30th of June 2010 11:58:56 AM

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

Where to start with the problems with the English team....

1 - the players - for all the talk about the golden generation and so on, how many of the players are actually that good that they would make other nations squads? I think it was calculated that 5 of the England squad would make the Spanish squad, and of those 5, only one (Ashley Cole) would actually get in their starting line-up. Given that dearth in players, it is perhaps not surprising that we failed in the last 16.

2 - the formation - every club side that has been successful in recent years has given up on playing 4-4-2, for the simple reason that it is at the moment an outdated formation. If a side plays a variation of the 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3, 4-5-1 system then you outnumber and overpower the side in the middle of the park and thus can control the game.

3 - playing people out of position - Of the 11 that started against Germany, only 3 play in the same role for their clubs (James, Upson, Defoe). Cole and Johnson are used as attacking full-backs for the clubs - almost as wing-backs, with the knowledge that the holding midfielders will cover for them when they attack, but for England, they don't have that luxury. Terry plays on the left for Chelsea, and although it shouldn't make much of a difference, it clearly did. Barry plays in a midfielder 3 for Man City and ended the season as the most attacking of those 3, so playing him as a holding midfielder is not his best position. Lampard hasn't played in a midfield 2 for years and cannot play effectively in that position. Gerrard is not a left winger. Milner has played centre midfield, not right wing, for Villa. Rooney has had his best season ever playing as a lone striker (or when he is partnered with Berbatov, he still plays as the most attacking option, not the link man he does with England). So playing so many people out of their best position clearly isn't going to work.

4 - when was the last time England actually played well? - other than the thrashing of Croatia (a side so good they finished 3rd in the group, behind the Ukraine, who lost to Greece in a play-off), I can't actually remember an England performance that was very impressive. And thus, we haven't actually looked like a good side in such a long time and thus would not be expected to go much further than we did.

5 - the last time England beat a top level international nation, where there wasn't circumstances surrounding it, was the 5-1 win over Germany back in 2001. Since then, we beat the German reserves 2-1 last year, beat Argentina 3-2 in 2005 (but with 2 last minute goals) and beat Argentina 1-0 in World Cup 2002 (but Argentina were so bad then it was impossible not to beat them), and failed to win any of the other 19 meetings against decent sides. So it's expected that we will lose to good sides.

6 - England don't play as a team - England have always picked the best 11 players rather than the best team, and have for years been putting round pegs in square holes. If you look at the Brazil side, players such as Elano are by no means the most talented player in the squad, but he does the job asked of him. For England, we just pick 11 players and assume they will play as a team, rather than working out how the team should play best.

I had us down to reach the quarter finals this time because the group we were in was very easy on paper, and we should have been able to get through the second round as well. But as soon as we finished 2nd in the group, our chances were over as there was no way we were going to beat the Germans who are simply a better side than us.

We've got an easy enough group in the Euro's qualifying, although Switzerland could bore us to death and the Welsh have a good crop of youngsters coming through, but we need to significantly improve if we are to win anything.

Drew · Jun 30, 2010

Message to Agent Capello, "Mission accomplished, return to Scotland"

Ratty · County player

Some random thoughts on randomness ...

Obviously it matters not how lucky I get in playing a tennis match against Rafael Nadal. I will always lose 6-0 6-0. However, randomness is a massive (but usually ignored) factor when 2 evenly matched players or teams play a single match.

As shown by all 4 World Cup quarter-finals. 3 were obviously very close. But even the 4-0 Germany victory could have gone either way. For a period of about 15 minutes at the end of the first half, and until the 67th minute, when Germany scored their second goal, Argentina were much the better side - they just did not quite get the run of the ball in the most important part of the pitch.

So with hindsight it goes down as a thrashing. But it wasn't like that at all! If Argentina had equalised, the whole momentum of the match would have changed (just like if England's equaliser had not been disallowed). Yes, clearly Germany had the quality to stop Argentina from scoring, and Germany probably would not have collapsed if Argentina had scored, but .....

Hindsight is always used to validate everything. Bill Gates is a genius, right, the greatest businessman that has ever lived? But back in 1980, IBM were within a whisker of buying the operating system for their PC's from a well-established company called Digital Research. But negotiations were delayed by a triviality, and instead they bought DOS from a tiny company called Microsoft.The rest is history.

angry1 · Lower Club Player

Ratty wrote:

Vandenburg wrote:

in a recent survey it was revealed that england is the least patriotic nation in europe, im sorry but the players just dont care,no one is proud to be english anymore,did anyone see the north koreans crying as thier national anthem played? nuff said.

Here's my chance to be Ben Goldacre ...

The "survey" was carried out by This England magazine with a very small sample size in 7 countries, and asked fairly pointless questions like "Would you fly the national flag on your house?" and "When is your patron saint's day?".

The most patriotic country in the "survey" was Holland. Rounding the scores, Dutch people scored 7/10 on the "patriotism index" and English people 6/10. Hardly a meaningful difference.

So we have a tiny survey, with carefully chosen questions designed to push the agenda of the magazine, and a statistically meaningless result.

Yes, the England football team were utterly crap. But nobody really knows the reason, as demonstrated by every armchair pundit in town coming out with a different theory.

Here's another to throw in the pot.

IMO, the England football team tend to perform at their expected level, which averages around 10th place in the FIFA rankings over the last 17 years - equating to getting to the last 16 or 1/4 finals in the World Cup, which is more or less what we tend to do. So the perception that our "star" players usually underperform when they put on the white shirt is nonsense.

And there is no "reason" for the poor performance in South Africa - it is just purely random. Like Greece winning the European Championships a few years back, when they were nowhere near the best side.

It's an old cliche, but the line between success and failure is a narrow one. The obvious example is the disallowed equalizer. Everyone says it would have made no difference, because Germany were so much better. But that is a completely fallacious argument with the benefit of hindsight.

Just as relevant is the USA scoring in the last minute against Algeria. If they had not, England would have topped the group, played Ghana in the last 16, and have had a decent chance of beating Uruguay for a place in the semi-finals.

Oh well, the search for meaning and reason in the Universe, it's a modern manifestation of religion, I guess ...

-- Edited by Ratty on Wednesday 30th of June 2010 05:26:04 AM

As others said 2 great posts,with permission I may well borrow parts to explain what I mean by luck in tennis.

One objection though,the USA winner was only making up for the wrongly in most people's view disallowed goal vs Slovakia.

indiana · Tennis legend

One thing that of course adds to such randomness as there is is FIFA's ridiculous stance against technology, be it goalline technology or video technology with a 4th official monitoring.

Football likes to think it is the greatest game in the world but as other sports have embraced technology it now stands out as having some of the worst decisions.

The oft argued thing about wanting the game the same right down the levels is ridiculous, gee you don't even have linesmen at the lowest levels, and other sports don't bother about that, they get the big important matches officiated correctly.

At the top level I would :

a) Have goalline terchnology, be it in the ball or whatever, so that it is known instantly if the ball has crossed the line.

b) Would have instant review of all goals to check for any reasons not to award the goal.

c) Would have instant review of all penalties awarded to see if any problem in awarding the penalty.

d) Instant review of all penalties taken whether scored or not, the main issue being encroachment and the goalkeeper moving off his line before the kick is taken, which both appear to be dealt with randomly, particularly encroachment which probably happens most of the time. The Spain penalty vs Paraguay was correctly ordered to be retaken because of Spanish encroachment, but so should have been the Paraguay miss, again because of Spanish encroachment.

Those would help sort out some of the big issues, using an experienced 4th official.

I accept b) and c) would still in some case be a matter of opinion. But so often it is actually fairly clear from TV that a mistake has been made and this would correct many of these. Obvious issues could be transmitted by 4th official. Others could maybe be subject to quick earpiece discussion between referee and 4th official. Whatever, you would lessen the number of errors and cut out the obvious ones.

There would remain contentious issues such as offsides given when not offside, penalties not awarded ( difficult to deal with in a flowing game ) and such as fouls, bookings and sending offs which some maybe could see being incorporated in some way.

I am reluctant to take technology and intervention too far though such that it effects the flow of the game, and such as an offside given when it shouldnt of been is difficult to find a way to deal with, given players will likely react to the offside flag.

But what I propose in a) to d) above deals with a) instantly and quickly comes to a conclusion on b) to d) when play has stopped anyway as a result of a goal or penalty situation. Sorting out some of the most important matters is better than nothing at all and the current FIFA "head in sands " attitude.

Something needs to be done soon. Since football at the top level loses credibility as millions instantly see on TV such as the Henry handball vs Ireland, the England ball over the line vs Germany, etc etc.

-- Edited by indiana on Tuesday 6th of July 2010 12:05:50 AM