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crabbycanary

Playing for England

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People have always thunk it, but now we have actually heard the likes of ''Arry and Graham Taylor coming out and saying that certain players tried to get out of playing for England.

It''s a disgrace, because the common man would love to pull the colours on, and we know that these days, the Prem is what it is all about for players, so there is no surprise in what''s been said, and it won''t be too hard to work out who these guys are talking about .

There are players from other countries of course who have done exactly the same, but it leaves, for me anyway, a bad taste.

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I can understand some players unwillingness to play for England, for certain games anyway. Say you''ve had a long season playing for your club and then you get called up to play in a friendly against Yemen or Azerbaijan. Would you be that interested?

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Depends if they are competitive games or friendlies.

The FA has often arranged pointless friendlies at stupid times of the season.

Picking and choosing when you fancy playing a competitive game is not on, either you are available or you are retired shouldn''t be an inbetween (a rule which seems to apply to John Terry but not Ben Foster).

Giggs didn''t play friendlies for Wales, Bellamy didn''t in his later career, Bale is said to be considering not playing in friendlies.

Find it difficult to judge without further information, if one of the Spurs players was Ledley King who trained half a day a week and couldn''t play more than one game a week then that would be understandable wouldn''t it?

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Hasnt it been relatively common knowledge for years that some players try and avoid being called up, particularly if its not a big tournament........nothing new at all.

For me, I accept this but dont understand it, but what I cant accept is players going into retirement and then coming out and being picked.......and when they do play in a major tournemant not showing real passion i.e. at least try and sing the National Anthem with a bit of passion!!

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Ben Foster playing for England today is nothing short of a disgrace, If woy says it''s about blooding the youngsters for the future then fraser should get the nod . it is not about giving world cup appearances to your old mates who you asked to come out of retirement. he didn''t ask john terry to come out of retirement cos he couldn''t handle him even though he would have improved our crap defence 100%.. i can''t believe we are going to stick with hodgson for another 2 bloody years he is absolute rubbish ..... rant over

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It''s been common knowledge DM, but it hasn''t come from manager''s mouths before.

Totally with you Spartacus, I am currently trying to find a cat........

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People are taking harry Redknapp word seriously?? Cos of course he obviously doesn''t have an agenda against the FA or nothing...

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I assume Redknapp meant when he was Spurs boss.

In that case, apart from Defoe, I can;t think of too many Spurs players who deserve an England call up. I''m glad they didn''t turn up.

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Fully understand it,Take Jamie Carragher for example,Always 3rd choice for qualifiers and major tournaments yet when when it came to friendlies we wasn''t played either. He was deemed not good enough for the first team but too good for the second team. He essentially spent his international career traveling around third world countries knowing he wasn''t going to get a kick.He also had a young family and a grueling domestic and European fixture list, can you really blame him for retiring?

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Scholes had the right idea. He knew they''d play him out of the position, he knew we''d never achieve anything so he retired and prolonged his career with United. Right choice.

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It''s a shame really, playing for your country should be the pinnacle, but the set up is such a shambles you''re set up to fail from the off. How we didn''t get the best from scholes beggars belief! He is always called out as the ''best player I ever faced'' by the likes of Zidane and co but because he didn''t fit a rigid 4-4-2 he was often overlooked like Le Tiss was.

The last decent, exciting player we had was Gazza and despite his problems later on, he''s easily given me my favourite England memories in my lifetime.

Any friendlies should be arranged with a distinct purpose. We will need them before the Switzerland match as that is easily our biggest challenge and it''ll be our first game of qualifying but do we really need them to warm up against the likes of Lietchenstein?

Cannavaro called it right saying our main problem is a lack of a winter break. One thing I have noticed though, is do most countries have two domestic cup competitions? It does seem we have more games a season demanded from our players.

The main blame for me though lies with the media. The way Rooney in particular has been treated this tournament has been a disgrace. Yes we all know he''s not had the best of times at world cups but the vilification and pressure put on him was ridiculous! He''s not Lionel Messi and never will be but love him or hate him he''s still a good player and he''s our player. He''s just not one to start expecting to win matches for us on his own. There''s this constant media circus around the England team and it shows when the team are scared to do anything adventurous on the pitch apart from the young ones like Sterling who haven''t fully learnt the wrath of the tabloid press yet. We breed a great culture of fearing faliure and let it consume us, a bit like Hughton did at Norwich last season. How about we approach a tournament without this fear and actually let the players showcase what they''ve got, not yesterdays hero''s not the youngsters but the best 11 players (and subs) for that game at that time.

For the record with the pressure off, I predict we''ll comfortably beat Costa Rica tonight. I mean no disrespect to them as they are better than I initially thought, but I still think our players will be too much for them now they''ll be allowed to fully express themselves with nothing left to lose. Look at Spain last night.

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[quote user="Jimmy Smith"]It''s a shame really, playing for your country should be the pinnacle, but the set up is such a shambles you''re set up to fail from the off. How we didn''t get the best from scholes beggars belief! He is always called out as the ''best player I ever faced'' by the likes of Zidane and co but because he didn''t fit a rigid 4-4-2 he was often overlooked like Le Tiss was.

The last decent, exciting player we had was Gazza and despite his problems later on, he''s easily given me my favourite England memories in my lifetime.

Any friendlies should be arranged with a distinct purpose. We will need them before the Switzerland match as that is easily our biggest challenge and it''ll be our first game of qualifying but do we really need them to warm up against the likes of Lietchenstein?

Cannavaro called it right saying our main problem is a lack of a winter break. One thing I have noticed though, is do most countries have two domestic cup competitions? It does seem we have more games a season demanded from our players.

The main blame for me though lies with the media. The way Rooney in particular has been treated this tournament has been a disgrace. Yes we all know he''s not had the best of times at world cups but the vilification and pressure put on him was ridiculous! He''s not Lionel Messi and never will be but love him or hate him he''s still a good player and he''s our player. He''s just not one to start expecting to win matches for us on his own. There''s this constant media circus around the England team and it shows when the team are scared to do anything adventurous on the pitch apart from the young ones like Sterling who haven''t fully learnt the wrath of the tabloid press yet. We breed a great culture of fearing faliure and let it consume us, a bit like Hughton did at Norwich last season. How about we approach a tournament without this fear and actually let the players showcase what they''ve got, not yesterdays hero''s not the youngsters but the best 11 players (and subs) for that game at that time.

For the record with the pressure off, I predict we''ll comfortably beat Costa Rica tonight. I mean no disrespect to them as they are better than I initially thought, but I still think our players will be too much for them now they''ll be allowed to fully express themselves with nothing left to lose. Look at Spain last night.[/quote]

All of the above reasons/excuses have been wheeled out for many tournaments now.

The Italian and Spanish media are far more ruthless in the hounding and criticism of players when they fail or rather don''t succeed.

Many of the players court the media so cannot complain either way because they are elevated to godlike status when successful.

We have had many exciting players over the years but have failed to pick them because of the excuse that they don''t work hard enough or can''t defend when asked. All of the flair players have been asked to do two or more jobs in the England team and this has stifled them. And since the new millennia, there are too many foreign players in this country with the flair so that clubs don''t have to groom them. Success is immediate or else nowadays.

The break is an important question but unlikely to ever proceed in England. The weather in unpredictable, the fans would not want a month without a game to watch and the clubs, already in debt, would have cash flow problems. It appears to be too late to introduce it now.

Our players complain they play too much football but Messi and Ronaldo play as many games for their club as Rooney but don''t necessarily play meaningless international friendlies. They play league and cup and their cup is two legged.

I believe the plain truth is we are not good enough when we get to tournaments. It is a different mind set and we always seem to be one style or tactic behind other countries when it comes to the finals.

Our defence has come under criticism in this tournament but to be honest I haven''t seen a decent strong defence among the 32 teams. And if you haven''t got a decent defence but decent forwards then that is your focus.

Unfortunately, Hodgson couldn''t get rid of the idea that attack was the only way he could achieve some measure of success with the current squad,

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