To ask why the England team (the men) keep falling at the final hurdle, (well virtually at the final hurdle,) at the football World Cup ... and The Euros too?

[GorgeousSpringtime]

Not an England-team bashing thread, but why, oh WHY do they - the men - keep falling at the final hurdle (well, virtually the final hurdle,) every time at the football (soccer) World Cup - and the Euro Cup too...?

They do so well, and get so far, and then BANG they're out. Nearly always in the top 8, or top 4, (and the top 2, in the World Cup once, and a couple of times in the Euros I think,) but never the winner. (Not since 1966 anyway!)

Is it nerves? Is it that they're so anxious to win that they keep making silly mistakes? Are they just not quite good enough? WHAT IS IT? Why do they keep getting so close, but just never manage to get the win?!

As I said, I am not bashing them, and they did well, and I am proud of them, but I just get so frustrated that they can't quite ever get the win!

!

Oh we don't have that next year do we?!

Would you say the same thing about other sports where English competitors don't win? England are good, but Argentina were phenomenal. Can not wait for Sunday's game. It'll be so entertaining. The style, flair and energy of both teams will mean it's hard to call.

Yep. Can not wait

Yesterday was 100% down to bad management.
Anyone who knows a tiny bit of football knows that Argentina are bulldogs, they're not going to lose focus because they've taken a goal, quite the opposite (cf the match against Egypt). Scoring against them is like taunting a shark with a piece of meat.
Playing exclusively defensively against a team that has Messi makes no sense. The man is able to score or to assist in the busiest surface, letting him camp around the goal is just going to give him more opportunities to read the game and come up with strategies to break the defense.

It feels like Tuchel didn't even prepare for the eventuality of England scoring first.

They did ok against very mediocre teams. Norway were a better opposition but still ranked a lot lower than England.

The first top level team they face it was a capitulation

You cannot defend for over half an hour in the penalty box and doing that , well they were really giving up and hoping the best. The mgr did not help but England have done that the last 25 years go 1 nil up then sat back.

Beating Crotia, Panama the Congo (!) and Mexico is not 'doing well'. The a draw against Ghanna. Norway was the one good result.

Argentina had 2 off the post and missed 2 sitters could have been 5-1

England did not do well, they were in an easy group then folded once they met Argentina. The fact England were betting favs to win shows how after 60 yrs we are still deluded. and the players really are over paid!

Now Russia who were banned from the Olympics for state sponsored doping (which never stopped since the 70's) then invading Ukraine are bein allowed back in the Olympics despite nothing changing.

MatchResults:

Group L
England vs Croatia
4-2 Win
Group L
England vs Ghana
0-0 Draw
Group L
Panama vs England
0-2 Win
Round of 32
England vs DR Congo
2-1 Win
Round of 16
Mexico vs England
2-3 Win
Quarter-final
Norway vs England
1-2 Win (AET)
Semi-final
England vs Argentina
1-2 Loss

How about feeling pleased they got so far? England aren’t entitled to win the World Cup despite many thinking that they are (I’m English). Also, blaming tactics is nonsense, the other team were/are better.

This. Better than many though!

It's also consistent with the fact that you can attain that ranking without having to ever play, never mind defeat a top ranked side, and also consistent with the fact that as soon as England do run into a top ranked side in Finals football, they lose

4th ranked does not mean there are only three better sides on the planet, it means you've accumulated sufficient ranking points to be ranked 4th in that table, which you can theoretically do by smashing Liechtenstein over and over.

@randomchap

oh believe me I do support and celebrate the women’s team! They actually win stuff! Talent against all odds

Are you being sarcastic? I'll get accused of misogyny and being a women I'm certainly not but omg women's football? I've seem more excitement at school tournaments.

@Gloriia

that must be the circles you move in. I know LOADS of people who are really into women’s football

What's not to like? Quality players playing a game many find entertaining to watch.

If you don't like it, there's so many other things to do/watch

I agree they lost last night to a team who played better. I also loathe the English mentality of criticism - the so-called 'pundits' who seem to enjoy kicking them when they're down. It's such a lottery of who you play and when you play them. If we had played any other team last night - France, Spain etc - it could well have been us in the final.

A few days ago, the English press and fans wanted Kane to be knighted, Bellingham was the new world-class footballer and England were brave Lions.

Now, after one extremely difficult game that didn't go their way - for whatever reason - the press and fans want to know where Kane and Bellingham were and think they are clueless.

And don't get me started on Rooney and his awful criticism of Tuchel as a manager - talking like he has all the answers - I think Rooney's managerial results tell us he doesn't!

Ok, but it's the exact same situation for all other teams. England consistently reach the semi-final/final of major tournaments. 4th in the world is correct.

Are you telling me Argentina have had a tough journey to the final and you have no problem with their ranking 🤷‍♀️ they also haven't played well in many of the games (same with Spain) and just about found ways to win. Same applies to England. Not sure why people want to deny their obviously good tournament record

Stamina. They always seem to have energy for an hour and if they get a one goal often just sit on it and hope to wait for the game to end. England just don’t score in the end of games, they don’t have the stamina, especially in hotter climates.

What do mean circles I move in? What, that only our specific school tournaments were more exciting than women's football? Maybe you're right and our dc were all very talented but it's something I've heard others say from other areas so don't think it's particularly my circle.

We seem to have to go through the facade of it being like mens football but we all know it isn't and no I'm neither sexist nor misogynistic, just realistic.

Well yes but it'll be all over the telly constantly, so hard to avoid tbf.

If only you had a way of changing the channel.

To ask why the England team (the men) keep falling at the final hurdle,

The final hurdle would be getting to the World Cup final and losing.

England has not reached a single World Cup Final in the last 50 years. Their best performances in this period were fourth-place finishes in 1990 and 2018.

Generally because they are top 4/8 team not the top team. They just don’t have the quality. Arguably the French had the most quality so a touch of luck is really important too.

They came either 3rd or 4th in the world and they are a small country. Where's the failure? What are you even taking about OP?

There are 48 teams in the World Cup.

Even if you accepted all the teams starting were equal, which is not true, calculate your probability of being the one winner, rather than one of the 47 that don't win, or the 46 who don't play in the final.

They were in the final four.

That's not a 'final hurdle' situation, any more than the other 45 (46-1) have 'fallen at the final hurdle'.

Only two teams out of 48 can clear the final hurdle, their chances were low, they did quite well, they lost it on the night. It's not a huge mystery.

The way the draw lands mean England tend to always get fairly easy teams to initially compete against. Then when they get further they fail because they just aren’t as good as they think they are and the other teams are better.

Yes but they didn't repeatedly smash Liechtenstein over and over.

They got to the finals of the Euros two tournaments in succession and have reached the semis, quarters and semis in the last 3 world cups.

The seeding has to some degree selected the opposition they play and you can only beat what is in front of you.

Their performance over the past tournaments is consistent with their ranking.

And the idea that Norway as a team are mediocre to me is wrong. They are 19 in the rankings but have moved up 12 places recently and are on the way further up. They have probably the best striker in the world in Haaland and the premiership winning captain, as well as other prem players. They are tough opposition.

Mexico were tough, again 10 in the rankings but heading upwards. The environment (home stadium plus altitude) added to the challenge.

But still they overcame both challenges and got to about where you would expect the 4th best team in the world to get to, the last 4 teams and were put out by (supposedly) the best on ranking.

There is nothing inconsistent about where they are ranked currently, have been ranked and their actual results.

If I were looking for ranking anomalies vs performance I would go for Italy (who didn't qualify despite being 15) and Cape Verde. Not England.

It's not about denying the record, it's just about reiterating two points, namely that FIFA rankings can be, and are sometimes gerrymandered, so you really shouldn't read too much into them in terms of determining which teams are actually the better, because that's rather meaningless until such time they actually play each other.

The second point is about England's ranking of 4 also being rather meaningless because it suggests they are in with the handful of very best sides on the planet, but the fact is they can not, and never have been able to beat the very best sides in Competitive matches, so I genuinely do think 4 is a false picture.

The way tournaments work with Pot draws means that the top sides very rarely meet before the Quarter Finals in any case, so England reaching semis and Euro Finals is still perfectly possible without actually running into another team ranked at the top. In fact, this is pretty much what has happened at the last four tournaments, they've made it to a World Cup semi without running into a top 10 side, and two Euros finals without running into a top 6 side. As soon as those things happened, they lost.

If they were genuinely in amongst the very best, then you'd expect over time that results between those teams would be fairly balanced because they are all capable of defeating each other, but with England they lose every single time without fail as soon as they run into another "top" side, so the only conclusion you can draw is that ranking is false, and the fact they get to Semis etc does not undermine that point, because they've proven that you can do that without having to actually meet a top side to begin with.