Nope, you didn’t just misread the headline. I did write it in capital letters so you could have hardly missed it.
Although I personally think they’ll qualify anyway.
But I’m just sick to death with the circus surrounding England.
Not to mention the constant disappointment and under-achievement at every major tournament I have seen them in.
So why don’t I want England to qualify?
Because of the ridiculous views of Steve McClaren, Steve Gerrard, Steve Coppell and Steve Ferguson. Sorry, I mean Alex Ferguson.
As people have already pointed out, it seems the whole England setup and English media are gearing up for an unsuccessful qualification campaign to Euro 2008 and the ‘foreigner’ issue is the perfect subject to sell more papers and cause more controversy.
What sells more than blaming those ‘damn foreigners’ eh?
Nevermind the fact England haven’t won anything since 1966.
It must have been because of the huge influx of foreign players coming in during 1967. I do apologise about forgetting about that, it was a long time ago you see.
You wouldn’t mind if there was some intelligent debate from the media or the England coach and players but saying English players don’t get a chance and blaming foreign players doesn’t hold any water. And just because you repeat it over and over again doesn’t make it true. It’s like speaking to someone who doesn’t speak your language and to help them understand you REPEAT IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN SLOWER AND LOUDER. It doesn’t matter how many times you do it you still look like a complete retard.
And another reason England shouldn’t qualify is that they simply don’t deserve it.
I hate to say this but look at the Germans.
How many of their players would get into our national side? The fact is talent-wise, they are much worse off that England. But somehow, they easily qualified for next years tournament in a much harder group than ours!
And look at Scotland. They go into the last game of their qualifying campaign with a place at Euro 2008 in their own hands (and the best of luck to them this weekend). That is in a group which contains previous World Champions France, and current World Champions Italy! If England were in that group, they wouldn’t even have got close to being where the Scots are now. And that is the sad fact.
What does that tell you?
But can you blame McClaren and the players for their reactions?
If England don’t qualify, the McClaren will lose his job, and the players will risk being called failures until the next qualification round starts again.
So you can see why they are looking for scapegoats.
It’s a pity someone like Roy Keane isn’t currently playing for England. At least you would get an honest assessment of the situation from a player, instead of someone like Steven Gerrard who quite frankly is pathetic.
Wasn’t this the same player who was licking Sven’s arse when the Swede was in charge and then slagged him off once he stopped managing England? I would call Gerrard two-faced but he would probably think I was talking about the current state of Britain’s dental healthcare.
The conduct of the whole England setup and media has disappointed me to be honest over the last few weeks. The media seem to ask everyone their opinion on the poor form of England and they only seem to print and publish answers which blame the foreign players. The press need to be more responsible, because people believe what they write.
I vaguely remember reading a piece from Chris Waddle a while ago about how English players are over-hyped and think they have a god-given right to play in the World Cup. Good luck finding it though, since it’s drowned in an ocean of ‘player quota’ stories.
Thank God the web has blogs where people can voice their opinions and think for themselves instead of being fed constant drivel from the mainstream press.
I can’t be bothered writing even more reasons why the player quota system is badly flawed so you can read my previous piece on it here. It also includes a lot of intelligent comments from the readers so I thank them for that and for contributing in the first place.