Kris Boyd - 'Football is now a Middle Class sport'

[Kuro]

Just now, Boaby Fisher said:

I disagree (they beat Spain and Croatia in the Nations League), but putting that to one side, they are significantly better than they were 10 years ago, so they're doing something right.

Are they?  I think 2002 and 98 they were at least as good as now probably slightly better.  The Nations League is a friendly for the big teams, when it mattered in the WC was a different story.

[Boaby Fisher]

57 minutes ago, Kuro said:

Are they?  I think 2002 and 98 they were at least as good as now probably slightly better.  The Nations League is a friendly for the big teams, when it mattered in the WC was a different story.

I think they are. Maybe I'm just getting old and less bitter, but I find that I'm impressed by England when I didn't feel that way in previous years. Their team from Euro '96 is lauded because of that performance against the Dutch, but they were lucky as f**k to beat us, and I wouldn't say that the '96 Scotland side were world beaters (although they were obviously a lot better than the pish being served up now).

[Binos]

16 hours ago, Gaz said:

Well, that's just wrong (the second point anyway).

He also walked out on his country

[Binos]

9 hours ago, Kuro said:

Are they?  I think 2002 and 98 they were at least as good as now probably slightly better.  The Nations League is a friendly for the big teams, when it mattered in the WC was a different story.

98 was a great side, just bottled

[Gaz]

9 hours ago, Boaby Fisher said:

I think they are. Maybe I'm just getting old and less bitter, but I find that I'm impressed by England when I didn't feel that way in previous years. Their team from Euro '96 is lauded because of that performance against the Dutch, but they were lucky as f**k to beat us, and I wouldn't say that the '96 Scotland side were world beaters (although they were obviously a lot better than the pish being served up now).

I don't feel England are particularly better than they were 10 / 20 years ago, to take last year's World Cup as an example it was a complete perfect storm for them in terms of progression with regards to which teams failed to qualify / were knocked out early.

[Detournement]

England are clearly improving and have the results in youth football to back it up. Sancho, Rashford, Foden and Alexander-Arnold look like top players coming through and they seem to have more on the way. Sterling has moved onto another level under Pep. 

Whether they bridge the gap to France is another matter but they are better than they have been in a long time. 

[DanMc99]

24 minutes ago, Detournement said:

England are clearly improving and have the results in youth football to back it up. Sancho, Rashford, Foden and Alexander-Arnold look like top players coming through and they seem to have more on the way. Sterling has moved onto another level under Pep. 

Whether they bridge the gap to France is another matter but they are better than they have been in a long time. 

improving in an attacking sense and more pleasing on the eye than in previous years but defensively a long way to go

[Shandon Par]

20 hours ago, craigkillie said:

I have never got the impression that Ryan Fraser is the brightest guy about.

If you listen to his podcast with Graeme (Graham?) Hunter you might be surprised. Meditation, cookery.. not the stereotypical off-field lifestyle! 

[Ross.]

Not sure Englands improvement is a sign that the FA are doing something right from the top down. More a sign that the EPL finally worked out that simply throwing lots of money at the first team wasn't getting the return it should.

Sterling has improved immeasurably under Pep. Kane made his breakthrough at Spurs just before Poch tookover but kicked on when being managed by a top class coach. Henderson was in danger of becoming something of a joke figure when Klopp took over, and Alexander-Arnold is also benefiting massively from having him there. The level of investment in Sports Science at club level has also turned guys who would have been good athletes into top class athletes, the likes of Rashford and Oxlade Chamberlain doing more in the game than their actual footballing ability would suggest they should.

England have improved but mainly because the club game wisened up a bit at the top end. Which ironically, happened because so many foreigners got involved in the ownership and coaching side of things and changed a lot behind the scenes.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ross.

[forameus]

In a general sense, is following a career in football really enjoyable enough to make kids properly knuckle down and put in the effort and sacrifice to get to the level of someone like Andy Robertson?  When I was a kid, I was pretty fucking shite at football.  Outside of indoor 5s games against adults my Dad was playing with (who were probably heavily humouring me) I didn't really play much.  I got into BB 7s around late primary early secondary and started getting a lot better, to the point where now I'd like to think I'm pretty good but obviously a million fucking miles away from any serious level.  As such, the most organised I ever got in terms of a club or training was going along to a few teams with people I work with.  And I hated the "training aspect".  Most of my "growing up" with football was just unorganised stramashes until it got dark, so going from that to endless drills and not actually playing wasn't really that appealing.  I'm also not really fit enough for that, but that's obviously zero to do with it...

So given that you don't really get the same degree of kids just going out and kicking a ball about (because "ye cannae dae that these days", because all dangers to kids only got invented in recent years apparently), if the only alternative is organised football at clubs, is there the same degree of "fun" involved?  I'd imagine that if you're going to  be good enough to represent your country, then you're going to have to really, really love what you do given the amount of work you'll have had to put in.  I wouldn't blame kids for losing the love of the game early on.

13 hours ago, Kuro said:

The comparison with the 60s/70s is nonsense as they game has moved on, the difference is we haven't.  Everybody else has but our players haven't to nearly the same extent.

You talk a power of pish sometimes Kuro, but this is it in a nutshell.  We still lord it over other nations, even if it's subconsciously, with some misplaced belief that we're better than we are.  That Israel game where they bodied us, you could hear the salivation on the radio about how they could wheel out the World Rankings and show just how terrible a result this was, stopping only just short of screaming "AND THEY'RE FUCKING DIDDIES" at the end.  This attitude needs to stop, because if there is such a thing as a diddy team in International football (outside of ones like Gibraltar, San Marino etc), then WE are the diddies.  We've stood still for years while countries barely old enough to go to school accelerate past us.  Often technically better, and always more confident in their abilities.  Whereas we have our captain coming out and saying, essentially, they were shitebags after taking the lead.

 

 

[Distant Doonhamer]

The women’s team are getting better though, so it’s not all bad. I genuinely found myself getting more ‘emotionally involved’ in watching their efforts in the World Cup than I did watching the men get pumped by Russia and Belgium. If my experience of watching both teams is anything to go by, then we don’t necessarily demand that either the men or women always qualify for everything, or win all the time. We will however, get behind a team who look like they care, look like they’re trying, and gave it their best. I cannot say the men’s team are reaching these three basic goals required for Scottish fans to excuse some of their other failings.

The women’s team are improving albeit it’s a low bar IMHO. They also took the throwing it away ethos that we recognise from the men’s team to a whole new level in the game v Argentina and then capped it all by having an alcohol fuelled “debrief” after which the head coach is extremely fortunate to still to be in a job. So definite signs of progress [emoji102]

[pozbaird]

1 hour ago, Distant Doonhamer said:

The women’s team are improving albeit it’s a low bar IMHO. They also took the throwing it away ethos that we recognise from the men’s team to a whole new level in the game v Argentina and then capped it all by having an alcohol fuelled “debrief” after which the head coach is extremely fortunate to still to be a job. So definite signs of progress

Aye, but at least they got there in the first place before it went tits up. No pun intended. 

Edited September 12, 2019 by pozbaird

[Savage Henry]

Not sure Englands improvement is a sign that the FA are doing something right from the top down. More a sign that the EPL finally worked out that simply throwing lots of money at the first team wasn't getting the return it should.
Sterling has improved immeasurably under Pep. Kane made his breakthrough at Spurs just before Poch tookover but kicked on when being managed by a top class coach. Henderson was in danger of becoming something of a joke figure when Klopp took over, and Alexander-Arnold is also benefiting massively from having him there. The level of investment in Sports Science at club level has also turned guys who would have been good athletes into top class athletes, the likes of Rashford and Oxlade Chamberlain doing more in the game than their actual footballing ability would suggest they should.
England have improved but mainly because the club game wisened up a bit at the top end. Which ironically, happened because so many foreigners got involved in the ownership and coaching side of things and changed a lot behind the scenes.

Their under 21s, under 19s and under 17s are all excellent. There’s clearly a system operating in England which is working. They’ve also been much more successful in coopting second generation immigrants into the system. That hasn’t happened yet up here to anywhere near the same extent.

The argument that trickle down economics works in football is no more provable than in real life, but I would say the massive investment in youth training is more likely to have an impact when coupled with the quality coaching brought in from other countries.

In Scotland, all they do is circulate the same old dinosaurs (sack the under 21 coach, and replace him with the under 19s coach. Replace the under 19s coach with the coach they just sacked from the under 21s, and when that didn’t work out either, replace him with the 103 year-old under 21s coach from a few years ago.)

The youth academy circuit in Scotland up until a couple of years ago was just a rebranding of the old YTS training system in which thickos who dropped out of school at 4th year got a little cash from the government to play football rather than claim benefits.

At least project brave, if nothing else, invested and redistributed cash towards that area of the game. Now halfwits like Henry McLeish are talking about tearing it down after two years when the first players from it are still in the age-representative teams.

It’s far too early to say that the system has failed, but it’s quite possible to say that the wrong coaches are being employed. As long as Malky Mackay, Scotland Gemmill and Billy Stark are employed in their current positions, there’s no chance of demonstrable progress.

[Ross.]

19 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

Their under 21s, under 19s and under 17s are all excellent. There’s clearly a system operating in England which is working. They’ve also been much more successful in coopting second generation immigrants into the system. That hasn’t happened yet up here to anywhere near the same extent.

The argument that trickle down economics works in football is no more provable than in real life, but I would say the massive investment in youth training is more likely to have an impact when coupled with the quality coaching brought in from other countries.

I'm not arguing that it is trickle down economics. I'm arguing that it is a side effect of the money that is going about at the top end of the English game. While perhaps similar on the surface, it is the absolute opposite, it is the concentration of everything at the top. Trickle down suggests a deliberate, thought out approach that is designed to improve the overall standard and health of the English game. What is happening here is that the FA and National Team are being brought up by the selfishness of the clubs involved who only want to make sure they have the best they can get, and couldn't give a shit about anything outside the top 20 teams in the league system.

More and more clubs outside the EPL are starting to wind down their youth set ups, either in part or completely, because they realise they can no longer compete with the EPL academy set up. The likes of Brentford, to use one example, are saving themselves a million or so a year by ditching the youth set up completely, spending that instead on better coaching for the first team, and attempting to take the best of the cast offs who simply aren't good enough to make it at the top level. That is starting to become more and more common in Championship, League One and League Two.

The FA, for all their investment, are having minimal impact on the standard of player coming through. They are however benefiting massively from the top division having a much bigger impact on the standard coming through than they previously had done.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ross.

[HibeeJibee]

On ‎12‎/‎09‎/‎2019 at 11:37, forameus said:

You talk a power of pish sometimes Kuro, but this is it in a nutshell.  We still lord it over other nations, even if it's subconsciously, with some misplaced belief that we're better than we are.  That Israel game where they bodied us, you could hear the salivation on the radio about how they could wheel out the World Rankings and show just how terrible a result this was, stopping only just short of screaming "AND THEY'RE FUCKING DIDDIES" at the end.  This attitude needs to stop, because if there is such a thing as a diddy team in International football (outside of ones like Gibraltar, San Marino etc), then WE are the diddies.  We've stood still for years while countries barely old enough to go to school accelerate past us.  Often technically better, and always more confident in their abilities.  Whereas we have our captain coming out and saying, essentially, they were shitebags after taking the lead.

It's a few years ago now - around the start of the decade - but I was at a friendly between a non-league team and Hibs XI the night St Johnstone were put out of Europe by a Turkish team (and not by any disgraceful scoreline IIRC).

Around me on the banking middle-aged and older blokes were bemoaning the 'state Scottish football was in' when our clubs - apparently even a comparatively inexperienced provincial side like St Johnstone - were going out of Europe "to teams from Greece, Russia and Turkey".

It was like 40yrs and the advent of professionalism, the collapse of communism and the spread of first-world prosperity passed them by. Do fans of Austria and Hungary, etc. feel similar?

[Guest]

Ironically with our U21's beating Croatia away the other night would actually mean that our coaching etc IS working, well, if we're going to have the same "rip it up and start again" reaction to a narrow defeat by the World Cup Quarter Finalists and a beating by the number 1 ranked team in the world, that is.

The time to really judge our current crop will be when we play Bulgaria / Finland / Serbia in the play off matches as realistically we can and should be competing with these teams as opposed to competing with the likes of Belgium who currently have got the best team in their entire history.

I've read it and heard it all over the past few days, ranging from "the fault of Hampden", to "failure of project brave" to "rubbish coaching", to "players not interested" etc, etc, however the fact remains that we were just simply out of our depth against two better teams with better players. Simple as....................

[Sergeant Wilson]

On 11/09/2019 at 22:43, Kuro said:

 I would be surprised if Messi has been genuinely drunk in his entire life even once, maybe after winning a CL that's it.  Ronaldo is tee-total.

 

They'd drink if they had to read your posts on here.

[DA Baracus]

First point; what is the evidence that football is becoming more middle class?

Second point; what's the issue with football being more middle class? Is there evidence to show that middle class people have less participation in football? Is there evidence to show that middle class players are not as good as players of other classes?

My view is that it's utter, utter shit. I think it doesn't matter what 'class' a player is from. What matters is the attitude of the player. Absolute morons can take to coaching and be a good player who is committed and dedicated and a really intelligent player can have all the ability but shites it on the pitch.

I've never taken any of the SFA coaching courses. For all I know it's world class.

However my impression is that it's very basic. I hear guys on the radio and my impression is that the SFA coaching is a good basics course, but football is far beyond that, and has been for decades. You hear about how loads of top coaches, like Mourinho, were on the course.

I don't doubt that. But these guys never stopped there. They went on to learn so much more elsewhere. They keep on learning. Then you hear shite like Billy Dodds on the radio and it's so clear that he's been through the basic SFA course and that only. If he's done anything else he's never shown it.

I feel that too many of our coaches settle for the basics. They don't seek out other methods, they don't go beyond a dated teaching manual.

[DA Baracus]

What's wrong? We aren't producing players at the required level. We're churning out loads of decent/average players but they aren't good enough for international level.

Our players seem to be down a level from the top in so many aspects.

Let's chuck Strachan's pish about genetics away right now. There are numerous examples of players of certain height or below who are exceptional.

However I do think our players, mostly as there some exceptions, are behind in terms of physique. Most of our players look like skinny wee wanks when they swap shirts. Belgium for example are stacked with players with very developed bodies. None come to mind but you can probably name a couple of Scotland players who are 'built', but did they combine that with talent?

Anyway, that's just a part of it. I think we have good players but the mentality is not there. No idea why, but for many, many years we've been the biggest shitebags going. Our players get infected by it. 

[DA Baracus]

The Iceland, German and Belgium models, to name but some, are/were all based on one simple principle, which is participation. Obviously you need things beyond that but participation is the foundation.

We need to get more kids involved. The 'no ball games signs' stuff is bollocks. I haven't seen one in years. What we need is places for kids to play. Iceland have pitches (usually artificial so that they can be used in most weathers) at almost every school. They have a substantially smaller population than us but massively more pitches. We need to hugely increase access.

Our coaching courses cost too much. We also have significantly less coaches than other countries. We need massively more qualified coaches. We need to remove well meaning but horrendous parent coaches who yell dreadful nonsense.

We appoint shite to important roles (Malky Mackay, Brian McClair etc). We have no consistent message throughout our system. What is our aim? Do our players play the same formation from under 16s to the full team? 

Our stuff seems prehistoric. Smash the ball up the park. Guys are one footed. Gamble in the box. Win knock downs. Take it to the corner. All horrible shite.

We need to focus on developing players who can use both feet, who can play more than position, who can move off the ball, who understands the work away from training required to be at the top, who can pass, who can understand possession.

All of the above is irrelevant until we totally change the coaching methods, and most importantly focus on mentality. We need to stop being shitebags at international level.

I read the stuff about 'old firm' (Rangers, who died, Celtic and Sevco) fans being an issue. Agree completely and have talked about it with a friend for years. Basically the type who associates with them is a bit of a coward who has no heart for a struggle with teams ranked lower than them. Also so many of our thicko players see playing for Celtic ot Sevco (even though it's a different club from the one that died) as the pinnacle, and don't see beyond. Such a limited ambition will never translate to international success.