Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Sergio Stefanuto]

[cj1976]

Carlton Palmer, lol. Indescribably crap.

[JMO]

It's not the foreign players that is the problem, it is the whole culture of English football. Kick and rush is dead.

While you have clubs that pick young kids based on size/weight at 12 years old and how fast they are..then you will never have a world class team. Kids have to learn technique early. It is as simple as that.

My biggest pet peeve with the 'golden generation' is that they wasted players like Scholes and Carrick. The team should have been built around Scholes in his prime and Carrick is criminally underrated in England. He is one of maybe 4 players in that squad who would be very comfortable playing in Spain. Gareth Barry starting over him was shocking. Barry can barely complete a ten yard pass correctly (at the right pace and in front of the receiver) and he has zero positional sense. But yea he gets stuck in and is energetic...therefore in England..he's the man for the job.

[catman]

The problem goes clearly to the grassroots level. It is time to swallow your pride and learn from countries like Germany.

[Sergio Stefanuto]

double post

[Sergio Stefanuto]

Milton Friedman said: "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another"

This applies to football in two ways: (1) obviously, the world cup is a fixed pie (Germany's success necessitated England's and Argentina's failure), but (2) the strength and potential of the teams isn't a fixed pie (Germany being good doesn't necessitate England and Argentina being bad)

(2) is why the foreign player hypothesis must fail. Just because an English player finds it more difficult to play for the big English clubs than players in previous decades did (not that there was any relationship at all between that and good England performances in world cups; if anything, they were worse), it doesn�t mean that they can�t still become a good player. In fact, playing at a smaller club in order to prove yourself is maybe superior to sitting on the bench at Manchester United waiting for your moment. Good English players, if they existed, would be snapped up by the smaller clubs and then sold on to the bigger clubs later on or sold abroad. Foreign players, it's true, are generally cheaper, though. In which case, this is a classic situation where local labor struggles to compete with cheaper (and usually superior) foreign competition. But clubs are independent businesses whose survival depends on success and if they want to field a team of 11 Chinamen, so be it, I say.

Milton Friedman again: "A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself"

The foreign player hypothesis does however succeed in a different respect: it shows how foreign players in England have strengthened the countries sending players over. This, perhaps, is another lesson England needs to learn. Free movement of labor applies just as much to English players as it does to foreigners, and yet . . .all the movement is from abroad to England and not the reverse. Look at Uruguay. Uruguay is in the semi-final of the world cup for the first time since 1954. Well, guess what. . .15 players in Uruguay's squad play in Europe, as do almost the entire Brazilian squad. But just because some countries are strengthened by their players playing in England, Italy or France, it doesn't at all follow that England is, as a consequence, weakened. This is the fixed pie fallacy (suggesting something is a fixed pie when it isn't). There is a practically infinite number of opportunities in which to flourish. Indeed, individual England players such as Rooney, Gerrard, A Cole, Ferdinand, Terry, Lampard, Owen, Beckham, Scholes and Walcott are arguably the best players we have had since 1966.

[Big_Bird]

[Big_Bird]

[Sergio Stefanuto]

[JMO]

[JMO]

[Sergio Stefanuto]

To be honest, JMO, there's no point comparing players past and present. In the 1980s, there was no passback rule and players could commit two-footed tackles from behind, willy nilly. Teams also used the offside trap a lot, which has been virtually extinguished by the new rules. Football was a lot easier (and a lot more rubbish) prior to the early-mid 90s.

[Big_Bird]

SS, did we watch the same matches? Germany were outstanding. Their sum was greater than their parts, as they played with intelligence and strategy, and came together as a TEAM. It was brilliant teamwork that got them through.

The rest of the world should (and will) be watching, and learning lessons.

[JMO]