Well well well, isn't this a lovely day, quiet but lovely? :wink:
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Well well well, isn't this a lovely day, quiet but lovely? :wink:
Hi, can anyone advise why sky aren't showing the English reaction to the Croatian equaliser and winner? And where is Ian Wright and the rests reaction to the two goals?
https://www.theguardian.com/football...nd-luka-modric
Interesting piece about the Croatian perspective. Seems the English media’s sense of entitlement came back to bite.....
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My feelings exactly. They were beaten by the better team. The difference was in the midfield. England don't have the quality there that other teams do. They actually played well till Croatia scored but apart from the mcguire header offer little. It was their best chance of winning it in my lifetime but unless they can discover a Gascoigne type and debruyne quality midfielder, how far they go in tournaments will depend on the draw. Had me worried I have to admit.
:agree:
They're one or two top class players and a bunch more experience away from being genuine contenders and that sort of thing isn't something you can go out and buy, unlike club football. The midfield just lacks that bit of guile. Next time round many other nations will have improved too though so it's not going to get any easier for them. I would have been relaxed about them winning it so worry wasn't really part of the equation for me.
Germany won't be that bad again for a long time. Italy's new manager and their younger prospects will qualify and will be contenders. Don't know enough about Holland to say whether they are on an upward path. Argentina on the other hand I can only see weakening for a while. Brazil need a long hard look at where playing in the European style is getting them. I just don't understand what is going on with Spain, I'm not sure they do either.
It's been interesting to see the sides with superstars not really punching their weight properly - Neymar/Brazil, Ronaldo/Portugal, Messi/Argentina. I almost got the impression that they would have been stronger without them because it would have forced them to play as whole teams rather than superstar plus ten.
Unfortunately our biggest challenge is likely to be picking another country to support when we don't make it - again. Can we really be absent from the World Cup finals for what will be almost a quarter of a century?
Over to Alex McLeish...:dunno:
We have a large percentage of our support who are happy to laugh at our national team, who take delight in whenever we lose a goal or a game.
They have all the answers about playing youngsters, yet when we do play them and lose its the managers tactics.
There's a lot more wrong than the players and managers with Scotland, the way the whole game is set up in the country, is not for the benefit of our national team, its for the benefit of two teams, and the lackeys who are in charge.
Supporting your national team should be the default position of every Scottish football fan, when they cant do that, and they take great delight when we lose, its a bloody disgrace and they get the team they deserve.
There are a lot of English people who mocked their national team before this tournament.
I think it's a coping strategy for folk who don't like being permanently disappointed.
If Scotland do qualify for the Euros or the next WC, people will get behind the team and be excited at our prospects.
Bloody snowflakes, they need to man up and channel their support towards the team and nation. They take great delight when we lose a goal, give a penalty away or even lose.
When we do win, its not enough, we should be winning against (insert team here) They actually want us to lose, so they can tell us how bad we are.
As i said earlier, your default position as a football fan who's Scottish should be to get behind them.
England could and should have had the game seen up by half time. If either or both of those chances had gone in, they'd be in the final. Kane's misses in particular was hard to believe.
Unfortunately, England's expectations will have risen markedly and unless they sort out their midfield, more disappointment will be in its way for their fans.
I've not encountered anyone who actively want us to lose. If that's the case then they're ****holes.
I agree with your last paragraph although I can understand people losing interest in the national team when performances and results are regularly poor and disappointing.
We continue to live in hope though.
They had a fortunate draw and an unbelievable chance to do it, and they blew it. Shame.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results = failure. Repeatedly.
Something stinks here though. We managed to qualify from '74 through to '90 continuously and there's no way Scottish Football wasn't dominated by, and run in the interests of, the Ugly Sisters then. The SFA would have been even less transparent, even more backward and even more in thrall to the Uglies in that period. So other much wider factors have to be at play too.
I wasn't wild about Craig Brown but at least he got us to the Euros and a World Cup (although largely I would argue on the back of the legacy left by Andy Roxburgh's tenure as manager). From then onward the list of managers has been largely a dirge list of the unadventurous and the steady-as-she-goes-stick-with-the-players-I-know types: Vogts, Burns, Smith, McLeish, Burley, Levein, Stark, Strachan, Mackay and now McLeish again.
Interestingly McLeish has the highest all time win percentage of any Scotland manager (aside from one game wonders like Stark) from his previous tenure - 7 wins from 10. So maybe McLeish will be the answer.
Can't agree with your last sentence. I don't think fans get the team they deserve, I think they're driven to indifference by the teams they are given. Crowds have a role to play in international fixtures, no doubt about that, but by the time the day of any individual game has arrived 90% of what will affect the result has already taken place - squad selection, training, training facilities, psychology, tactics, fitness, leadership, team selection, team formation, choice of captain, media treatment etc. The fans are the very last people in a long chain who should carry any responsibility.
Failing to qualify for a World Cup Finals for 20 years means we need to be doing something or somethings differently. The real question for me is - what has changed since that '74 to '90 period?
Croatia took their chances which is the difference at the highest level. Croatia always been a good side but haven't performed as their talents suggest they should have. Pity that it wasn't a Belgium France final as I think they have been the best teams. Belgium needed another striker beside lukaku then they would have beaten France I think. Yes expectations will be raised way above realistic which will make the fall sweeter for us and more painful for them. Aww.
We don't produce enough players and because of that we don't produce enough players with the required quality or mindset.
Most if not all of the players from 74-90 would have started playing football on the street. That doesn't happen any more and the facilities to get swathes of youngsters playing have yet to be built. Look to Iceland where they had a plan, build facilities and train coaches, its not rocket science, just science. The SFA just don't seem interested enough in modernising development and would rather stumble along with a culture that just doesn't hack it in the modern age.
It's maybe more common than you realise. I know 3 people that actively support Scotland's rivals and are delighted when Scotland lose. They revel in it, it's very strange behaviour. Two of them are jambos and one is a sevco fan. They are all bigoted, extremely bitter, self-loathing scots.
Try telling people from other parts of the world that some people that are born and raised in Scotland don't support Scotland. It's very difficult to explain.
I think one problem we have is players who have their heads turned by much larger wages down south or with the Old Firm. I can’t blame them, but we don’t manage to ‘grow’ players and give them experience within a hopefully supportive club environment. They either go to the Old Firm, where I think they win more but with a lot less need for individual skill or effort, or they go down south and do the square root of naff all because they aren’t ready to play at the level they are needed to. That’s not to say that down south is a better level, but it is different and there’s so much cash around that players don’t seem to get as much time to bed in. Take Cummings as an example, wasnt able to do much at Nottingham Forestor didn’t get enough try and then found himself at The Rangers with a poor season ahead of him. If we had been in the top league with McGinn for three years there’s no danger we’d have kept him that long. Too many players bought from Scottish clubs easily by big English money and too big a financial gulf between us and the Old Firm. They can buy played as an investment or as a way to stop rivals appearing. That’s great for them but poorer for Scottish football.
Spot on. The players that came through then were, in some cases, genuine world class (Dalglish, Hansen, Sounness, McGrain)
It was a Golden Age for Scottish football - An era now long gone and never to be repeated.
I said in another thread that similar sized small footballing nations have since caught up and over taken us - thus we now jostle with dozens of other also-rans in the footballing pecking order.
We punched above our size for decades, and those of us who were around will never forget The World Cup of 1974 - going out of the tournament undefeated and drawing with the then World Champions, Brazil.
They didn't 'blow it'. They went into the tournament with expectations probably lower than for any England side at a major tournament. Few would have expected them to get further than the last 16 so they had a very good tournament and ultimately lost out to a more experienced and stronger side. Credit to them.