We've won 1 lost 7 in shootouts which is hardly very lucky is it and poor refereeing decisions cost us in 98 04 10 were we scored perfectly good goals in each game and none given.

As for 66 it was well over the line!!!

I agree with that!

I know hodgson has only been England manager for a limited time but if that's the style of play we are going to be taking out onto the field then we won't improve, it was only the first 30 mins against France that I was impressed with. The rest was just below par and average. And as said above we rode out luck a hell of a lot

Going back to Mr Ripper's point about world class players. In 1966 we had a goalkeeper ( Banks) who was world class, a centre back Moore) who was world class, Bobby Charlton was world class. We even had a striker on the bench who was world class ( Greavesie). Added to that we had two solid international full backs.
In midfield Martin Peters and Alan Ball were exceptional.
We had a manager who devised a way of playing the game and then went out to find and gel the players to his system.
We were extremely hard to beat and could score goals...............a very simple formula.
Where we were extremely lucky was the fact that we had Bobby Charlton, who was a genius at passing a football and had an explosive shot in either foot. In my humble opinion, Bobby Charlton has never been replaced and probably never will.
The only other teams who were capable of going the full distance were Brazil and Argentina. Brazil got kicked off the park by Portugal, allowed by an inept and some say bent referee. Argentina were victims of their own indiscipline. Argentina's Antonio Rattin, their captain, was outstanding but got himself sent off against England or they may have got through. Germany had the swaggering Beckenbauer, who was also world class, but the rest of the german team were efficient internationals without being world class.
In my opinion England deserved their success.
I fully believe England would have won the next world cup as well but fell foul of Ramsey's decision to take off Moore and Charlton when cruising 2-0 against the Germans allowing a certain Gerd Muller to destroy us. I was 21 at the time (1966).........how old were you MJ??

Wernt we robbed in 68 aswell???

Not sure on that one.

The worst thing that has ever happened to English football was winning the World Cup in 1966. Since then the press of England has demanded a repeat performance. We were at home, we got the decisions (sometimes quoted as 'luck') and we had six players who would have got in any team in the world.

It's widely rumoured that the linesman gave the 3rd goal because he was Russian and on his deathbed said that he gave it because of Stalingrad. I dunno.

It remains that since the 30's, England are a very ordinary football team and in the 30's were too arrogant to play a game where they thought they might lose. Scotland mullered them regularly. Notice how we rarely play Scotland now??

We're playing them next year.

The England Scotland game was sacrosanct. There were only two games shown live on tele with a 3pm Saturday kick off. That was one and the FA cup final was the other. Now both have been " downgraded".
I believe the Eng/Sco game was the oldest international fixture or at least one of them.
So much for tradition.

You must be Scottish to come out with crap like that.

For the first time in how long?? It was the FA who binned the Home Championship. They said England were above that sort of thing after Scotland came down and beat us at Wembley the year after we won the World Cup.

Mind, they took most of Wembley home with them and demanded that we handed over the World Cup.

No, born and bred in Hartlepool. You might need to say why it's crap.

How about the opening line, the worst thing to happen to English football was winning the world cup? That's crap and anyone who was around at the time will tell you it is.
Ive heard the same line said a thousand times by jocks only they say it's the worst thing that's ever happened to Scotland.

We have had some bad luck at crucial times in tournaments probably going back to the 86 Maradona moment but last night we were just beaten by a better team.

Lets face it we had a piss easy group and if we have ambitions to win tournaments then we should be comfortably beating Ukraine and Sweden not stuttering past them. The France result was a decent result but they had the best share of the game.

If you are talking world class players and by world class I mean a World XI plus 7 subs then not a single England player would get mentioned except possibly Ashley Cole. I don't have much faith in the next generation improving things either.

As for flair players - it wasn't long ago that Joe Cole was supposed to be filling that role....

To be fair, that's bollox.

The 1990 team were excellent and the way that we won the games whn we needed to showed it.

If you could put them onto the pitch against the current lot then the team of 2012 would be destroyed.

Name 1 team we outplayed in italia 90

Holland

Euro 96 dosnt count

My worry is that Hodgson has got a 4 year deal. That yesterday was poor. Yes there was a battling spirit, as there was in all games, but tactically, it was dreadful. The England player who made the most passes last night was Joe Hart. Italy had more shots last night than we had in the entire tournament. Hard work simply won't cut it at international level. We need to start from scratch and have an ethos to work towards.

We played well for 10 minutes last night and shit it when they got a few chances. There were England players who have won at the top level in Europe who could not do anything other than cheaply give away possession.

Rooney and Young should not have lasted beyond 60 mins but they played for 120!!!

I blame the FA. They've had numerous chances to address what has been a problem for decades and have done bot all about it.

2 disallowed goals for England a bit harsh - good competitive game without all the diving shite that we see now...

Why cant you blame Hodgson? And why does everyone claim the problem is with grassroots football?

If you watch grass roots football you will see many many younguns that look seriously good and skillful.

And I havent seen a coach of any younguns side telling these kids not to be skillful.

Nor have a seen a coach setting his side out to win a game, by leaving out the skillful players to keep the team solid.

Nor have I seen a coach pick someone on the right of midfield, only picked because he can run and defend, deliberately picked to cover the deficiencies of the right back.

But I have with this England manager.

Sorry if this turns into a rather long rant, but:

The very person trying to change kids football in this country, and ruin in for the majority of kids that love playing in organised leagues(most of whom know they have no chance of being a pro, but like to play in a competitive league anyway) is of course Trevor Brooking.

Yes, good old trevor wants to stop leagues being organised, and to stop much of the competitive edge to kids football, and have all the coaches pay to get FA accredited and just coach kids, his way, three days a week.

All so that the cream can get spotted by the big clubs, and help the Ingurland team. Fook all those kids that just LIKE playing in a league, even though they arent THAT good.

Trevor just wants kids to train with a ball all the time, doesnt mater about fitness or team ethics, or team spirit. No, its all about step overs, and keepy ups, and taking people on, and showing a trick.

So Trevor blames the under 10 teams of the sunday leagues, not the academy systems.

Even though, I and many others, (Talk to them if you dont believe me) have seen younguns as young as 8 and 9 be as skillful as we have seen go into an academy/centre of excellence, and come out three years later, broken.

Either much worse than when they went in, or worse still, lost to the game forever.

Wouldnt be the acadamies thats at fault would it?

And that leads me onto another thing. Trevor was part of the selection team for the Ingurland manager.

Its no coincidence that anyone with any flair was overlooked, and they chose the tacticly aware Hodgson.....a man widely regarded as dull must not lose coach.

So kids need t be taught skills, then wont ever play for ingurland cause they always pick a safe option. You couldnt make it up.

What flair players were overlooked for the squad like?

You can blame Hodgson for being negative tactically and trying to battle their way through, Chelsea style.

I know he hasnt been in the job long but where's the justification for playing Rooney and Young as long as they did. Both could not keep hold of the ball. Young was dreadful in every game

Hodgson is route one and I guarantee fans' patience will run out when we get dicked by Montenegro in the WC qualifiers. The fans and media will expect an attacking game. Hodgson will play the exact same way. Football of fear.

Hodgson was delighted that we didn't lose the other night (in 120 mins). That sums him up. His mentality is that his team didn't get beat and only went out on the lottery of penalties, where in reality we got tortured for 110 minutes. Don't lose at all costs.
Not good enough

We can't play exapansive attacking football if we dont have the players to do it.

I thought he worked well with the players he had, and considering he was only given the job 3 weeks before a major championship too i thought he's done ok.

I'll reserve my judgement for this time in 2 years.

On the basis that Hodgson only got the job a few weeks ago and had very little time with the players I think that it's a little harsh to judge him badly after winning the group and going out on penalties to a side who were clearly better than us.

Surely he's got to be given a chance rather than people decide what he's going to do in the next two years before he actually does it?

I would've thought that Hodgson would've learned a lot from this tournament and now we have to see if he's bright enough to implement the lessons learned and start bringing in the right players to play in a way that can make us even more competitive.

I still think however that without a world class player as I said above he is facing an uphill task to match the expectations of some people (especially those slagging him off now) but some people are just unrealistic. Having had a bit of a think about who this world class player that we need might be I can only think of two young lads who show the potential if they can progress well in the next couple of years- Chamberlain or James.

You can blame hodgson as in all fairness he picked the squad and chose to leave Adam Johnson at home. He started James Milner each game as a winger but he had him playing defensively, for me wingers are attackers who take people on and cross balls, neither of our wingers did so. Walcott changed the game v sweden yet was overlooked each game and ox against France at least had a go at them but was also dropped. Downing selection was poor with Adam Johnson who is now proven at international level not considered good enough. So yes you can blame hodgson. However we only lost on pens so he must have did something right

Rooney is a world class player, messi struggles with Argentina so is he not world class also???

I'm not judging him on the tournament alone. My analysis has come from his time as manager at Switzerland, Blackburn, Fulham, Liverpool, West Brom and Inter Milan where his teams all played in the exact same way. He's a manager who doesn't like losing and will focus on that rather than concentrating on ways to win. He might have been short of a world class player (I'd argue that Gerrard is world class but couldn't be expected to keep up that level of performance with the amount of games played in such a short space of time) but I feel that he's looked at when Greece won the competition and hoped we could do the same.

Anyway, time will tell. I'd just rather we built for 10 years, completely changed the outlook so that we had a remote chance of winning something in my lifetime, rather than follow the same old fashioned, outdated style that no longer works

Although it's a game of opinions I completely, totally and utterly disagree with you regarding Rooney who I think is very very far from being "world class". The media, and especially Sky, like to pretend that he's world class when they're selling you newspapers and TV subscriptions but that doesn't mean that it's true.

As for Messi, he's a lot younger than Rooney and has recently started performing much better for his national side so I think that he is proving himself to be a world class player on that stage. The next world cup will probably prove that to be true or not.

I think that given the short amount of time that he had in the job prior to the tournament staring it would have been ridiculous to ditch half or more of the current squad and bring in a load of players who had never or barely played international football. Hence why I'm saying give him time to prove that he will either look to change things more drastically or that he will just carry on with the same old faces playing the same old way.

But as England manager that's all that we can properly judge him on at the moment. Like I've said, give him a chance. You may be proven correct but to jump to conclusions before giving the bloke a chance seems a bit premature to me.

What moves/plays from England players during the tournament would you class as high-end European?
None from Rooney, none from Young, none from Parker, none from Milner, maybe a few from our defence including saves by Joe Hart.
One from Gerrard/Carroll, one from Walcott/Welbeck.
Er...

I know what you are saying. It probably is too soon to judge but I've looked at his time as an international manager at Switzerland and have seen how his teams play at domestic level. It's enough to realise that the style of play won't change and were more or less guaranteed another 4 years of this unless he gets axed beforehand

Time will ultimately tell. Not looking forward to another 4 years wasted though

Jack wiltshire

I understand your concerns and have them to a degree myself, however are the players that he had available to him as Switzerland manager comparable to those who he can choose for England?

Wilshere is good but I'm not convinced with regards "world class". Possibly though given a few more years developing as he is still very young.

In the days when the only foreigners in English football were Scots/Irish/Welsh, English teams used to spank Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch teams just as much as now, probably more, so we had the players - but still never won owt.
Not sure what that proves except maybe that the others got better while we got worse.

He had a pretty good squad at Blackburn (title winning team) Inter and took charge if a Liverpool team which contained Torres, Gerrard, Reina and Mascherano. The style never changed. That's enough for me to weigh up the situation

Problem is it was the older players who were our best, Terry and gerrard by far our 2 best players in the tourney

At this present moment in time we only have one player that consistantly does the business for us at the international stage and thats Ashley Cole. And I am struggling to think of a better left back in world football.

I agree with you about Cole, probably our only world class player at the moment or for the past few years.

I think Hodgeson would have got less criticism if his team had lost every game at the group stage. It would have been a case of well there was not a lot he could do with the injuries to players and time he had.
Having topped the group I think there was a lot of false hope that the players we had could have a real go at the good teams.
Which we did first half against Italy but ultimately ran out of steam and fell back to what English teams tend to do best, defend for their lives.

Hart cole Rooney all world class and Terry n gerrard arnt far off there best form which would easily have them in that bracket. It's all opinions though but 1 fact is Rooney was our only player actually selected in the world x1

Yep, definitely about opinions.

My opinion seems to be that I judge "world class" differently to you as I wouldn't say that Rooney is anywhere near it and Hart, although young and having lots of potential, hasn't done enough yet to be put up there (it was his first major tournament and he didn't do anything particularly "brilliant").

I have no idea what "World XI" you refer to, but I personally wouldn't have Rooney anywhere near it unless you're not allowed to pick Argentinians, Brazillians, German, Spanish and Portugese.

Rooney didn't show a single glimpse of world class in the 210 minutes he played in this tournament.
His penner was good though.

I dont agree with Rooney being in it but he did get in the FIFA world XI last year voted by 50,000 professional football players

http://www.fifa.com/ballondor/world11/index.html

Do you think that he'd get in it if it was voted for again at the end of this tournament? I don't think he'd even make team of the tournament nevermind a World XI!!!

I think you might have a point there.

There would of course be the serial whingers who would've criticised anyway, along with those who would revel in England losing matches, but given what he had to work with and the timescales that he had then the level of expectation only rose because we won some matches and that was unrealistic expectation.

Concurring!

I havent seen him play world class for england since 2004.

He's not the only one like, but he shouldnt be exempt from criticism.