England's World Cup let down

[Buzzo]

Englands World Cup in Six Seconds.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijmj4pcqHi0"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijmj4pcqHi0[/ame]

[McDermotX]

I love the expression on his face in between 1-3 secs..............sort of like a enigmatic half-smile/half-painful grimace, but its 100% clear he doesn't know what is going on.

[danperkins]

[shanks69]

Englands World Cup in Six Seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijmj4pcqHi0

looks like he falls asleep at the end,who can blame him though after watching englands 2 games

[BobTheCharmer]

looks like he falls asleep at the end,who can blame him though after watching englands 2 games

Did you find the England Italy game boring?

[Yozza]

ENGLAND SPECIAL REPORT: Lifting the lid on the World Cup shame of Roy Hodgson's side and the bloated FA party in Brazil

• Around 80 England staff will return to the UK on Wednesday
• That includes an army of specialists who had no impact on the team
• £100,000 was spent on a pitch they hardly used in Brazil
• Arrogant FA blazers swanned around the team hotel
• FA have offered same excuses for humiliation as they did at previous finals

The FA charter plane, top heavy with England’s bloated World Cup party of around 80 underperforming personnel, will touch down first in Manchester and then Luton on Wednesday afternoon on their hasty retreat from Brazil.

The pampered underachievers — both players and officials — will scuttle towards a convoy of chauffeured cars and then home to their families.
There will be no welcoming party of England fans thankful for having been entertained by their heroes on the greatest football stage in the world. Just a miserable retreat for a pathetic Team England.

What an unedifying — but fitting — end to this World Cup debacle. This was the team of athletes, coaches, and a myriad of experts that flew from England in the belief that they would be the ‘best prepared team at the World Cup’.

What they weren’t prepared for, and neither were the fans who paid thousands of pounds to follow a dream to Brazil, was that England would be out eight days after the tournament had begun.

Even now, the humiliation may not be over. England play Costa Rica on Tuesday night in Belo Horizonte. If they lose, this will be their most miserable World Cup since 1950 when England were defeated by the USA in the same city. At least in those days England managed one victory, a 2-0 win over Chile in Rio.

That tweed-and-brogue clad party numbered only 17 players, four referees, two trainers, eight sports writers and the manager. It was long before an England team needed an army of sports scientists.

So how did it come to this? And how did we get to the stage that the FA’s reaction is to keep calm and carry on?

The FA’s blundering chairman Greg Dyke’s timing on Friday was bizarre in the face of such an abject display. A time for review or consideration? Best to review the operations of the whole England set-up? No, Dyke blurted out his and the FA’s full support for Roy Hodgson just minutes before Costa Rica scored the goal against Italy that sealed England’s fate.

Dyke, who likes a report as his ill-conceived England Commission shows, should have, at the very least, played a straight bat when asked about Hodgson’s future. Then he should have set about a root-and-branch review of England’s approach to this World Cup. The starting point? What exactly did everyone in that ridiculously excessive FA party — only Germany had a bigger delegation — do to justify their place in Brazil?

Not a lot in many cases. Trevor Brooking, England’s retiring director of football development who somehow thinks England can win the World Cup in 2018, made a short address in a ceremony in a Miami cathedral to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Apart from that his only noticeable contribution seems to have been endlessly walking around the training ground keeping fit.

Dyke might also ask why England need a load of blazers hanging around the hotel with nothing to do but wait for the next free drink or dinner.
The defunct dinosaur international committee, who haven’t had a meeting for three years since being marginalised by the Club England set-up, still had Robert Coar and Dave Barnard in Miami. Then another four — Ivan Gazidis, Keith Lamb, Peter Barnes and Barry Taylor — took their places on the FA gravy train for the Brazil leg.

And as if this isn’t enough freeloading largesse, Tottenham’s Darren Eales has arrived for the meaningless match against Costa Rica because Gazidis went home after the Uruguay humiliation.

Team England flew out with all manner of specialists: fitness and conditioning coaches, doctors, sports scientists, video analysts, security officers, four Club England and FA executives and numerous commercial figures.

The whole team will fly back as what Jose Mourinho might call ‘specialists in failure’.

Perhaps the most heralded member of the team was the acclaimed sports psychiatrist Steve Peters. But he has cut a timid, detached figure, who did nothing either to empower Steven Gerrard and his team-mates.
One leading European coach asked: ‘When is the last time that group of players lined up in the tunnel with a look about them that said to the opposition: “You’re gonna have to play well to beat us today, lads”.’

The answer is probably against Portugal, in the quarter-final of the World Cup in Gelsenkirchen. It was there that England played for an hour with 10 men and were beaten, inevitably, in a penalty shootout.

Dyke, who attended a couple of training sessions at the Urca military base, should also demand specific data on the impact of so many sports scientists.
England had the best of everything — except the football. At their base in Urca, the FA lavished over £100,000 on ensuring the training pitch was up to standard yet used it on just seven occasions; likewise the media centre, which cost £80,000, partly paid by sponsors Vauxhall, to install.

This extravagance was also in evidence during the squad’s three weeks of training before they arrived in Rio. The FA spent more than £100million building a national training centre at St George’s Park outside Burton, yet had less than three full days there during that time. Instead they preferred to go to the Algarve — colder than Burton for part of the week — and then on to Miami at the start of the hurricane season with the first day’s training washed out by rain.

And only the FA in their wisdom could complete their World Cup from hell by having a closed training session on Sunday when already out of competition. How much better it would have been to let in fans, who have been totally let down by England, to watch them practise.

It was ‘business as usual on a match day minus two,’ said an FA spokesman. Try telling that to the short-changed England supporter.

The FA have a habit of putting a positive spin on everything. Why even this World Cup has been a success: due to FIFA appearance money for World Cup finalists they will make a net profit from their brief stay in Brazil.

Nowhere was the FA’s financial obsession better illustrated than when the team was used as clothes horses for kit suppliers Nike’s vast wardrobe of gear. The smiles of the FA officials and staff at England’s military training base on Sunday said it all. School’s out. Soon enough they will pack up their boxes of Nike T-shirts, shorts and socks and travel home with the rest of the team.

This has been an appalling World Cup campaign and yet the public are supposed to accept the same, dreadful excuses from the FA.
To the outsider, no one is really taking this shameful experience seriously enough within that organisation. When Germany, Holland and France have found themselves in similar positions, they have opted for a cathartic overhaul.

Not England. At their training camp, you are met by armed, Brazilian military personnel on the way in. Once inside, there is a cossetted, almost arrogant, atmosphere. We are England, it says. We know best.

Hodgson is a lovely, charming man. But he has proved beyond reasonable doubt he cannot lead England to success at tournament football. The facts speak for themselves.

‘The players gave me everything I could have asked for and more,’ Hodgson claimed and that proves the point. If they really have given him everything and more, and still lost their opening two group games, there is something profoundly wrong.

Every time England come up against elite competition, they get well beaten. Every. Single. Time.

That the jobs of Hodgson and his assistants are safe after such a fiasco – even before the last dead rubber of is played — is beyond belief.

However, it is worth casting the mind back to England’s Ashes surrender in Australia last winter. England Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke was adamant that Andy Flower would remain in charge. And Flower, like Hodgson insisted, couldn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t.

A month later Flower, once out of the England bubble of a major sporting event, realised the depth of national feeling and resigned. He admitted that those who had questioned him had been right all along.

Hodgson should do the same, but he won’t.

[Yozza]

Gary Lineker slams Roy Hodgson's tactics as he brands England's World Cup 2014 group stage exit a 'humiliation'

• Lineker said Hodgson's decision to play 4-2-3-1 and not 4-3-3 cost England
• That decision caused England to be over-run in centre of midfield, he says
• He was also heavily critical of Steven Gerrard's organisational skills
• The 'old guard' of Gerrard and Frank Lampard are 'past their best', he says
• Former England striker said only positive giving the youngsters 'a chance'

Former England striker Gary Linker has hit out at Roy Hodgson's World Cup tactics and branded the Three Lion's group stage exit in Brazil a 'humiliation'.
Lineker, who played in four major tournaments for England, believes that Hodgson's decision to play 4-2-3-1 instead of 4-3-3 was naive due to his side's lack of experience.

Steven Gerrard's inability to organise and lead the side correctly also contributed to England's first group stage exit since 1958, according to Lineker.

The only positive that he was able to draw from England's World Cup elimination was Hodgson's decision to give the youngsters 'a chance'.
The 53-year-old Match of the Day presenter told Blahzil.com: 'Personally, I think Roy got it wrong.

'The system that suits this kind of England better, with the lack of experience in it, is probably a 4-3-3. He tried to just play with two players in the centre of midfield.

'In the first game I thought it was better because he had (Raheem) Sterling behind (Daniel) Sturridge, and that gave us three because Sterling is more of a natural midfield player, certainly than (Wayne) Rooney.

'But I just think it is too big an ask for just two central midfield players and once again we were outnumbered.

'The problem with this 4-2-3-1 is that it very quickly becomes a 4-4-2 or at least a 4-4-1-1 and we end up with flat lines and people getting between us.

'I think we would have been better - and I said this before the tournament - with three midfield players because you've got to give yourself a chance defensively.'

Although he was heavily critical of Hodgson's tactics, Lineker did say that he was pleased the England manager blooded some youngsters in tournament conditions.

'You admire him (Hodgson) in many ways for giving youngsters a chance,' he said.

'I applaud the fact that he had a go and that's what we all asked for wasn't it, that he played faster, positive football, so we can't complain too much.'
While calling England's exit a 'humiliation', Lineker criticised Gerrard's 'individual' attitude and his lack or organisational skills.

Lineker, who scored 48 goals in 80 internationals, believes England's 'old guard' of Gerrard and Frank Lampard are 'past their best'.

He said: 'Steven Gerrard, wonderful player that he is, has always been an individual in many ways.

'He's not really a player that can organise or spot problems. He didn't spot the danger on England's left side in the first game, which was pretty obvious after a few attempts.

'We don't have the players who can spot something and deal with it. In my era we had Terry Butcher, Ray Wilkins and Bryan Robson - players who could spot problems on the pitch and that is something that is missing from this crop.'

In reference to Gerrard's failed headed clearance that led to Luis Suarez's winner against England in the 2-1 loss to Uruguay, Lineker added: 'It was a schoolboy error that saw England finally go home with that dreadful second goal for Luis Suarez.

'Defensively we were not good enough.

'It was always the fear before the tournament that we were lightweight at the back with little depth, neither of the full-backs were defensively-minded full-backs.'

[Shaggy]

[ame="http://youtu.be/GRzXN56iWqQ"]Roy Hodgson sees his moobs on the big screen England World Cup 2014 funny - YouTube[/ame]

[PTP]

roflmao

[RedReet]

ENGLAND SPECIAL REPORT: Lifting the lid on the World Cup shame of Roy Hodgson's side and the bloated FA party in Brazil

• Around 80 England staff will return to the UK on Wednesday
• That includes an army of specialists who had no impact on the team
• £100,000 was spent on a pitch they hardly used in Brazil
• Arrogant FA blazers swanned around the team hotel
• FA have offered same excuses for humiliation as they did at previous finals

The FA charter plane, top heavy with England’s bloated World Cup party of around 80 underperforming personnel, will touch down first in Manchester and then Luton on Wednesday afternoon on their hasty retreat from Brazil.

The pampered underachievers — both players and officials — will scuttle towards a convoy of chauffeured cars and then home to their families.
There will be no welcoming party of England fans thankful for having been entertained by their heroes on the greatest football stage in the world. Just a miserable retreat for a pathetic Team England.

What an unedifying — but fitting — end to this World Cup debacle. This was the team of athletes, coaches, and a myriad of experts that flew from England in the belief that they would be the ‘best prepared team at the World Cup’.

What they weren’t prepared for, and neither were the fans who paid thousands of pounds to follow a dream to Brazil, was that England would be out eight days after the tournament had begun.

Even now, the humiliation may not be over. England play Costa Rica on Tuesday night in Belo Horizonte. If they lose, this will be their most miserable World Cup since 1950 when England were defeated by the USA in the same city. At least in those days England managed one victory, a 2-0 win over Chile in Rio.

That tweed-and-brogue clad party numbered only 17 players, four referees, two trainers, eight sports writers and the manager. It was long before an England team needed an army of sports scientists.

So how did it come to this? And how did we get to the stage that the FA’s reaction is to keep calm and carry on?

The FA’s blundering chairman Greg Dyke’s timing on Friday was bizarre in the face of such an abject display. A time for review or consideration? Best to review the operations of the whole England set-up? No, Dyke blurted out his and the FA’s full support for Roy Hodgson just minutes before Costa Rica scored the goal against Italy that sealed England’s fate.

Dyke, who likes a report as his ill-conceived England Commission shows, should have, at the very least, played a straight bat when asked about Hodgson’s future. Then he should have set about a root-and-branch review of England’s approach to this World Cup. The starting point? What exactly did everyone in that ridiculously excessive FA party — only Germany had a bigger delegation — do to justify their place in Brazil?

Not a lot in many cases. Trevor Brooking, England’s retiring director of football development who somehow thinks England can win the World Cup in 2018, made a short address in a ceremony in a Miami cathedral to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Apart from that his only noticeable contribution seems to have been endlessly walking around the training ground keeping fit.

Dyke might also ask why England need a load of blazers hanging around the hotel with nothing to do but wait for the next free drink or dinner.
The defunct dinosaur international committee, who haven’t had a meeting for three years since being marginalised by the Club England set-up, still had Robert Coar and Dave Barnard in Miami. Then another four — Ivan Gazidis, Keith Lamb, Peter Barnes and Barry Taylor — took their places on the FA gravy train for the Brazil leg.

And as if this isn’t enough freeloading largesse, Tottenham’s Darren Eales has arrived for the meaningless match against Costa Rica because Gazidis went home after the Uruguay humiliation.

Team England flew out with all manner of specialists: fitness and conditioning coaches, doctors, sports scientists, video analysts, security officers, four Club England and FA executives and numerous commercial figures.

The whole team will fly back as what Jose Mourinho might call ‘specialists in failure’.

Perhaps the most heralded member of the team was the acclaimed sports psychiatrist Steve Peters. But he has cut a timid, detached figure, who did nothing either to empower Steven Gerrard and his team-mates.
One leading European coach asked: ‘When is the last time that group of players lined up in the tunnel with a look about them that said to the opposition: “You’re gonna have to play well to beat us today, lads”.’

The answer is probably against Portugal, in the quarter-final of the World Cup in Gelsenkirchen. It was there that England played for an hour with 10 men and were beaten, inevitably, in a penalty shootout.

Dyke, who attended a couple of training sessions at the Urca military base, should also demand specific data on the impact of so many sports scientists.
England had the best of everything — except the football. At their base in Urca, the FA lavished over £100,000 on ensuring the training pitch was up to standard yet used it on just seven occasions; likewise the media centre, which cost £80,000, partly paid by sponsors Vauxhall, to install.

This extravagance was also in evidence during the squad’s three weeks of training before they arrived in Rio. The FA spent more than £100million building a national training centre at St George’s Park outside Burton, yet had less than three full days there during that time. Instead they preferred to go to the Algarve — colder than Burton for part of the week — and then on to Miami at the start of the hurricane season with the first day’s training washed out by rain.

And only the FA in their wisdom could complete their World Cup from hell by having a closed training session on Sunday when already out of competition. How much better it would have been to let in fans, who have been totally let down by England, to watch them practise.

It was ‘business as usual on a match day minus two,’ said an FA spokesman. Try telling that to the short-changed England supporter.

The FA have a habit of putting a positive spin on everything. Why even this World Cup has been a success: due to FIFA appearance money for World Cup finalists they will make a net profit from their brief stay in Brazil.

Nowhere was the FA’s financial obsession better illustrated than when the team was used as clothes horses for kit suppliers Nike’s vast wardrobe of gear. The smiles of the FA officials and staff at England’s military training base on Sunday said it all. School’s out. Soon enough they will pack up their boxes of Nike T-shirts, shorts and socks and travel home with the rest of the team.

This has been an appalling World Cup campaign and yet the public are supposed to accept the same, dreadful excuses from the FA.
To the outsider, no one is really taking this shameful experience seriously enough within that organisation. When Germany, Holland and France have found themselves in similar positions, they have opted for a cathartic overhaul.

Not England. At their training camp, you are met by armed, Brazilian military personnel on the way in. Once inside, there is a cossetted, almost arrogant, atmosphere. We are England, it says. We know best.

Hodgson is a lovely, charming man. But he has proved beyond reasonable doubt he cannot lead England to success at tournament football. The facts speak for themselves.

‘The players gave me everything I could have asked for and more,’ Hodgson claimed and that proves the point. If they really have given him everything and more, and still lost their opening two group games, there is something profoundly wrong.

Every time England come up against elite competition, they get well beaten. Every. Single. Time.

That the jobs of Hodgson and his assistants are safe after such a fiasco – even before the last dead rubber of is played — is beyond belief.

However, it is worth casting the mind back to England’s Ashes surrender in Australia last winter. England Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke was adamant that Andy Flower would remain in charge. And Flower, like Hodgson insisted, couldn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t.

A month later Flower, once out of the England bubble of a major sporting event, realised the depth of national feeling and resigned. He admitted that those who had questioned him had been right all along.

Hodgson should do the same, but he won’t.

Scathing. Who wrote that?

[Yozza]

Scathing. Who wrote that?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2014/article-2665357/ENGLAND-SPECIAL-REPORT-Lifting-lid-World-Cup-failure-Roy-Hodgsons-bloated-FA-party-Brazil.html

[Shaggy]

I have seen literally three journalists question Hodgson - Ashton (above), Daniel Taylor and Miguel Delaney. All the others - that I've read, at least - think he is not to blame. It's unbelievable.

[RedReet]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/wor...ty-Brazil.html

[RichC]

Hodgson's true genius is his ability to lower expectations so much that he's actually doing as expected.

As I've said before if the current England manager was someone born outside of the UK they'd be being torn to shreds by the UK press instead it's Hodgson who's "doing as well as is to be expected" etc....

[Tee]

Englands World Cup in Six Seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijmj4pcqHi0