Leeds United » Rants

British government poised to condemn young African footballer to death

Matthew — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:41:03 +0000

This has nothing to do with Leeds United, but I’m furious, so here goes. The British government has ordered the deportation of Alhassan Bangura, a young footballer from Sierra Leone who fled his home at the age of 15 amidst death threats and violence. He created a new life in Britain after escaping from human traffickers who brought him to London, and has married an Englishwoman. He was scouted by Watford while playing in a park, and the team consider him one of their most promising players. If he returns to Sierra Leone, he will have to leave his wife behind for a place in which he has no family and no life, where he is likely to be killed. If you’re British and you feel as strongly about this as I do, write to you MP.

Another Rant about England

Matthew — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:55:09 +0000

When England is barely capable of beating Austria in a friendly, at a time when the team should be at the peak of its form, you know something is seriously wrong. After an embarassing performance, in which only Micah Richards distinguished himself in any small way, England won a meaningless 1-0 victory which contained more meaningful commentary on the state of the English game than any of those in the past few months.

First, the positives: Micah Richards is excellent, and hopefully under a good manager like Sven-Gorran Eriksson, he will only get better.

Alright, now that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the bad.

Scott Carson took over from Paul Robinson in goal, and while that’s certainly a welcome development given Robinson’s current confusion over the role of the goalkeeper in a game of football, Austria’s blistering challenge for the title of “worst footballing nation in Europe” meant he had very little to do.

In defence, Wayne Bridge, Sol Campbell, Joleon Lescott, and Micah Richards demonstrated … well … very little, given that the entire Austrian team generated as many attacking chances as Scott Carson. It’s hard to evaluate their performance when their primary function – preventing goals – was taken up by the opposition’s attacking players. Wes Brown replaced Sol Campbell towards the end of the game, and wasn’t very good.

And now! To the time machine! Rewind to the last World Cup! Joe Cole, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, and David Beckham. And lo! It didn’t work any better than it did under Sven; it was worse, if that’s possible. Joe Cole was at least visible. If anyone has the faintest idea how Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard spent their game, let me know: I’ll be damned if a single one of Gerrard’s passes actually reached anyone (apart from a number of surprised spectators), and Lampard, on fire for Chelsea, looked like he’d been drugged. Surely someone, somewhere in the FA, has cottoned on that STEVEN GERRARD AND FRANK LAMPARD CANNOT PLAY TOGETHER! THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME PLAYER IN A DIFFERENT BODY, THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BEING THAT FRANK LAMPARD IS IN FORM RIGHT NOW AND STEVEN GERRARD ISN’T! EITHER PLAY A 4-3-3 WITH LAMPARD OR A 4-4-2 WITH GERRARD AND BARRY, BUT PICK ONE OR THE OTHER, YOU BLOODY SORRY EXCUSE FOR A COACHING STAFF!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I haven’t mentioned Beckham yet, largely because anyone who’s seen a ~~League One~~ MLS game recently knows exactly what happened: he took a few largely ineffective corners and tried to score from a 40-yard free kick, for reasons known only to himself.

Up front, Michael Owen and Peter Crouch started the match. Michael Owen failed to score! Please, contain your astonishment – I know Owen is England’s first-choice striker, despite not having scored since playing Russia at Wembley three months ago, but even great-strikers-who-can’t-score-and-are-made-out-of-papier-maché have an off day. Or two. or sixty. He injured himself again in this match, so he won’t be playing for a while, not even in our upcoming ~~friendly~~ extremely important qualifying match against Croatia.

Peter Crouch scored again, which is nice considering he almost never starts at Liverpool and wouldn’t have started here if Wayne Rooney were fit. Jermaine Defoe replaced Owen after his injury, but that’s about all he did. And McClaren brought on Alan Smith to replace Peter Crouch during the second half, which is probably all the mention he deserves.

Yesterday, I slagged off the English youth system and the fact that, once the current crop of top English players retires, we’ll be left with Micah Richards, Theo Walcott, and Sir Alex Ferguson’s shoe-shine boy. Today, though, I’m taking a more positive note. For the love of God, this is an England squad that can call upon four members of the Chelsea starting 11 and a host of other top players from some of the best teams in the world. Why, for the love of God, could we barely beat a team that might have improved if reinforced by members of the Austrian FA’s cleaning staff?

Someone in the FA, please, listen to me. Find us a decent manager. Anyone. Someone who knows the basic, rudimentary techniques for building a functioning football team, rather than a mob of 11 individuals running around on some grass for 90 minutes. Someone other than Steve McClaren. I don’t care if we qualify or not anymore, largely because, if we do qualify, there’s a fairly good chance we’ll embarass ourselves repeatedly on live television.

I’m holding out for José Morinho, but to be honest, I’ll take anyone.

England’s National Team: A Rant

Matthew — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:37:08 +0000

I know this isn’t about Leeds, but hell, I’m angry. What planet is Steven Gerrard on? The England captain (in the absence of John Terry) has declared that there are too many foreign players in the Premier League and the only way to make the English national team any good is to impose a quota on foreign players.

Forgive me, Steven, but I’m confused. If there were enough talented young English players coming up through the academy system, surely they’d be playing in the Premier League? If we have enough good English players to maintain the current Premiership standard, where are they? If they’re playing in the Championship, why does every (predominantly English) promoted Championship team have such difficulty staying in the Premiership without a hefty injection of funds to purchase (you guessed it) foreign players? If Rafa Benitez had skillful young strikers coming up through his youth system, would he really have needed to shell out millions for Fernando Torres? Aside from Ashley Cole, can anyone out there name a single world-class English left-back? Steve McClaren, incompetent though he might be, was forced to resort to playing a centre-back (Joleon Lescott) out of position against Russia, with disastrous results, because Cole couldn’t play. How bad does the standard of English players have to be that a centre-back was preferable to every other living English left-back?

What Gerrard – and the idiots who, like him, favour a quota system – seem to be in complete ignorance of is the simple fact that young English players are generally not as good as young Brazilian players, young Italian players, young French players. Exceptional, world-class players like Wayne Rooney are the lucky exceptions who somehow survived a system that produces players with virtually no technical ability beyond being able to thump a long ball upfield. We have a youth system that emphasizes the full 11-a-side game, neglecting technical skills and pushing smaller and weaker children out in favour of early-developers who, if many professional English players are anything to go by, aren’t that talented.

Rather than turning the Premier League into a glorified version of the Championship, we need to address, at a national level, the failings of our youth systems and of youth coaching in general, so that young English players can stand toe to toe with their overseas counterparts. Lowering the standard of the Premier League might create the illusion of more world-class English players, but the only way to create the reality is to build up our youth so that they don’t need help from the government – or Steven Gerrard – to be able to play in the world’s best football league.