Skip to main content

England are not gifted with talent, so we need to find it





   

 http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jun/21/roy-hodgson-build-better-stronger-england-costa-rica


 The standards of refereeing need looking at too.



























I gave up playing football some years ago.(My brain knew where I should be, but my legs will not get me there quickly enough). I gave up watching football when it became abundantly clear that money had become infinitely more important than skill, talent and ability. At one time, admittedly many years past, players would have pulled on an England shirt, simply for the honour of paying for their country. Now, it seems, the first consideration often appears to be the question of settling the fee for "appearance". It is also, abundantly clear that the media and vast sections of the country, consider that England can/will/should win every competition trophy that they qualify for. When this does not happen, the media certainly, treat everyone to the "I told you so" stories.
The fact of the matter is that England are not a world class team and until the philosophy at club level and the dinosaur attitudes at the FA change significantly, England have little if any prospect of becoming a world beating football nation.
Having said that, I have seen lengthy parts of some matches in the current Brazil World cup competition, and there is one common factor which applies, certainly to those matches which have been on my television and I assume that the same applies to other games in the competition.









The standard of refereeing in all these games has been appalling. Notwithstanding the cans of magic shaving foam, liberally applied on the pitch surface to mark position of ball and distance to "wall", by the (often) hysterically animated match official, the continuity of games has frequently been disrupted by strange refereeing decisions which have clearly affected the play and perhaps even the result. There may be a case for challenging the decision and referring the matter "upstairs" for review in slow motion from all angles. The occasional bad referee decision has always been evident in football at both international and club level. However the standards of the match officials in Brazil 2014 have probably spoilt many games and will no doubt spoil many others during the rest of the competition.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Northern Ireland and Brexit. The return of "The Troubles"

Northern Ireland: police attacked in another night of disturbances | Northern Ireland | The Guardian When the "Brexit" debate was still filling our newspapers and our television screens, readers may remember why I had changed my mind since voting to leave at the referendum vote. Apart from the economic arguments, which had become crystal clear after peeling away all the lies and misrepresentations trotted out by Bozo Boris and his "Get Brexit Done" conspirators, there was always the problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Would it be possible to have a border between the European Union and the United Kingdom where people, goods and services could pass freely between the two nations without customs restrictions, tariffs, duties and all the other formalities? Would it be possible to have one part of the United Kingdom treated differently from other parts of the United Kingdom, particularly when Scotland for example had voted overwhe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enough of this hysterical nonsense

  http://style.uk.msn.com/royal-baby/how-will-the-royal-baby-look-as-he-grows-up Media generated hysteria.                           This is too much. For the last 36 hours (thought it seems more like 36 days) there has been wall to wall news coverage, media and television comment and reporting, with Sky News taking first prize for frenzied minute by minute reporting from the Palace, the hospital, from a village somewhere in England, from the studio and anywhere else that Burley, Botting and company could stick a microphone into some obscure "celebrity's" face and ask for yet another banal quote. All this galvanising the mass hysteria of some elements of the public, (who the media would have you believe is the reaction of "the whole world",) with their flag waving, dancing, singing and cheering over what is after all, no more than a woman having a bab...
Post a Comment
Read more

A perverse and rather sinister media obsession to discredit, smear and undermine Jeremy Corbyn

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/venezuela-jeremy-corbyn-blasted-for-not-condemning-president-maduro-a3606156.html#commentsDiv Venezuela: Jeremy Corbyn blasted for not condemning socialist President Nicolas Maduro as violent conflict escalates There is a perverse and rather sinister obsesseion with the media and particularly television "interveiwers", in seeking to secure from Jeremy Corbyn a "condemnation" of some person or organisation or event. This time it is connected with events in Venezuela and the actions of President Nicolas Maduro and the bloody crackdown on protests against the result of last weeks poll which inaugurated a constituent assembly . The media "stories" and the interrogation by the television interviewers, are as subtle as a sledgehammer being nothing more than a variation on the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question, which so many repoters use in order for them to make themselves appear very ...
Post a Comment
Read more