Gunners captain Cesc Fabregas has highlighted exactly what is wrong with English football. Fabregas’ interview with Telegraph should no doubt turn some heads in the FA as to what kind of an approach is needed in England. He explains how constant demand to win neglects what the primary purpose of football is.
“In Spain, we believe in one style of football. The way we play is the most important. It’s about how you do it. You will never play the ball longer or do some things you are not used to. We want to win playing football. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen but we want to be the best this way. We did it last summer and we want to keep doing it”
Footballistically, the culture and expectation around Europe is staggering compared what we witness in England. Bert van Marwijk, the Dutch manager that led them to the World Cup finals was constantly slaughtered in the Dutch media for his style of football throughout the World Cup as was Dunga, though as much as I despise them for reasons unknown, I must admit watching Brazil in the World Cup I thought was fantastic.
The approach we in England take to football has given us no recognition of any sort for years and although the country can boast having the best league in the world, the fact of the matter is that it is the foreign players that light up the league.
Teams can play with defensive long ball tactics against tougher opposition. That is understandable when so much is at stake in the game. Whereas a game watching Stoke play Blackburn can be interesting to see how many players leave unscathed, we can be assured that the rest of the world would be sitting there having a good old laugh at us.
“Here in England it is passion and the fans love it when there are hard tackles and you play long balls and counter-attack. If you do that in Spain they will boo you.”
“…because they are used to another kind of football. Here [in England] if you play good football, good football, good football and you don’t win then they can boo you for the opposite. You have to believe in your style and go for it”
Football is an entertainment business and that is the truth of the matter. In recent days however, we have seen the word “entertainment” removed from the phrase. And it is exactly the reason why England always fail at the major international stage. There is a lack of discipline among the players mixed with a complete disregard for what the game stands for.
Over the past 6 or 7 years, other than Wayne Rooney at Everton/Manchester United and Steven Gerrard, there hasn’t been any English players that would turn a head in World football like Iniesta, Ronaldo, Fabregas and Messi would.
“In Spain they make you study and have discipline,”
“You can be a good footballer, but if you don’t study, if you don’t behave, if you don’t have the discipline to get to training on time and eat well then they don’t care if you’re the best."
“Discipline and humility is very important. If you think you’re better than the others they’ll put you on the bench straight away. "
“They want the kids to be good but they want it to be that when they get into the first team, they behave the same way they did at 16."
"And that’s the most important thing because now it is very easy at 17 to become a first-team player, get some money and to go back down again because you think you have made it. But in Spain they would never let you do that. If that happened you would be out of the team straight away.”
It is hard to imagine how a player like Kevin Davies with some 120 goals and some 112 yellow cards can go home on a Saturday evening sit down and think, “I enjoyed my football today”. How do you enjoy playing football when all you’re doing through a game is watching out for when the long ball comes in and then bask in the glory of beating it past a defender by wrestling him to the ground?
“Sometimes my family couldn’t find me. You are out on the street. you came back at 12 o’clock at night and rested and then got up on Sunday morning and did it again. It was like this. One of the things you see in Spain a lot is that when you go, especially in small towns, on the street you play street football with your friends.”
"You cut your knees badly but you still stand up and play and it’s important to do that at this age. From there, players progress in a certain way."
“You fall on the floor, you stand up, you hit a wall, you sometimes break some windows. That is the beauty of football in Spain.”
There are no technically gifted players in the England team as there is of the robust energy powerhouse players which is useful to have, but causes an imbalance.
Rest assured, the new generation of players coming through to the English team have promising abilities. Jack Wilshere, Rodwell of Everton and Adam Johnson from Manchester City look the part in what is needed start undertaking a new philosophy in football
“I’m sure you have the players, but you have to find your own style. We were not born like it but we were taught to play like it.”
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Resigned to Fate or Deflated
Was it really surprising to have lost that game? No, not really. That still doesn’t mean there isn’t that deflated feeling after that. The same excuses can be thrown again, “we didn’t have van Persie, Verminator, Cesc, Theo etc. etc”. And yes it was “like playing Chavski without Drogba, Terry, Ramires etc.etc.”
It is still more than just a little frustrating to have lost. Other than the first minute where we had the two opportunities, the chavs always looked comfortable sitting on the couch watching us pass till the cows came home. The game went exactly as predicted: We dominate, you score and we lose. Always the same story. The more annoying part is that we KNEW what they were going to do. They’ve been doing this against us for a long long time and we happily played into their hands.
They showed the mentality of champions. They absorbed the pressure and almost nearly fired at will.
It generally seems from the Arsenal blogosphere that most Gooners are not that bothered and expected this. I understand that there is not much else to do but we mustn’t always have to settle for mediocrity by any stretch of the imagination. We should be beating the likes of the chavs, even if it can be argued that we didn’t have our “full squad”. The fact of the matter is that we have had 2 wins in 17 against them.
Gooners must realise now that there is no point shedding tears over the defeat for too long. We are not going to play them every week and we must remember that this fixture last year left us some 9 points behind. So at this stage of the season, 7 points is not an absolute mountain to climb. But there is still work to be done and the team must remain focused and determined.
Every team has a blip or two during the season, let’s hope that we’ve past our blip stage. We’ve got a game against Birmingham at home before Shakhtar and then Citeh. Let’s hope we can put some good performances in; It’s a long season ahead if things do feel THAT bad, spare a thought for the Anfield faithful who find themselves in the bottom 3 with geriatric owners and a Sunday to forget with a 2-1 defeat to Blackpool.
COYG!!!!!!
It is still more than just a little frustrating to have lost. Other than the first minute where we had the two opportunities, the chavs always looked comfortable sitting on the couch watching us pass till the cows came home. The game went exactly as predicted: We dominate, you score and we lose. Always the same story. The more annoying part is that we KNEW what they were going to do. They’ve been doing this against us for a long long time and we happily played into their hands.
They showed the mentality of champions. They absorbed the pressure and almost nearly fired at will.
It generally seems from the Arsenal blogosphere that most Gooners are not that bothered and expected this. I understand that there is not much else to do but we mustn’t always have to settle for mediocrity by any stretch of the imagination. We should be beating the likes of the chavs, even if it can be argued that we didn’t have our “full squad”. The fact of the matter is that we have had 2 wins in 17 against them.
Gooners must realise now that there is no point shedding tears over the defeat for too long. We are not going to play them every week and we must remember that this fixture last year left us some 9 points behind. So at this stage of the season, 7 points is not an absolute mountain to climb. But there is still work to be done and the team must remain focused and determined.
Every team has a blip or two during the season, let’s hope that we’ve past our blip stage. We’ve got a game against Birmingham at home before Shakhtar and then Citeh. Let’s hope we can put some good performances in; It’s a long season ahead if things do feel THAT bad, spare a thought for the Anfield faithful who find themselves in the bottom 3 with geriatric owners and a Sunday to forget with a 2-1 defeat to Blackpool.
COYG!!!!!!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
And They Say Being a Journalist is Hard Work…
Defeat against the baggies was surprisingly quite easy to take over the weekend as it’s one of the few occasions when we were outplayed footballistically by a team other than Chelsea or Manchester United and without the boring long ball, push and shove and hard so called “tackling” football deployed by Tony Pulis or Sam Allardyce
Having said that, I came across the article in the mirror by Mike Walter. It contains all sorts of name calling and abuse towards Arsene Wenger and will no doubt have all the Anti-Wenger fans screaming with joy.
While many gooners are getting worked up about the words used to describe Wenger, I frankly find it almost embarrassing that the British media has sunken to a new low of name calling. Isn’t that something that we all remember from primary school days? If the site was blog for writers, then you can understand to an extent. However, reading through the article it seems to get more abusive and one wonders how a so called journalist lacks so much knowledge that he’s called the defeat an “all time low”.
Is Mike Walters serious? Or is he actually a 9 year old child that doesn’t remember recent football seasons. The West Brom defeat ranks nowhere near an “all time low”. Then I began to wonder on why a similar article was not thrown out when Liverpool lost to Northampton at home. Ah wait, of course.... silly me! Roy Hodgson is an English manager. Surely he can do no wrong!
After 6 games into the league we have tasted a first defeat and it was almost as if the media guys at the mirror were just aching to unleash an article that attacks Wenger. Instead all they have managed to do is advertise to the rest of Britain the low level journalism they can produce by gathering together an uneducated bunch of retards calling themselves “journalists” and giving them a piece of paper to doodle on.
They are quite clear in their support of the twitchman Redknapp and seem to believe that he is clearly the manager who’s words hold the trend to be followed in the footballing world. Hence, Harry’s name calling towards Wenger after being humiliated in the Carling Cup has caught on by the Mirror’s retards.
Fact of the matter is that atleast 18 of the 20 premier league teams in the country would jump at the opportunity to have Wenger as their manager and I doubt many would want to go bankrupt by having the fraud Harry Redknapp as a manager. But Harry’s red passport means that he can always have the mirror journalists following him around as if he is the messiah to save football from the cruel hands of evil genius Arsene Wenger.
To more important issues; tonight’s game in Serbia against Partizan Belgrade will be a difficult one. We are short of players that are fit to play. Nasri played 120 minutes in the carling cup followed by a full 90 minutes on Saturday and the same goes for Eboue. Koscielny was spared playing the full 90 minutes on Saturday as we pushed for goals late in the game. Jack Wilshere should be fresh enough to start, as will Rosicky and Fabianski.
This brings me to our once again keeper problems. I am not Almunia’s biggest fan by any stretch of imagination. However, credit must be given where it’s due and he performed well for us this season…up until the West Brom game.
Two big errors ended in a goal and everyone turned against him. It was disgusting to see the so called “Arsenal fans” making sarcastic noises towards him. These lacking 2 brain cells good for nothing fans don’t stop to think what it achieves to intimidate your own player! It’s baffling to even wonder what they expect. THE TRANSFER WINDOW IS CLOSED!!! Look it up in the dictionary if you don’t understand any part of that phrase!
Jeering your keeper will knock his confidence even further and no we DON’T have another keeper to stand in. I don’t understand what part of it all do some fans not understand. You’re not going to get another keeper so atleast support the ones we have. Manuel has done well this season and there is no denying last game he was poor. Further, bare in mind that he WAS injured through the 2nd half of the game.
Personally, I would quite like to see Szczesny play. Many argue that he is young and inexperienced. However, he seems to have faith in his ability and confidence is a very important factor in goalkeeping.
Just to finish off, take note all gooners: we can come out winning or losing by any amount of goals tomorrow but there will be no winning with the media for Arsenal. They will forever hate the Arsenal but it’s no reason to stop enjoying the football or supporting the team whole heartedly.
COYG!!
Having said that, I came across the article in the mirror by Mike Walter. It contains all sorts of name calling and abuse towards Arsene Wenger and will no doubt have all the Anti-Wenger fans screaming with joy.
While many gooners are getting worked up about the words used to describe Wenger, I frankly find it almost embarrassing that the British media has sunken to a new low of name calling. Isn’t that something that we all remember from primary school days? If the site was blog for writers, then you can understand to an extent. However, reading through the article it seems to get more abusive and one wonders how a so called journalist lacks so much knowledge that he’s called the defeat an “all time low”.
Is Mike Walters serious? Or is he actually a 9 year old child that doesn’t remember recent football seasons. The West Brom defeat ranks nowhere near an “all time low”. Then I began to wonder on why a similar article was not thrown out when Liverpool lost to Northampton at home. Ah wait, of course.... silly me! Roy Hodgson is an English manager. Surely he can do no wrong!
After 6 games into the league we have tasted a first defeat and it was almost as if the media guys at the mirror were just aching to unleash an article that attacks Wenger. Instead all they have managed to do is advertise to the rest of Britain the low level journalism they can produce by gathering together an uneducated bunch of retards calling themselves “journalists” and giving them a piece of paper to doodle on.
They are quite clear in their support of the twitchman Redknapp and seem to believe that he is clearly the manager who’s words hold the trend to be followed in the footballing world. Hence, Harry’s name calling towards Wenger after being humiliated in the Carling Cup has caught on by the Mirror’s retards.
Fact of the matter is that atleast 18 of the 20 premier league teams in the country would jump at the opportunity to have Wenger as their manager and I doubt many would want to go bankrupt by having the fraud Harry Redknapp as a manager. But Harry’s red passport means that he can always have the mirror journalists following him around as if he is the messiah to save football from the cruel hands of evil genius Arsene Wenger.
To more important issues; tonight’s game in Serbia against Partizan Belgrade will be a difficult one. We are short of players that are fit to play. Nasri played 120 minutes in the carling cup followed by a full 90 minutes on Saturday and the same goes for Eboue. Koscielny was spared playing the full 90 minutes on Saturday as we pushed for goals late in the game. Jack Wilshere should be fresh enough to start, as will Rosicky and Fabianski.
This brings me to our once again keeper problems. I am not Almunia’s biggest fan by any stretch of imagination. However, credit must be given where it’s due and he performed well for us this season…up until the West Brom game.
Two big errors ended in a goal and everyone turned against him. It was disgusting to see the so called “Arsenal fans” making sarcastic noises towards him. These lacking 2 brain cells good for nothing fans don’t stop to think what it achieves to intimidate your own player! It’s baffling to even wonder what they expect. THE TRANSFER WINDOW IS CLOSED!!! Look it up in the dictionary if you don’t understand any part of that phrase!
Jeering your keeper will knock his confidence even further and no we DON’T have another keeper to stand in. I don’t understand what part of it all do some fans not understand. You’re not going to get another keeper so atleast support the ones we have. Manuel has done well this season and there is no denying last game he was poor. Further, bare in mind that he WAS injured through the 2nd half of the game.
Personally, I would quite like to see Szczesny play. Many argue that he is young and inexperienced. However, he seems to have faith in his ability and confidence is a very important factor in goalkeeping.
Just to finish off, take note all gooners: we can come out winning or losing by any amount of goals tomorrow but there will be no winning with the media for Arsenal. They will forever hate the Arsenal but it’s no reason to stop enjoying the football or supporting the team whole heartedly.
COYG!!
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