Monday 28 June 2010

Another blog about football

I suppose that I should stick with football today because of England's departure from the World Cup. Yesterday's blog was about footballers' attitudes and today I would guess that there are hundreds if not thousands of comments on the internet that have been written about technological advances on the football pitch. I am not too bothered about this myself. I am much more concerned with the attitude and ability of our players. We treat them with so much respect and pay them so much and this in turn raises our expectations. The bubble should have burst yesterday.

Our top players looked like amateurs, and these are people that are paid thousands of pounds per week. I often joke that if we paid them a little more then they could afford the time to be a little fitter, a little quicker, a little more skillful. The joke is wearing thin. Compare the salary of the England manager to that of New Zealand's who only receives a £20 000 salary.

If we are expected to cut back in so many areas then Premier League salaries would be a really good place to save money. I know we live in a capitalist system and the money belongs to the League and they can do with it what they like, but there are plenty of football clubs that are struggling and the bias towards our best players is clearly not working.

Change the world

2 comments:

  1. Not interested in the football so I've only seen the disallowed goal on news bulletins. Use of goal-line technology in these situations seems a no-brainer. It works for cricket and tennis so should work for football.

    On the 'players looking like amateurs' point - as I understand it - England have had repeated changes of manager - using both English and overseas ones - mostly with indifferent results.

    Changing the manager is not likely to improve the team performance in my view. The players do appear to have amateur attitudes and do not appear to be very adaptable to differing circumstances.

    I suspect that the next England team might best be selected from among those players who:-

    Would willingly play for their country for nothing more than expenses.

    Do not abuse their bodies with rubbish food, late night antics and alcohol consumption above the occasional glass of wine with a meal - professional sportspeople should keep their bodywork and minds in top condition

    Have the skin of a rhinoceros to cope with the tabloid press

    Spend a lot of time honimg their footballing skills alone for themselves as well as participating in team training sessions

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  2. Thanks for your thoughts Anonymous. I think it helps to be a good role model. I once met Colin Hendry who was (and I'm sure still is) a really nice man. He was also dedicated as a player and would be the first player on the training field and the last one off it. We have an attitude that our top players can get away with a few hours training here and there. I don't think you get to be world champions without an exceptional training schedule. Whenever you saw our players training it looked like they were on holiday.

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