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will definitely steal that.
There's a tongue-in-cheek article in issue zero of
the blizzard about how this is all Roy of the Rovers' fault for forming the basis of every English gameplan since 1970. Worth a look, it's available on pay-what-you-like.
Is he the guy who advocated the long ball based on the thoery, time in the box = more chances at goal and thus long direct passes to a forward..? Apparently this theory was popular for a long time. It's amazing given the level of sophisitication in the English cricket anaylsis.
Given Australian football media hail from the continent and love to blame the 'English Mafia' for why Australian football was so poor outside of the influx of Greeks/Italians/Serbs/Croats post WW2, here's a list of what we have been told over the years as to why England struggle to keep up with the continentals in terms of technique. With heart/passion and all that other bollocks being held equal.
a) Initially only teachers could coach the game. Compare this to the high levels of structure in the Italian system and others where exhaustive theoretical debate took place between former players.
b) The working class roots have really affected the theory behind the game. Equalisation of work expected from all players leading to people to question if the inbetween striker/forward type player e.g. like Maradona (forgetting he's an argie f***er) would have struggled to get a game as a youngster, small, slow and not really fitting to the rigid 4-4-2. Some creative players who float in and out of games or don't 'get stuck in' would fail to win crowd approval.
c) cold weather, too much running around at training instead of teaching skills.
d) Pride, invented the game so what can 'they' teach us.
e) Too much emphasis on power, thus in juniors the 6 month younger guys usually struggle vs the more developed players in their age groups, although they might have more technical ability. (Germany made this adjustment to thier junior system after the 98 QF loss to croatia, and believe the class of WC2010 to be showed fruit of this theory, plus they have won a heap of junior tournaments).
f) EPL is great to watch but, outside the top few, it's really a myriad of mistakes if you watch it closely and critically (Jose made this comment in his first press conference as Inter Manager 'Italians are professionals who see football as a job and manage their bodies/outlook accordingly, English players enjoy playing so much I can't get them to take rests (
Lampard) and they just want to have fun rather than see the bigger picture).
g) Too concerned about the ends rather than the means. Press feed this circus to a hungry crowd.
h) Not enough small sided games for kids.
i) England are naturally crap and bottle it under pressure (The Aussie ungrounded pub theory
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, maybe we stole that from them).