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Are we being far too generous to England players?

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I thought it was giants stadium but are they not New York
new york giants and new york jets shared the stadium that bgh used to be called The Meadowlands which is just across the river and is actually in New Jersey. Same stadium. Always weird that it was just across the border in New Jersey
 
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As the dust settles, the third youngest squad in the tournament rated 16th in the world finished 4th..... what do people want??

Age is just a number - England have choked for 50 odd years in major tournaments no matter what age the squad.
 
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Age is just a number - England have choked for 50 odd years in major tournaments no matter what age the squad.
I don't think it can be described as 'choking' to play to your actual ability level. I don't think there has been a time (at least, not in the last 60 years or so) when by any measure - whether official FIFA ranking or any subjective assessment - England have been seen by anyone as the number one or two team in the world. (I think most people would agree the '66 result was an aberration).

Let's try applying the 'choking' criterion to some other team, for example Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were one of the lowest ranked teams in the tournament and went out in the group stages. They could hardly be described as having choked - they were just playing to and reaching the level corresponding to their abilities.

Similarly with England - they were ranked 12th in the world before the tournament started and even if you think that was a little low (not sure how many people did) the only way that I think you can claim that they choked by not making it to the final is if you think they really should have been ranked either number one or number two in the world.
 
I don't think it can be described as 'choking' to play to your actual ability level. I don't think there has been a time (at least, not in the last 60 years or so) when by any measure - whether official FIFA ranking or any subjective assessment - England have been seen by anyone as the number one or two team in the world. (I think most people would agree the '66 result was an aberration).

Let's try applying the 'choking' criterion to some other team, for example Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were one of the lowest ranked teams in the tournament and went out in the group stages. They could hardly be described as having choked - they were just playing to and reaching the level corresponding to their abilities.

Similarly with England - they were ranked 12th in the world before the tournament started and even if you think that was a little low (not sure how many people did) the only way that I think you can claim that they choked by not making it to the final is if you think they really should have been ranked either number one or number two in the world.

Peter forget your rankings if you based every target or performance or England campaign on Fifa rankings you would end up looking silly, coming into the tournament Wales were ranked higher than Croatia for goodness sake Switzerland were ranked higher than France so does that mean Switzerland under achieved & France over achieved or are France just a better team than Switzerland? Lets not bring rankings into it as they are not worth the paper they are written on.

England have made the semi finals 4 times in major tournaments since 1966 that’s 52 years, in that 52yrs we failed 6 times to even qualify for a tournament.

Value wise on paper ability wise on the pitch Gazza,Shearer,Lampard,Gerrard,Rooney,Lineker,Barnes,Scholes,Terry,Ferdinand,Kane year after year after year we produce the players & year after year we flop.

We spend more than most on football in this country we produce players that most teams can only envy yet our last two tournements we have been knocked out by two teams with a combined population less than that of Yorkshire.

You say England play to there ability i beg to differ Peter.
 
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You say England play to there ability i beg to differ Peter.
I also differ. But in the opposite direction. In this tournament England actually delivered ABOVE their ability. Interesting that when you quote the England 'stars' you mention only one of the current team ... and that seems about right to me. Happy to ignore the rankings ... but how many current England players would get in a combined England / Belgium or England / France team?? One definitely, two or three maybe. But that's it. So expecting us to be all conquering champions (and describing anything else as 'failure') is simply a misrepresentation of the CURRENT state of English football and players.

I get that you're looking at a longer term picture. And I completely agree that we underperformed in past tournaments, most notably Euro 2016. But to tar this group of players with the same brush just isn't fair. They showed calmness, composure and confidence in getting past a very tricky Colombia fixture, laying shootout demons to rest in doing so. They brushed aside a Sweden team who had eliminated Holland in qualifying, taken 3 points out of 6 against FRANCE, beaten Italy in their playoff and then topped a group including Germany and Mexico! And then they were highly competitive against a first rate Croatia team who, were it not for two controversial refereeing decisions, could have been leading the final at HT and then who knows how that would have finished .

All in all, to expect any more than the above from this current crop of young players just seems bizarre to me ....
 
I cant see how anybody cannot treat Englands WC as a success, hero's certainly not, knighthoods, no way, but, as lots of above have said, punched above weight this time round and, if nothing else, has got the country interested and passionate about the national team for first time in ages

To put it in personal perspective, for all the ridicule Scotland get, it took a injury time equaliser to get a draw, so, to go from that, to 5 mins away from pens in a WC semi, I would say that in itself is an achievement.
 
Imagine if we’d been talking about a small nation of about 4 million with a poor national league getting to a final of a World Cup actually winnng it. We’d never of heard the last of it! A team that are followed by passionate fans who parade in there national sports attire... No, it’s not not the caber flingers, I’m talking about the wonderful Croatians! 🇭🇷
 
We will never have a better chance & better route to a World Cup Final we avoided every major nation & chocked at the final hurdle against a non international powerhouse who on paper were on a par with us.

Good to get to a semi yes, showed signs of togetherness & spirit yes, played two organised sides & lost three times yes, will I remember 2018 with a smile for getting to the semi final no, will I remember how we blew our best chance in recent years to get to a final yes.

We chocked against a side that we’d previously beaten 4-2 & 5-1.

I gave up on England during Capello’s reign & after the Hidgson failure & Big SAM debacle I was all out.

One good thing happened at this World Cup & that’s we won a pen shootout as for the rest typical choke job bottle job England.
 
The Sweden game, a WC 1/4 final and England from start to finish were never losing that. It was probably the most convincing of all the 1/4 displays. How often could you say that about England. Even to beat Cameroon all those years ago took 2 pens?
 
Could you elaborate on how / in what way, we "choked" against Colombia or Sweden? These were both games that (in a historical context) we could easily have ended up losing ....

I’m taking about the semi final & Croatia.

This is the problem with the mentality of England fans & general public they’ve been so used to flopping against anyone & everyone at tournaments like Iceland Sweden etc that when we do actually beat one of the minnows & reach our first major semi final in 22yrs it’s like we are on the cusp of something special it’s like we have finally arrived & achieved something.

It’s laughable it really is, we got lucky with the draw avoided Brazil & France yet we still ballsed it up.

Anyway it’s a subject I should probably avoid as I’m so done with England i honestly hand on heart & I mean this could not care less if we never qualified for a tournament again.
 
The Sweden game, a WC 1/4 final and England from start to finish were never losing that. It was probably the most convincing of all the 1/4 displays. How often could you say that about England. Even to beat Cameroon all those years ago took 2 pens?

Exactly that sums us up as a nation, people now see beating Sweden as an achievement that’s how low it’s got in recent years.

It’s comical it really is, Walker cost more than the entire Sweden starting XI put together & yet we should all be over the moon bouncing off the walls with joy at beating them.

It would have been an achievement if we had got to the final, yes you could look back and say what a journey what a World Cup BUT nope we flopped we blew it. So the highlight was beating a third rate nation in the quarters? Forgive me if I don’t get a England 2-0 Sweden tattoo anytime soon.
 
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