Football Banter Thread

So Rooney has been fined 2 weeks wages by Everton which is apparently £300,000. Bet the other Everyon players love Rooney getting paid twice what they are to be utter **** week in week out.
 
Anyone got any views on why English players are so poor technically compared to the continentals? Why can't they keep a ball, pass, shoot with the same quality?
 
Moses said:
We didn't, and don't, focus on it enough. Too often we use big balls, eleven a side games, favour 'big strong kids' who've just had a growth spurt before their peers so have a natural advantage, etc. We need to accept that building technical skills with 5/6 a side, smaller pitches, futsal balls, etc, etc is the way forward. I'd guess there's more of that than there was a decade ago, but I bet you still have a ridiculous proportion of kids being coached terribly... which goes onto the other side of all this where we massively lag behind in terms of qualified coaches. From a few years ago, but,
Click to expand...

I completely agree. I wonder if the lack of good coaches also affects what we place the emphasis on when it comes to the youth game as well. Get a bunch of coaches who are just "having a go" or teaching the team because their son plays can't be a good thing.

I gave up football because it got to a point where you were playing against much bigger lads, nasty teams and all the enjoyment was lost. I wasn't the next Ronaldo but I was quite good, I just didn't appreciate being kicked the **** out of every week and playing against teams that seemed to have gone down the space jam route and their whole team was 6 inches taller than most of us.
 
Street football, we don't do it anymore, when I say street football, I don't mean playing on a actual street, although you can, I mean, kids playing in their own free time literally anywhere with whoever, kids playing football nowadays only ever consists of 1 training session per week with a game at the weekend, most of the time they are playing Xbox or something. Are parents scared to allow their children out? Maybe that has something to do with it as well. They just aren't playing enough football compared to say Brazilian kids, those children will be playing for 3 or 4 hours a day every day, they get to the that golden 10,000 hours a lot quicker than our children.
 
Trusty said:
They just aren't playing enough football compared to say Brazilian kids, those children will be playing for 3 or 4 hours a day every day, they get to the that golden 10,000 hours a lot quicker than our children.
Click to expand...

I don't agree with that. Our top english players are not playing twice a week growing up. Kids that a football mad will be playing for hours a day still. Its our culture of football and what we prioritise thats the biggest issue.
 
fez said:
I don't agree with that. Our top english players are not playing twice a week growing up. Kids that a football mad will be playing for hours a day still. Its our culture of football and what we prioritise thats the biggest issue.
Click to expand...

Yeah obviously England players won't have been playing twice a week, it's the numbers, the higher the number of kids playing for hours on end the higher the probability of getting Ronaldinho's, we don't have the numbers compared to other countries, I scour the streets for kids playing football, I don't see it compared to say 10 years ago. Glenn Hoddle has made a point about this very problem very recently. Also, the mentality of youth players at younger ages, they think they've made it when they are like 14 or 15 if they are attached to a professional, rarely do we see them staying out after training with a bag of balls practising, they are down the social club bigging up themselves, it just all adds up to that 10,000 hours I was going in about.
 
Last edited:
Trusty said:
Yeah obviously England players won't have been playing twice a week, it's the numbers, the higher the number of kids playing for hours on end the higher the probability of getting Ronaldinho's, we don't have the numbers compared to other countries, I scour the streets for kids playing football, I don't see it compared to say 10 years ago. Glenn Hoddle has made a point about this very problem very recently. Also, the mentality of youth players at younger ages, they think they've made it when they are like 14 or 15 if they are attached to a professional, rarely do we see them staying out after training with a bag of balls practising, they are down the social club bigging up themselves, it just all adds up to that 10,000 hours I was going in about.
Click to expand...

Yeah you're probably right. When kids as young as 15 are being scouted and signed for serious money its got to be hard to keep their feet on the ground.
 
Rodgers said Sterling was on £2k a week when he was playing regularly. At that age that's a freaking fortune yet his agent was still in his ear constantly no doubt.
 
MissChief said:
Rodgers said Sterling was on £2k a week when he was playing regularly. At that age that's a freaking fortune yet his agent was still in his ear constantly no doubt.
Click to expand...
But when you are playing regularly and some on the field next to you or on the bench or not even in the squad is on ten or fifty times that, then it's hard to justify.
 
Trusty said:
Yeah obviously England players won't have been playing twice a week, it's the numbers, the higher the number of kids playing for hours on end the higher the probability of getting Ronaldinho's, we don't have the numbers compared to other countries, I scour the streets for kids playing football, I don't see it compared to say 10 years ago. Glenn Hoddle has made a point about this very problem very recently. Also, the mentality of youth players at younger ages, they think they've made it when they are like 14 or 15 if they are attached to a professional, rarely do we see them staying out after training with a bag of balls practising, they are down the social club bigging up themselves, it just all adds up to that 10,000 hours I was going in about.
Click to expand...

We have disagreed elsewhere but I totally agree here. I played football almost every waking moment of free time as a kid. I was never going to be a pro and in truth wasn't that good but I loved it as a game. I played with mates but only in a formalised environment once a week and I think that's the difference. I got better through sheer repetition, would spend hours down the park practicing dribbling, volleys, 3 and in, blah blah, rain hail or shine. My improvement through practice was mirrored by the more talented players too because we were all doing it so the overall standard rose. A naturally gifted player practicing and playing 20 hours a week is going to be better than a player of limited ability doing the same but that limited player practicing and playing may be almost as good as a naturally gifted kid today who doesn't have the opportunity to put in the same hours because its the fun, social, normal thing to do with mates.
 
Charlton look like they’ve got another good’un on their hands with Fosu-Henry. Expect to hear more of his name soon. Perfect hat trick Saturday.
 
Iniesta probably would choose to play for the Catalan side over Spain (or decide to retire to avoid any of this). He has been a 'guest player' for them in the past as that's solely based from birth location, but he has lived in and played for Barcelona since he was 12.

Would give a quite a good game that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom