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Author Topic: The world Cup Russia 2018 Thread  (Read 200737 times)
Flashheart

« Reply #1380 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:20:55 »

I'm sure I heard one commentator mention that England had the 2nd youngest squad in the tournament.
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horlock07

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« Reply #1381 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:33:24 »

They did, but I wasn’t convinced, so i checked.

The team that started for France yesterday was exactly the same age as the England team that started against Croatia in terms of years.
If you go down to days the French team was a combined 500 days older.

I guess they may have meant squad instead of just the starting XI

I can imagine that Ashley Young rather skewed the figures?

In terms of sheer quality they seem a long way ahead of us.
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Posh Red
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« Reply #1382 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:41:19 »

I can imagine that Ashley Young rather skewed the figures?

In terms of sheer quality they seem a long way ahead of us.

They had three players over 30, whereas we had just Ashley Young.

I guess you would look at the experience rather than just age, for example Pogba is the same age as Lingard (in fact he’s 3 months younger), and Harry Maguire is the same age as Varane.

Hopefully the experience of this tournament will help our team in the future.
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #1383 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:50:08 »

I can imagine that Ashley Young rather skewed the figures?

In terms of sheer quality they seem a long way ahead of us.

France isn't really a footballing country.... what it does have is a huge talent pool in the banlieues, into which the small local clubs have tapped and their FA has invested in coaching and education, culminating in the Clairfontaine academy.

The French league is essentially a feeder league, for particularly the Prem and la Liiga, with some going to Germany and Italy...this of course helps the players learn.

Our FA is still way behind....  OK we've now got Burton which was established after France won 20 years ago, but one of the stated aims of selling Wembley is to put the money into grass roots.  Belgium for example suddenly got good on the back of some investment into coaching and facilities.

However... I'm guessing for most fans of football in England they'd rather have a strong domestic set up, and come up a bit short on the international front.
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Berniman
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« Reply #1384 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 11:52:51 »

I think you need to take into account number of caps as well as age of the squad.  e.g. I heard a stat on the England vs Belgium game..  We had around 280 caps for our team vs around around 750 caps for Belgium - that shows better the international experience of our team vs others.

We have been building this squad for less than 2 years, if the core of it stays together with a sprinkling of the World cup winning youths coming through, it should be a relatively positive outlook.
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« Reply #1385 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 12:00:11 »

I think you need to take into account number of caps as well as age of the squad.  e.g. I heard a stat on the England vs Belgium game..  We had around 280 caps for our team vs around around 750 caps for Belgium - that shows better the international experience of our team vs others.

We have been building this squad for less than 2 years, if the core of it stays together with a sprinkling of the World cup winning youths coming through, it should be a relatively positive outlook.

The positive outlook has to mean more regular appearances in semi finals and finals of Euros and WC's..... ok you can't win them all, but this WC should act as springboard for 2020 Euros, especially as semis and final are at Wembley.

You'd like to think GS will hang about, as there's more restructuring work to be done and he's now got a voice.
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horlock07

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« Reply #1386 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 12:02:12 »

France isn't really a footballing country.... what it does have is a huge talent pool in the banlieues, into which the small local clubs have tapped and their FA has invested in coaching and education, culminating in the Clairfontaine academy.


I wasn't aware that we didn't have suburbs in this country?
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« Reply #1387 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 12:05:14 »

I'll put a dampener on it Smiley We did well, clearly not ready to sit at the top table quite yet but there is hope.

However the run also did remind me a bot of Wales in the last Euro's. A team achieving more than they should with great spirit/attitude. And look how that ended!
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horlock07

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« Reply #1388 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 12:06:33 »

I think you need to take into account number of caps as well as age of the squad.  e.g. I heard a stat on the England vs Belgium game..  We had around 280 caps for our team vs around around 750 caps for Belgium - that shows better the international experience of our team vs others.

We have been building this squad for less than 2 years, if the core of it stays together with a sprinkling of the World cup winning youths coming through, it should be a relatively positive outlook.

The issue is our young players don't get caps for the simple reason that in the majority of cases they are not even playing in the highest league until they are heading towards their early/mid 20's, look at the teams which have won at the lower age groups (u19's u21's), very few of the players are anywhere near the first teams where they are and unless they get loaned out to a lower prem club (like Loftus Cheek last year for instance) its a few seasons in the championship which is not really a grounding for anything - see the way that promoted teams rapidly turn over players with those who got them promoted migrating back to the Championship.

Hopefully is starting to change as a few young players have grown a pair and started moving abroad for experience etc so fingers crossed, my main worry is that we don't seem to have anyone of the level of say Hazard or Mbappe either in the present crop or coming through as yet?

I'll put a dampener on it Smiley We did well, clearly not ready to sit at the top table quite yet but there is hope.

However the run also did remind me a bot of Wales in the last Euro's. A team achieving more than they should with great spirit/attitude. And look how that ended!

We did very well and when it got to the semi's I think we settled in our natural position within the 4 teams.

My worry was still the fact that whatever our talents were, we just didn't seem able to play at a decent tempo for more than an hour and looked knackered after that, mirroring a fitness issue which seems to have befallen Swindon for the last couple of years?
« Last Edit: Monday, July 16, 2018, 12:10:43 by horlock07 » Logged
Bogus Dave
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« Reply #1389 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 13:20:20 »

France isn't really a footballing country.... what it does have is a huge talent pool in the banlieues, into which the small local clubs have tapped and their FA has invested in coaching and education, culminating in the Clairfontaine academy.

The French league is essentially a feeder league, for particularly the Prem and la Liiga, with some going to Germany and Italy...this of course helps the players learn.

Our FA is still way behind....  OK we've now got Burton which was established after France won 20 years ago, but one of the stated aims of selling Wembley is to put the money into grass roots.  Belgium for example suddenly got good on the back of some investment into coaching and facilities.

However... I'm guessing for most fans of football in England they'd rather have a strong domestic set up, and come up a bit short on the international front.

The team that has reached three of the last six World Cup finals. Not really a footballing country
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Flashheart

« Reply #1390 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 13:28:25 »

*Reg facts
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« Reply #1391 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 13:34:10 »

He's got a point, France isn't really that big into football, more of a rugby country.  In the bar I work in, which is only a couple of hours from Lyon we're only ever busy for PSG Champion's League games insofar as french teams go whereas we have frenchies asking for rugby much more frequently.
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #1392 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 14:35:13 »

He's got a point, France isn't really that big into football, more of a rugby country.  In the bar I work in, which is only a couple of hours from Lyon we're only ever busy for PSG Champion's League games insofar as french teams go whereas we have frenchies asking for rugby much more frequently.

PSG, only really came to prominence in 91 whern Canal+ decided that Paris should have a football club, for them to show on tele. 

They get a 40 odd thousand crowd, but there isn't another Paris club of any size.  Marseilles and Lyon are football places, and there is some interest in the north in places like Lille.  However the total top flight attendances would be well down on our Championship.
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« Reply #1393 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 14:51:24 »

Nice to see the Croatian president rolling up to games. She apparently attended every Croatia match, travelled in economy class and sat with the fans in the stadium. She refused to take any pay for her days not at work.

As she is eastern European here's a Picture for Reg....

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Nemo
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« Reply #1394 on: Monday, July 16, 2018, 15:01:22 »

She's also a conservative, so he'll have very mixed feelings indeed...
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