'The problem with British Football'

I'm writing this up for a blog post, it's not quite finished but it could be considered a near final draft. If you don't mind giving it a read, that's be grea

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Referees have had a pretty bad time in the premiership recently, gathering more and more critisicism every week for their handling of matches. Offside calls, handball claims and many others, but nothing has created more angst than their decisions on awarding penalties. It's a complicated argument, with strikers claiming if they are fouled they have a right to fall over and defenders claiming the rules benefit the attacker unfairly. What is fact though, is that whenever the topic is raised one answer always seems to arise - 'its all the foreign players that are causing it'. The slightly racist undertone aside, it's a connotation that this tactic of tying a defender up in knots and forcing him to make a clumsy challenge that is then dramatised is something that is characteristic of European play. It's no different when Englishmen like Young get accused of diving - the foreigners re teaching them.

This brings me to my key point - why are we always so keen to copy everyone else? Whether or not the 'European' style of play is cheating or not, we seem unwilling to face the truth that we are simply not very good at it. Look at the players that get the most attention - Suarez, Torres, Ronaldo. All fit one style of play - they're nimble poachers with some impressive footwork. They're also famously quite thinly built, meaning a minor breeze could potentially send them all flailing. Compare this to England's three main strikers in recent years - Rooney, Defoe and Crouch. None of them are players built in the mould that allows that style of play to come naturally to them. Yet, Crouch and Stoke aside, they play in teams where that sort of play is rife. Bale for Tottenham and Young for Manchester United are key members of both squads, but by utilising a style of football that is unfamiliar to the British game as a whole. I'm aware they are both British, but they are however undeniably very different players to their national team mates, and that becomes obvious on that stage.

To look into whatever could be considered a 'British' style has now been made far easier by Hodgson's recent exploits with the England team. San Marino aside they haven't set the world alight with goals, but they've made pessimists like myself curious once more with how difficult they have made themselves to beat. Even with a squad weaker than any I've seen represent England for sometime they remain unbeaten. This is not to say they are world beating, they need a better striker before anyone can even consider that, but it is saying that they may well be onto something.

If you want more evidence, look at Chelsea. They won the champions league with a poor team despite our biggest teams faltering very early, and they did it by being notoriously difficult to break down. If no goals find their way into your own net, a small trickle of goals in the other end is all that's needed to make a fearsome team. How many times have you heard how difficult it is to take 3 points from Stoke at home? Why is this? Because they have a very threatening defence.

When you start discussing this style of play positively however, you get waves of people calling it negative 'boring' football. Yet simultaneously, subconsciously we already know its how British football should work. If Barcelona win a game 5-0, we shower them with praise. If Manchester United beat Aston Villa 5-0, we laugh at Aston Villa. We immediately consider large scorelines the losing teams fault, and rarely consider whether the winning team were simply remarkable. We know our teams aren't natural goal scoring machines, but we still demand it. We get given an alternative play style on a plate that could deliver results, but we constantly want what the other guys have. We bring in foreign players skilled in that playstyle. We make our brightest talents train that way even if it is not natural. We bring in foreign managers to try and make us play that way.

Why are we so scared to try something different? We're stuck in the role of the little brother desperate to follow his siblings footsteps. And until we realise we'd get there faster on our own, we'll never catch up.

I'm going to leave this and come back at some other time as I have found it difficult to read.

NN2Red2 wrote:I'm going to leave this and come back at some other time as I have found it difficult to read.

Ill be honest and say I don't like much of it either, thus why I've offered it up for critisicism. Thanks for giving it a look over

Red.........I'm not sure that I see what you are trying to say at the end of it all. In one breath you say that we blame the foreigners for the bad elements in our game, then that we are not very good at copying how they play and finally that we are scared to try something different.

Putting to one side whether I agree with your arguements or not, it's not an easy read.

I know that you are a great student of the game and usually put forward well thought out views, but maybe you haven't quite got it straight in your mind what you are trying to convey here.

Hope that helps........all the best.....TDA

As I thought, the beginning is a little bit misleading. Ill probably rewrite it, as you're quite right it's never clear what exactly im trying to talk about. Serve me right for trying to be a bit clever really.