FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Derek S

Too soon?

TRIBUTES are being paid to Scotland today after the entire country laughed itself to death. The alarm was first raised at around 4pm as thousands of phone calls and text messages went unanswered.

Small groups of volunteers from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and Carlisle ventured north only to find houses full of dead people gathered around still blaring television sets.
As RAF helicopters flew over deserted city streets, it was clear that the whole country had suffered a catastrophic abdominal rupture.
Wayne Hayes, a special constable from Northumberland, said: "We went into one house in Dunbar and found three men sitting on the sofa with huge smiles on their faces, still holding cans of tennents. They seemed to be at peace."
He added: "In a house near Edinburgh we found a man face down on the living room floor with his trousers and pants round his knees.
"It seems he may have been showing his bare buttocks to the television when he keeled over."

Roy Hobbs, a civil engineer from Northampton, said: "I got a call from my friend Ian in Stirling at about 3:40PM
"He was already laughing when I answered the phone, but after about 25 minutes of the most vigorous and uncontrollable hilarity, everything suddenly went very quiet."

Moving tributes are already being placed along the Scotland-England border with many mourners opting to leave a simple bag of chips or a deep fried bunch of flowers.

Originally Posted by Derek S

He added: "In a house near Edinburgh we found a man face down on the living room floor with his trousers and pants round his knees.
"It seems he may have been showing his bare buttocks to the television when he keeled over."

That sounds about right

Right now english national football deserves to be the laughing stock it really does never in my life have i seen a bigger bunch of passionless going through the motions waste of space before. Capello and his stubborness need a p45 and so do many of those players who seriously looked like they had better things to do then be on the pitch. Maybe it is time to incentivise them with their clubs saying "get picked for national squad and play crap and your wage gets chopped when you get home" watch how fast they get some passion. Sorry day for english football and an even sorrier day to be a supporter of it i am totally embarassed right now to say i support england and mug that i am will continue too but right now i don't have to like it.

Fair play to germany they weren't brilliant but they played well and deserved the win disallowed goal or not they won that match and the right team did win it.

[Hom3r]

Right time to back Ghana

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

Fair play to germany they weren't brilliant but they played well and deserved the win disallowed goal or not they won that match and the right team did win it.

I spoke to a German earlier before the match. he said that in the spirit of sportsmanship they would be supporting the English underdogs today, but then go back to supporting Germany in their remaining three games.

Originally Posted by RizzyKing

Right now english national football deserves to be the laughing stock it really does never in my life have i seen a bigger bunch of passionless going through the motions waste of space before. Capello and his stubborness need a p45 and so do many of those players who seriously looked like they had better things to do then be on the pitch. Maybe it is time to incentivise them with their clubs saying "get picked for national squad and play crap and your wage gets chopped when you get home" watch how fast they get some passion. Sorry day for english football and an even sorrier day to be a supporter of it i am totally embarassed right now to say i support england and mug that i am will continue too but right now i don't have to like it.

Fair play to germany they weren't brilliant but they played well and deserved the win disallowed goal or not they won that match and the right team did win it.

Yes congratulations to Germany, they played us off the park, although I'm saddened at the goals they scored via a counter-attack, exposing our defence, they managed to pass the ball & control the play when it mattered, which we couldn't do.

Re the wages - perhaps they should be 'chopped' to the same level as the average supporter, whether for club or country - 20K per year, rather than 50k per week might be a 'wake up' for them, it would certainly test their commitment ..

[Niles Crane]

I'm convinced the people who go on about wages haven't got a clue about football.

Do you think the Germany squad play for peanuts? The game is a professional sport overseas too, you know.

Originally Posted by Niles Crane

I'm convinced the people who go on about wages haven't got a clue about football.

Do you think the Germany squad play for peanuts? The game is a professional sport overseas too, you know.

I admit I haven't a clue about football, but even though I first attended a game back in the 1960's I'll bet the players, then, didn't earn 50x the average wage.

I've got a ticket stub for Stamford Bridge that cost £5.25 - I stood on the grassy bank that was then the shed & watched Peter Osgood play against Grimsby Town - I'd be surprised if, even he, earned that much more than my yearly wage per week, then....

[Horace]

I'm probably the only person in the whole world, with the exception of Capello that thought we did ok, the main problem was the bad linesman decision, we saw in the Mexico match how bad decisions like that really mess a team up, players try to 'get back' for the mistake and in turn lose concentration and tried too hard to score. It's no co-incidence that Germany scored two goals on the counter-attack, John Terry being at the other end of the pitch during one of them. Our defence behaved completely differently to all other games after that decision, it had been fine up until today and I don't remember any criticism of the defence during qualifiers or indeed the first three games. The problems were in mid-field and attack especially with do-nothing-Rooney being continually picked. If Capello did anything wrong it was sticking with players who continually prove their worthlessness in international matches. Capello or any future manager probably needs to start looking outside the Premiership or at least to lower-profile players that can play without having elite foreign players backing them up instead of being lazy and just selecting well known 'names'.

[Niles Crane]

Originally Posted by gazfan

I admit I haven't a clue about football, but even though I first attended a game back in the 1960's I'll bet the players, then, didn't earn 50x the average wage.

I've got a ticket stub for Stamford Bridge that cost £5.25 - I stood on the grassy bank that was then the shed & watched Peter Osgood play against Grimsby Town - I'd be surprised if, even he, earned that much more than my yearly wage per week, then....

It doesn't really matter. The Germany players are all stinking rich too, so it's pretty illogical to use the England players salary as reasoning for their demise or lack of "passion".

I personally don't think it is anything to do with Salaries, but I will agree they are all massively over paid.

I think the problem with England over the course of the tournament was bad moral among the players. Bad management decisions, I just couldn't believe what or where John Terry's heart was during some of those games, because it wasn't in the Germany game.

Like the commentators were saying during the game, these players, Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard and Terry, they are all Premier league players, they have all the talent necessary, you pick a top Premier league team to be the 'England' team, there wouldn't have been an issue with any World cup team IMO.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Sirius

But if at the end of the day players go out on that pitch with there own agenda then what can the manager do.

Drop them?

The fallout begins from today and i do not think the manager is the only one to blame. Maybe we need to rethink the whole England team from the ground up

It's a great idea but sadly we have blown all the cash on a stadium. For one I'd like to see more genuine football people involved at the FA, look at the Germans and it's a veritable who's who of ex international players administrating the game.

---------- Post added at 05:56 ---------- Previous post was at 05:55 ----------

Originally Posted by Russ

Manager after manager, your team consistently fails on the big stage. Let's face it, apart from that minor blip back in 66 England have never looked like World champions.

Forgotten Italia 90, I have no doubt we'd have beaten that Argentinian team in the final, sadly the only thing we seem to have learnt from that is don't let the managers contract run down pre finals and that has been a roaring success ever since.

---------- Post added at 06:04 ---------- Previous post was at 05:56 ----------

Originally Posted by Niles Crane

It doesn't really matter. The Germany players are all stinking rich too, so it's pretty illogical to use the England players salary as reasoning for their demise or lack of "passion".

Luca Toni was the worlds highest paid player a couple of years ago when he was with Bayern Munchen

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Niles Crane

I'm convinced the people who go on about wages haven't got a clue about football.

Do you think the Germany squad play for peanuts? The game is a professional sport overseas too, you know.

You right i don't have a clue about Football i watch rugby, however on the performance of some of our highly paid ballerinas sorry footballers i would say nether do they.

End of the day the average man takes a while to save up to be able to afford a tournament like this and shows passion when he is there supporting the team, The likes of Rooney and Gerrard don't give a hoot about the cost and even if they did have to pay its pocket money to them, the only player yesterday with any passion was James and he can hold his head up high knowing he saved us from a bigger defeat.

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by Sirius

You right i don't have a clue about Football i watch rugby, however on the performance of some of our highly paid ballerinas sorry footballers i would say nether do they.

End of the day the average man takes a while to save up to be able to afford a tournament like this and shows passion when he is there supporting the team, The likes of Rooney and Gerrard don't give a hoot about the cost and even if they did have to pay its pocket money to them, the only player yesterday with any passion was James and he can hold his head up high knowing he saved us from a bigger defeat.

dito
i also wonder what future flabyjo propellor has if any

Originally Posted by Horace

I'm probably the only person in the whole world, with the exception of Capello that thought we did ok, the main problem was the bad linesman decision, we saw in the Mexico match how bad decisions like that really mess a team up, players try to 'get back' for the mistake and in turn lose concentration and tried too hard to score. It's no co-incidence that Germany scored two goals on the counter-attack, John Terry being at the other end of the pitch during one of them. Our defence behaved completely differently to all other games after that decision, it had been fine up until today and I don't remember any criticism of the defence during qualifiers or indeed the first three games.

England's defence was awful before the disallowed goal, that's how Germany were already 2 - 0 up. Terrible defending before and after. The reason it had been 'fine' up till then was because we didn't play any really decent side.