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!

!

It is basically the plot of Dear England playing out in front of our eyes!

If you haven’t seen the play then sorry for the spoilers. The plot is about how disfunctional the England team were, how they didn’t work together, even to the point of not practising penalties ( and we all know how that has played out for England in the past) , etc etc etc.

In the play, which yes , is fiction based loosely on fact, Gareth Southgate manages to pull them together into a team, they still don’t win, but they feel better about it. 🙁Maybe if Southgate was still manager then things might have worked out differently, but he wasn’t and they didn’t. But as others have said, getting to the last four is a huge achievement, a damn sight better than a lot of teams who on paper were more favoured.

I hope they can be gracious in defeat and play the third place game with dignity, though personally I think it is a mean thing to make the losing teams do and it would be better to let them go home and re group.

ps if you get the chance to see Dear England on stage then do, it is a terrific play, far better than it sounds!

I have a veiw in that they are paid extremely well at a very young age. They get into trouble with this level of responsibility around the millions they earn.

This means they arent as hungrey as players from other countries. We treat football as religion (along with the NHS!) and there were grown men crying into their beer last night

The players just dont want it as much as other countries do.

Exactly. Only one team can win the World Cup but that hardly means that all the others have failed. A semi-final place is a great achievement.

I agree !

It's the way tournaments work. You play the harder teams in the later stages and they are more likely to beat you. Even if it is somewhat stating the obvious.

Evey now and then a highly ranked team screws up or puts in an anomalous performance than means they meet another highly ranked team in the early stages, but mostly it works out the way you would expect it to.

This time the finalists are who you would expect them to be, as are the semi finalists. The quarter finalists 2 were outside the top 8, but all in the top twenty. The round of 16 only 4 were outside the top 20. Etc.

There are always a few surprises, but if we didn't have those there would be no need to change the table.

Why would you do that to yourself?

Watching the awful decisions live was bad enough but watching them again the next day? You absolute masochist

It was almost looking like a re run of all other England managers who get the team so far and then just blow it with sitting back and parking the bus. Or they lose on penalties.

There are 100’s of videos of him being a really kind person, naturally friendly and loved.
It looks like he’s had a moment of frustration as the other player took the mike out of him.
You can do 100 good things and one bad, doesn’t make him a bad person.

Because the Argentinian player was laughing, celebrating in his face.

Self-loathing.

The British left hate Britain. Above all, they hate England and Englishness. I remember reading an interview with the ‘comedian’ Alexi Sayle (very left-wing) in which he said “this country needs to lose a war.” That was years ago, yet I have never forgotten it. It reveals what really goes on in the minds of the British left. Just listen to people like Will Self or Stewart Lee for five minutes. They hate England so much they can hardly get the words out.

Unfortunately, the left have a massive influence. They run academia, the BBC, the arts and the publishing industry. Radio 4 can’t even mention Jane Austen without linking her to colonialism. People absorb, or internalise, that hatred, and our footballers are no exception. When they come up against mediocre sides like Mexico, it’s not a problem. But when it is 1-1 in a semi-final against Argentina, the urge to go that extra mile just isn’t there. My grandparents never said anything patriotic, because they didn’t need to. They’d grown up in a country that had such a deep-rooted sense of history and culture and identity and pride that there was no need to wave flags. All that has gone. To be honest, the drip drip effect of leftist thinking has even worked on me. Frankly, I don’t give a sh*t that England lost either.

Indeed. If you read it more than once it's even bigger bollocks. What was your favourite bit? The conflation with 'England' and 'the British' was quite good. Although I must admit I do like the idea of all the up-and-coming footballers tuned into Radio 4.

not as much hunger as argentina.

argentina attacked over and over. England barely attacked at all

@XelaM, it is you who is doing the diminishing.

If England beat France on Saturday, they will finish in third place, not fourth place.

This would mark England's best World Cup result in sixty years.

It'll be '100 years of hurt'

Some people really are butthurt that their roundabout flag works of art got washed off, aren't they?

AS Abbey Lee Miller on Dance Moms said

'2nd is the first to lose'

No one cares about the third place team

After Argentinas goal this player ran from the bench across the field to celebrate in England players faces while rest of the Argentina team were in the opposite corner celebrating the goal scorer.

I'm pretty sure she stole that from Senna

I don't know that is/ From looking him up...he's an F1 driver?

Well they can really celebrate anywhere they want on the pitch.

I suspect the 4th placed team cares about the 3rd placed...

I can see why Jude got annoyed though. If any of us lost in a world cup semi final, wouldnt we all be pissed off at seeing the other team celebrate

nah im sure they dont.

Do any of us remember who came third or fourth in the last world cup?

FWIW I have no idea what 'Dance Moms' is.

They will just have played each other. England France is an old rivalry, I'm sure whoever loses will care