England Football: Overrated or just not good enough? Part 1
Association football is somewhat of a national sport in England. It is a place that was arguably responsible for contributing heavily to writing the modern time script for football. Therefore, it was a major influence on the development
of the modern Laws of the Game. With over 40,000 association football clubs, England has more clubs involved in the code than any other country.
England is home to, amongst others, the world's oldest association football club; namely, Sheffield F.C. It also hosts the oldest national governing body to match - The Football Association. The first national team, the oldest
national knockout competition (the FA Cup) and have the oldest national league (The Football League) to match. Today England's top domestic league, the Premier League, is one of the most popular and wealthiest sports leagues in the world and is home to some
of the world's most famous football clubs.
In modern times, the Barclays Premiere League is one of the most promising destinations for any football player. For some professionals, irrespective of footballing capacity, it is nothing short of a dream come true. The Champions
League features clubs from all over the continent in question. For the past five years or so, teams from the English Premier League have consistently made it to the semi-finals and the finals of Europe’s premier club competition. The top 4 teams of the Barclays
Premier League - Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool Football Club and Arsenal FC - have more than often managed to reach the quarter finals and gone on to win the cup in some cases as well.
However, this piece already recognises the efficiency of English ‘club’ football. The media hype subjected to the domestic format may seem justified. This article, on the other hand, deals with the England national team. The side
has relied on its domestic league for its progression in football – A perk that might leave any national side in awe. However, despite the Premier League injection, things haven’t gone quite as planned.
Come the start of every major tournament, somehow England is always amongst the favourites. Yet they only have just one World Cup to their name. Have they really underperformed in all the major tournaments since 1966? That’s debatable.
Apart from the World Cup triumph in 1966, England has never gone past the quarter final stages of the football’s biggest showpiece. England failed to qualify for the 1970, 1978 and 1994 World Cups, and it required a last gasp David
Beckham free kick for them to qualify for the 2002 World Cup finals. England’s record in the Euros isn’t any better either. They have gone past the group stages on only three occasions. Their best is a third placed finish in 1968 by the same team that triumphed
in the 66 world cup. And recently they failed to even qualify for the 2008 Euro Finals.
This brings us to the initial question; is England really that good a team? Surely they can’t have underperformed all these years. What can’t be denied is that England has never lacked talent. Over the years we’ve seen many great
players play for England, Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker, Jimmy Greaves, Bryan Robson, Alan Shearer, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney just to name a few. But what we haven’t seen is England play as a team. Looking at the recent tournaments, we
see that when it comes to England, it’s always about individuals. In 1998 it was Shearer’s England. In 2002 it was Beckham’s England. In 2006 it was Gerrard and Rooney and to some extent Beckham too. In 2010 it was Rooney’s England. Had it been a small team
with a weak domestic setup, it might have been understandable. The irony is that nearly all members of the national sided are ‘finished goods.’
The write up bears the opinion of the writer and should not be related to Bettor’s editorial stance.
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