england?

[ozleeds]

The worst part is that they are supposed to be the best players, yet they are made to play against other best players twice in like 3 days.

[ozleeds]

I grew up in the 70s here, and they trained twice a week and played on sat only. The Ozzie rules were the same as the major league was only based here in Victoria. Nearly all the teams were based in Melbourne and played on Saturday. It was a different time, and I used to enjoy it, as now I couldn't give a farke really.
Only downer for me is which one do I choose and having just moved here, I went to soccer where in the 80s they changed the league to national, and I lost interest and went to ozzie rules games till they did the same, went national, and that's when I sort of lost all interest.

[WTF11]

I am a bit surprised by the comments on this thread. Surely everyone on here watches the matches with a significant level of interest because they want to see if their predictions in prediction league are correct.

Not really. Club football is now the pre-eminent focus for fans and the media who feed.the masses with their footballing fix.

Decades have passed since national teams, in the case of this thread England, were constructed from players from a handful of teams and with names familiar to most, be they supporters of the relevant clubs or not.

The national team now is a hotch potch of players who only come together occasionally, have little understanding of each others playing style and capabilities.

The group structures further erode interest, with "senior" sides able to depend up in being placed amongst sides they would expect to beat (not always so predictable when it comes to England!) and hence proceed to the knockout stages.

England haven't been particularly convincing in the knockout stages for some time, almost as if we are offered up as the first "shock" defeat, so hardly surprising that interest is "limited". I'm sure the victory tonight will be touted as the new dawn for English football (Toucel seems to think so), but the real test will come when we play credible opposition, something severely lacking of late.

[alfinyalcabo]

Good win last night in Serbia. 🙂

[spaldy]

Is it wrong to hope that every one of the countries our players represent get knocked out now so we don?t have the injury concern?

[ozleeds]

Is it wrong to hope that every one of the countries our players represent get knocked out now so we don?t have the injury concern?

We don't have that many I think 5 and 4 were injured. At least we can try someone better anyway.