Because England cant play. They haven't been able to, at least, in my memory. The commentators tonight remarked that English fans may not be used to this style of football, and that they must be patient to appreciate international football. They recognised the oddity of Englands style, or lack of, but labelled it as 'foreign' rather than 'garbage.
The last time I saw England play well was in Japan/Korea WC 2002. They played well and were unfortunate to lose to a flukey goal from Brazil, who eventually won the tournament.
It's because they don't play with any set system or consistent philosophy. It's just a mish-mash.
And as ever, players who can keep the ball are not appreciated.
And that failure has to come down to the FA. Only now have they built a national training centre when other European countries have had their own for many years, and in terms of the quality, numbers of, and access to accredited coaches, we still lag way behind other European countries like Spain, Germany, Netherlands etc.
But who cares, we've got the most expensive stadium in the world with the most expensive trains in Europe, so the average fans can't afford to go and watch the shit national team anyway, while the FA toffs don't even bother to fill their seats. Beautiful!
GB cycling (and other Olympic teams) have shown what you can do when you get the funding, facilities, people, and then get a coherent strategy and follow it through.
The FA isn't (or certainly
wasn't) short of money, the training facilities are just now getting up to scratch, and I still don't see any coherent strategy for the long term youth development. The FA gets 1.5 stars out of five. Until the FA gets their shit in order I can't see England winning a tournament in the next 10-15 years.
No it's not irrelevant. Rooney is the PL's biggest star according to some on here. He should be dedicated and we should get consistent performances out of him at international level, but we don't.
He just doesn't get the criticism though.
I'm a Utd fan and just last week I said that Rooney is overrated and if we could get £40m or more for him, then we should sell him. But he's still the biggest star in the PL. He plays for the biggest club and his superior commercial income shows that he's the PL's biggest star. That is indisputable.
