Last night the Spanish made it a hat-trick - World Cup, European Nations Cup and U21 and on top of that Barcelona have made a clean sweep of the Champions league. In the past we have seen the Portuguese develop a team at youth level and seen it develop through the different age levels of football to be, if not world beaters, a country that out punches its weight as a footballing nation.
I love English football I want it to succeed at all levels, but I see the Premier League putting up barriers and psychological hurdles created all the time.
England have U21's capable of certainly being in the same final as Spain, it could be argued that we should have beaten them in the 1st match as their goal was a hand ball (that said they had so much possession it led to Pearce saying that if we had so much possession we would have won 5-0 - but we did not Stuart, that is the problem).
England perform badly in tournaments, we go into a tournament expecting to be disappointed, added to that for something like the U21's we tell the players going into the tournament that they are not even the first choice. Wilshire and Wallcott would have made a massive difference but they were too tired. Too tired to be part of and key to a successful tournament side.
In club football it is often said that teams don't know how to win trophies until they win that first one be it a Europa league or a League or FA Cup. Until then their credentials to go on to better things is questionable.
If we were to send an U21 team to a tournament which they believed they could win because the squad members were not merely replacements for tired first choices and the team had the belief that they had match winning players and it was worth turning up, their mentality would be so much stronger for the tournament (Not conceding a wining position to a losing one in the last minute) and by wining it they would have the experience and taste for success unlike any England team above youth level for many years.
It is about time that the U21's were taken seriously with key squad members being available when the senior squad was not playing and they were primed for success not managed to failure.
3 comments:
You know what? every time i hear that statement 'footballers are too tired to play' in any fucking competion. I want to explode.
Tired! that haven't got a clue. They ought to try working a week of 12hr nights in some shit factory somewhere. Then they would know what tired means!
I agree with Daggs. If that had been the Euro finals or the World Cup, I wonder if those very players would have been too tired to appear in that.
No, thought not.
I agree too, bloody prima donnas and how come its only the english players. None of the foreign players playing in the english league screw up through tiredness in international competitions.
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