Toulon Tournament

[woof!]

Every player and person can, with practice, develop an excellent first touch. The drop of the shoulder and ability to beat a man is innate and can be improved with practice, although if you're not born with it you'll never be a winger or a number 10. But there's no reason why, as a minimum, we can't have aggressive athletes in our team with a sound first touch if we get the coaching and practice hours right. The fact is we've struggled for years to achieve even this. 

[troopio]

Greece won Euro 2004 playing Hoofball and parking the Bus. Portugal, albeit Technically gifted and having "Ronaldo" won Euro 2016 playing negative football...

My point?? I think we are blinded by us wanting to play a certain way and that is the only way to be successful. Granted the arguments above are different in that we clearly cant coach players to be Technically capable however does it matter how you get a result? Route one or Tiki Taka it shouldn't matter really as long as you win? I want to see the game played on the floor, the right way etc however I think considering how poor we are at the moment it needs to be baby steps and try to crawl before moaning about wanting to walk??

Also, when we qualified for WC 1998 I wouldn't say the Football was pretty either..........

[roman_bairn]

Just noticed Scotland beat the Czech Republic 3-0 to finish third. Good performance after losing to them in the group stages.

Disappointing at the loss v England but overall a good showing by the Scots.

[RandomGuy.]

From what i've seen, yes. They've got a better first touch than previous Scottish generations too, but whether they develop physique and a fighting spirit, as well as game intelligence, remains to be seen.

Problem is, according to numerous youth coaches, that these young players are only being taught a certain style, to the point they get described as "drones". We're going to end up with a squad full of identikit players

[woof!]

36 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

 

Problem is, according to numerous youth coaches, that these young players are only being taught a certain style, to the point they get described as "drones". We're going to end up with a squad full of identikit players

 

i've heard that too, but then it comes down to attitude and natural ability (the coaching won't suppress that - as it will re-emerge with age). We need every player to have a good first touch though, and it's easily achieved.

[dogmc]

Biggest concern with the u20s at toulon is how often they resorted to just blootering the ball up the park hoping Burke could make something of it.

[kenny131]

1 minute ago, dogmc said:

Biggest concern with the u20s at toulon is how often they resorted to just blootering the ball up the park hoping Burke could make something of it.

It was the laziest match tactics I've ever seen....hey just blooter it to burke as he is the best player, they should never be allowed near another unders team as they clearly have no idea what there doing.

[dogmc]

It was the laziest match tactics I've ever seen....hey just blooter it to burke as he is the best player, they should never be allowed near another unders team as they clearly have no idea what there doing.

Concern for me is more that they seemed to be coached to do that (assuming you were referring to players rather than coaches apologies if I'm making same point as you). Can't say I have faith in our coaches at any grade up to seniors.