The Mailbox ponders Harry Kane’s big decision and how he will be best remembered. Also: 16 Conclusions on England’s young Lions; hypocrisy over Saudi; and the spirit of football.
Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…
16 U21 Conclusions
England are comfortable on the ball, especially in defence and happy to play out from the back, regardless of the press but seem most threatening on the break.
– Portugal were similarly comfortable on the ball but mainly in midfield, they were never too threatening.
– England are billed as a 442 team, as you’d expect from a team managed by Lee Carsley (if you’re old enough to have seen play) but to defy stereotype it was more of a 460. With Anthony Gordon the furthest forward of that 6.
– I’m aware that this may be due to necessity as the only out and out striker is Archer, who was in the championship last year. 18 goals in 40 games at that level suggest he has something about him though.
– Also the midfield has by far the most depth with Palmer, Skipp and Smith-Rowe starting on the bench.
– The problem for England was getting players in the box, counterintuitively this was more obvious when building up slowly, then when breaking quickly.
– Fabio Silva is as anonymous in U21 football as he was in the Prem.
– Neto looked lively and appeared their best player in the first half but didn’t see much of the ball in the second half.
– The decision to play Garner at RB seemed odd, he struggled to begin with but did settle, still, with Aarons LB it didn’t make much sense.
– Tavares wasn’t bad per se but England were most threatening on his side (Madeuke and Gibbs-White when he floated over) and he gave the ball away on the halfway line at the end of the first half that should have led to a goal. So he’s still Tavares.
– Madeuke seems a cut above this level, both physically and technically.
– It was noticeable that this England team (except for little Angel Gomes) were physically dominant over this Portugal team.
– Then, England made the decision to drop deep for all of the second half. It’s almost ingrained at this stage and for long-term England watchers this went as well and you’d imagine. Portugal hit the bar and they weren’t banging on the door but they were loitering outside the house and therefore it wasn’t as comfortable as it may have been.
– Harwood-Bellis had a poor second half. By all accounts he had a good season in the Championship and it seems like he’ll be in the Prem next season.
– I thought taking off Madeuke and Aarons was risky but it signalled that Carsley wanted to see this game out and fairplay it worked.
– U21s tournaments are like the U23 league (formerly the Reserves), the best players of the age group are in the first team and having a good reserve team doesn’t always lead to a good first team.
Darns (Pearce got to a final and Southgate was knocked in the group stages, make of that what you will) Marrakech
Name all 300
Still not convinced by the argument that Harry Kane will be more remembered in 20-30-50 years time if he goes to Real / Bayern than staying and beating Shearer’s record. There have been 300 players awarded a league winners medal since football was invented. How many can you actually name? Did you remember that Dion Dublin (excellent player that he was) picked up one with Man U? Or that Robert Huth has in fact got 3 (2 with Chelsea in addition to the Leicester one)?
Football is a team game, and we remember sides but not necessarily the individuals. Individuals stand out for being serial winners or for their own achievements. Harry Kane will of course be better remembered if he stayed at spurs and won nothing, but broke the record than if he went to Bayern and won the Bundesliga or even went to Real and won the Champions League.
Sadly as a Spurs fan, I’d have to admit if he went to Man U (or City, or Newcastle) and won one or more league titles in addition to breaking the record this would likely be more memorable still…
Chris (East Sussex)
Spirit of football
I’ve got a question for Dave Tickner apropos of nothing and strictly about football. If Tottenham scored because – I don’t know, let’s say Fulham – kicked the ball out of play for an injury to Heung Min-Son, and then went to sleep expecting Tottenham to throw the ball back, would you be delighted?
I was at the Arsenal v Sheffield United FA Cup match in 1999 when Overmars scored like this. The feeling in the crowd was awful. Everyone wanted the game to be replayed. I didn’t hear a single person who thought that Sheffield United were to blame for going to sleep and that Kanu and Overmars didn’t break any laws so it’s all fair.
There is no such thing as “the spirit of football” that’s invoked on a regular basis, or any such imperialistic notion about the correct way to play. But everyone in that crowd felt a bit shitty about it. It didn’t feel like we earned the win or that Sheffield United were to blame for not staying 100% focused. It just didn’t feel like that is the way to win a game of football. We want football won by footballers, not law historians.
There may of course have been a few people in the crowd who smugly boasted how much smarter they were than everyone else for thinking it was all fine. But luckily, we didn’t have social media at that point for them to ram their cleverness down our throats.
Jaimie (maybe Elon has a point?) Kaffash, AFC, London
In at the deep end
A short time out from all the pissing and moaning about how rigged or unfair football is…
A friend of mine in the U.S. has a son who was a pretty good soccer (!) player at high school so got a scholarship to a top University. He obviously did well for himself as he got drafted to an MLS team a couple of years ago where he has been learning his craft.
One of the established defenders recently got injured so he has been training with the first team squad and has been told he will most likely make his debut in a couple of weeks… against Lionel Messi!
Let that just sink in for a moment!
Sometimes, the tears we shed about football are not just in despair.
Adidasmufc (Personally, I’d be sh#@ting myself!]
Fergie for United
Still hoping Utd go for 18 year old Evan Ferguson. Although they bought Wayne Rooney under similar circumstances, and that didn’t go well.
Rearguards,
Liam
Hypocrisy over Saudi swoops
I really don’t understand all of the pearl clutching about players other than those in the last couple of years of their career going to Saudi for simply bonkers money.
Ruben Neves and Seko Fofana being the two that seem to have raised the most fuss, with articles on here, and general noise about it showing a lack of ambition from the players, and being sad that they are putting money ahead of football success.
Neves is from Portugal, and grew up apparently as a Porto fan; according to Wikipedia joined the club as an 8 year old.
I am sure it was not his life long dream to leave them for a mid table Premier League side near Birmingham with almost no chance of winning a trophy. This was a move clearly for money.
The much quoted comment that he wanted to play Champions League is also a bit of non starter – he had already played in the Champions League – for the club he grew up supporting.
With Fofana (and again with help from Wikipedia and transfermarkt), you have a player that was born in France, but plays for the Ivory Coast, and in the last nine years has played for Man City, Fulham, Bastia, Udinese and Lens.
He is 28 years old, so if he was going to play for one of the marquee clubs in world football, he would have most likely done it already.#
He can earn mindblowingly huge amounts of money, and set himself, his family up for generations if they are smart with the money he will earn over there – but some people want him to turn that down for some romantic rubbish.
The biggest reason for the uproar is clearly that the Premier League can no longer just gazump everyone else in the world except for Real or Barca (who seem to keep finding buckets of money despite apparently being skint) when it comes to taking whatever players they want.
Maybe now the Premier League is getting a taste of what those moaners in all of the other leagues have being going on about.
It’s a little bit of hypocrisy going on here. A bit like English cricket fans with yesterdays dismissal of Bairstow – two days after Bairstow himself tried the same thing but failed (both sides tried the same thing, one is just better than the other – a bit like the series so far).
Dixon “below the line” Hunt.
LIV football
I saw the football365 article concerning Fofana moving to Saudi Arabia and ‘how disappointing’ it was.
Saudi are following the LIV model where they managed to swag a couple of big name, a couple of big names but past it and a slew of middle of the road ‘journeymen’ and a whole bunch of no names.
Some of it is to create awareness of the league, but a lot of it is to unsettle and upset the ‘establishment’ to ultimately drive to some deal they will want. Go after the players, steal some away and drive up prices on what are already tightly stretched club budgets and it puts a lot of pressure on the leagues and UEFA.
What do they want? Probably the club World Cup and few other high profile games and tournaments. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed for admittance to the European competitions – as that would greatly increase and enhance their profile.
Unlike LIV though, those aging players have a very limited lifespan. They may be able to play on for a year or two more than in Europe due to the lower physical demands but even that will end. Especially with the much lower PR it gets the players – and there are some of those that will miss that most – looking at you Ronaldo.
Be intriguing to see if they can create the same level of disruption to football they they did in golf – although golf is an individual versus team game so it could work faster – but they are getting a ton of help from all the strident reporting – giving them the free PR they crave.
Paul McDevitt
Computer says no
The talk of Morris’ hatred toward Darren Huckerby on champ manager 97/98 the other day bought back painful flashbacks of seeing ‘Morten Gamst Pedersen scores. That’s his first of the season’ mockingly flashing on my screen season after season. He’d either smash it in from outside the box after Anthony Vanden Borre (otherwise faultless. A true big game player) gave him too much room or whip any free kick into the top corner and there was nothing Vincent Emyeama or Benoit Costil could do about it. Special mentions must also go to James McFadden, Sylvan Ebanks Blake and Vasilis Torosidis for the grief they caused me.
I’d be keen to hear other readers tales of anguish and computer based hatred.
G, Enfield
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