So, were England actually any better this time?

[Bored Of Education]

So, were England actually any better this time?

Yes, I know. I was thinking aloud, on paper, something

[ursus arctos]

So, were England actually any better this time?

Jamie Forrester went to Auxerre as a 16 year old but left after a year due to "homesickness".

[jason voorhees]

So, were England actually any better this time?

Analogue Bubblebath II wrote:

Those aren't the characteristics of a team that can pass the ball.

Nowhere did I say they were good at passing the ball. Nowhere did I say they were Spain Part II. I said this team was better making unpressured passes, and better at passing than the Svensters.

That is blatantly not true. Argentina 2002, Denmark 2002, Croatia 2004, Sweden 2006, all under Sven, all much better than anything England produced in the last two weeks.

England could hardly string three passes together against Ukraine or Italy. They were better against Sweden and in the first half of the France game. In the second half of the France game, they retreated to their own half and let the French come at them. I lost count of the number of times in this tournament that an English pass rolled harmlessly along the turf, over the touchline and out for an opposition throw-in, having missed its intended target by anything between five and ten yards.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's post-traumatic stress syndrome from watching Sven, especially seeing it live in 2004. There was nothing uglier than anything I've seen with my own eyes happening on a football field that was less than 20 feet from my vantage point.

I felt this team made a whole less amount of unforced errors. Please don't make me watch every Svengame over the past 10 years to confirm my statements. I'm not that bad a person, and that's a punishment I wouldn't give to Charles Manson.

[Borracho]

So, were England actually any better this time?

I hear what you're saying. England 2012 were much more defensively-oriented than the Eriksson-era teams and kept a noticeably higher number of players behind the ball at all times, thus reducing the possibility that one awful miscontrol or dozy pass could lead to a sudden goal for the opposition. That might account for it.

I maintain there's no way that they were any kind of an advancement on the England of 8-10 years ago. Those teams were generally clumsy and unimaginative, and hugely flawed. Eriksson also picked Heskey as a first-choice striker for two tournaments, which was a war crime. But when they played average or poor sides, they generally won by a couple of goals, even if appearing leaden at times (Switzerland, Denmark, Trinidad & Tobago). They also pulled one genuinely great performance out of themselves (Argentina 2002).

Hodgson's England never came close to doing an Argentina 2002. They shuffled along to get a draw with France, then they got a deserved victory over Sweden, and a totally undeserved victory over Ukraine. All three of those were average opponents. Against Italy, well, there's no need to again dig up the documented deficiencies and the innate defeatism-in-advance of letting the other team totally run the game.

I wouldn't heap too much blame upon Hodgson for it. He came in at short notice and, in historical/relative terms, was working with a noticeably poor crop of players. The smart thing would be to bail out now. But, for whatever reason -- the wages, the prestige, or maybe a misguided belief that he can be the one who makes the breakthrough -- he won't. England would have to write off Brazil 2014, France 2016 and maybe even Russia 2018 to get to where Germany and Spain are now. For various reasons thst will never happen.

[Uncle Ethan]

So, were England actually any better this time?

Anyone who doubts what Kettle says about junior coaching can test their beliefs very easily.

Go down to a local park and watch two of the junior matches.

[Reed John]

So, were England actually any better this time?

I certainly feel a lot of these responsibilities, leaving aside that, in total, these lads' parents pay almost £1800 a year towards their coaching. In answer to your question though, what is more important than teaching kids and building the future of the game is that the kids have fun and love playing football.

That's what I meant and contrary to how youth sports are often coached, I think enjoying the game is not at odds with learning how to play well.

I know a 14 year old who plays at a relatively high level around here and he told me that his club coach and soon-to-be high school coach has encouraged him and his teammates not to play on a team this summer, but to get together with some of the older boys on the high school team for pick up games. I suspect this will help promote both creativity and team cohesion.

[Bored Of Education]

So, were England actually any better this time?

Your first paragraph is absolutely true and, as I say, my whole ethos is exactly that. Indeed, it has been very satisfying to see that my approach is paying off on the pitch now as well as in the enjoyment of the boys. Not only satisfying but relieving. As much as I believed in this, you do sometimes feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall. I am not saying that this team are going to be all-conquering but it is nice to that they can compete with 'win at all costs' teams and that, when they do lose, there are no tears due to pressure to win.

Anyone who doubts what Kettle says about junior coaching can test their beliefs very easily.

Go down to a local park and watch two of the junior matches.

Not mine and, to be fair, on occasions, we come up against teams and coaches that have similar philosophies. Indeed, there was one coach that was even more principled than I was, in a way, and took his team out of competitive leagues completely until relatively recently.

[Reed John]

So, were England actually any better this time?

In this country, there is now a huge backlash against the leagues that "give trophies to everyone one just for showing up." There's this idea amongst parents that you have to be a Type A Tiger Mom and get your kid into Yale or they'll end up living in your house forever like all of the losers whose parents taught them that just participating was good enough.

The baseball leagues that don't even record outs let alone the score are stupid because the kids aren't even learning the rules of the game. Without rules, the game isn't a game. It's meaningless, it's just running around the bases. Kids will get sick of that soon enough.

But focusing on winning, as many parents did in my generation of little league, was unhelpful too. The strongest kid pitched as hard as he could to intimidate the batters. Great. It didn't help to create better ball-players, either. Almost all of the kids I knew in little league whose parents pushed hard ended up burning out on baseball and, in some cases, burning out on life by the age of 18.

There's this idea out there that giving awards for just showing up has contributed to how spoiled and narcissistic kids are today (never mind that parents said that about kids in the 60s too), but in my experience, that's not really how it works. Kids are not fooled by "trophies for everyone." They watch pro sports. They understand that there's a winner and a loser. What that kind of incessant sunshine-blown-up-the-ass does is just make kids cynical about the whole business. So they cheat on tests and try to get other people to do their work for them, not so much because they believe they're "entitled" to it, but because they believe that getting things done is a matter of gaming the system and getting away with whatever one can.

I don't have kids so my only exposure to kids are my niece and nephew, my friends' kids, and the middle school kids I volunteer with and what I can see with them is that both extremes are stupid. But fortunately, outside of the world of talk radio and internet message boards, a lot of parents already know this.

The kids I know are working very hard in their sports, but most of them seem to grasp that it's all a work in progress. I suppose that's one great advantage of a sport like swimming - I know a bunch of girls way into that. I found swimming to be the most boring sport imaginable when I did it as a kid, but I can see how a sport focused on personal bests that are easily measurable would be very rewarding. The kids don't seem too worked up about winning or losing. They just want to best their PR. That's a good habit, I suppose.

When I talked to that soccer player I know, he didn't seem too upset that his team did poorly at the recent state tournament. He talked about how the new coach was installing a new system and teaching them to play a different style - in much the same way that the US team is adapting to Klinsmann, he said - and that it's going to take them a while to adjust. Remarkably mature attitude for his age. He plays one of the central back positions in a flat back four, he said. I'm not sure what they were doing before, but it wasn't that.

I attended my nephew's final fall baseball game (in Florida, baseball is 12 months of the year) and his team lost, but the coach said the right things. He stressed the areas where the kids had improved - catching and throwing in particular. And I always stress that when I talk to my nephew about it. Winning isn't so important as long as you're enjoying the process of getting better and being able to do things you couldn't do yesterday. Baseball lends itself to that approach, I guess, because there are so many games and failure at least 2/3 of the time is inevitable anyway, so it's more about locking in on the right approach and seeing it play out over the long haul of months and years rather than getting pumped up to execute in one short performance (like American football tends to be, for example).

[Bored Of Education]

So, were England actually any better this time?

The thing is the non-competitiveness is because the parents and coaches have been so pushy and over-competetive. If it was just left up the kids, it would be fine to have leagues. Part of junior football is all about doing exactly what your heroes do - promotion, relegation, like Harry says, celebrating goals and doing step-overs.

If it wasn't for the bullying, living-vicariously-through-offspring parents and coaches, the kids could quite happily do all this innocently. Some would collect stats, some would forget what the score was 5 minutes after they have played. My lads have had a few double digit losses - including their first ever match - and, contrary to what I thought, have always turned up the next week, happy as Larry to start again.

[dalliance]

So, were England actually any better this time?

One last stat about the last quarter of an hour of the England v Italy game. England completed just 15 passes in that period, one a minute in a world where the top end teams like Spain will complete 8 each minute.