So actually we're better off in this regard than most of Europe? Really? I must admit, I'm surprised. This is very, very different from the narrative we're getting.
EDIT: Just spotted we're in £ and everyone else is in Euros. So not actually better off. But nor that much worse.
It would come out at €416 on that basis. Like you, I hadn't spotted the currency wasn't the same.
So, pretty much comparable with Switzerland.
(Which begs another question. Why would we be in pounds and the Swiss in Euros not francs?)
So actually we're better off in this regard than most of Europe? Really? I must admit, I'm surprised. This is very, very different from the narrative we're getting.
EDIT: Just spotted we're in £ and everyone else is in Euros. So not actually better off. But nor that much worse.
Given that it's current wholesale prices, and according to Gridwatch we aren't producing that much wind energy at the moment (approx 5GW) I would expect the UK to be relatively high - have a look at how it changes on Sunday night or Monday (much warmer weather, and if windy.com is correct then a relative gale blowing over the whole East coast so wind generation should be well up)
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
So actually we're better off in this regard than most of Europe? Really? I must admit, I'm surprised. This is very, very different from the narrative we're getting.
EDIT: Just spotted we're in £ and everyone else is in Euros. So not actually better off. But nor that much worse.
Given that it's current wholesale prices, and according to Gridwatch we aren't producing that much wind energy at the moment (approx 5GW) I would expect the UK to be relatively high - have a look at how it changes on Sunday night or Monday (much warmer weather, and if windy.com is correct then a relative gale blowing over the whole East coast so wind generation should be well up)
A snapshot of current wholesale prices is not very meaningful.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
I may have mentioned I'm having some work done on the house. I'm working from home today. In the last hour, three different vans of Middle Eastern-looking people have called round to see if they can rummage through the skip for scrap.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
2 MPC members vote for no rate hike. What planet are they living on?!
Last month I'd have agreed with you, but they [finally] took serious action last month and no time has been given yet to see it through, and inflation has already peaked and is forecast to come down potentially rapidly now.
Petrol is soon going to be recording serious deflation not inflation.
They were very late to start raising rates, but there's a real risk they'll again soon be fighting the last war again.
This
Not while the Fed is exporting their inflation to the rest of the world. We still need to keep up.
So actually we're better off in this regard than most of Europe? Really? I must admit, I'm surprised. This is very, very different from the narrative we're getting.
EDIT: Just spotted we're in £ and everyone else is in Euros. So not actually better off. But nor that much worse.
Given that it's current wholesale prices, and according to Gridwatch we aren't producing that much wind energy at the moment (approx 5GW) I would expect the UK to be relatively high - have a look at how it changes on Sunday night or Monday (much warmer weather, and if windy.com is correct then a relative gale blowing over the whole East coast so wind generation should be well up)
A snapshot of current wholesale prices is not very meaningful.
Agreed. AIUI the bigger problem for the UK is that we are much more dependent on the future price of gas (which remains extremely high at 335p/therm) than countries with longer term supply contracts and more storage. But these figures really don't highlight that issue.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
FWIW I agree with you. England, with the exception of Bellingham and occasionally Shaw, were far too static and rigid in their play.
It was embarrassing to watch, or perhaps not embarrassing as we have achieved some degree of success in tournaments but France (and I suspect other top 10 teams) were in a different league.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
This is Southgate's safety first approach which I have had an issue with for years. I understand why they did it 4 years ago at the WC, England didn't really have the team, now we blessed with so many skillful attacking players that cause trouble in the Champions League week in week out. Perhaps still having to have Maguire and Stones at CB continues that vision that England can't afford to play expansively in case they get caught out and those two don't have the pace to cover.
However, this slow deliberate style of play is why we have rarely beaten a top 10 team under Southgate and a general over-reliance on set-piece goals. Top 10 teams are too organised and don't make enough mistakes to create the required number of opportunities to score from open play.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
This is Southgate's safety first approach which I have had an issue with for years. I understand why they did it 4 years ago at the WC, England didn't really have the team, now we blessed with so many skillful attacking players that cause trouble in the Champions League week in week out.
This slow deliberate style of play is why we have rarely beaten a top 10 team under Southgate and a general over-reliance on set-piece goals. Top 10 teams are too organised and don't make enough mistakes to create the required number of opportunities to score from open play.
Thanks for articulating it in a more analytic way which I would have expected of you
If only the chartered accountants and louche North London bohemians could get their heads around how football works these days.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
So actually we're better off in this regard than most of Europe? Really? I must admit, I'm surprised. This is very, very different from the narrative we're getting.
EDIT: Just spotted we're in £ and everyone else is in Euros. So not actually better off. But nor that much worse.
And presumably there are state subsidies for living in the northern half of Norway?
A little research indicates that the figures for European countries are mostly monthly figures for high consuming households, while ours is annualised for the average household. For example, the average monthly bill in Austria for a two-bed flat is around €197 (although that includes water as well) which if annualised works out at only slightly cheaper than the UK bill for an average family.
As I suggested some weeks ago, if you're going to tell lies to support your rampaging anti-English xenophobia, at least try to make them intelligent ones. I appreciate your distinct lack of intelligence (or perhaps, lack of rationality which means you can't properly use what intelligence you have) may make this hard for you.
In fact, having finally run them to earth via a different tweet, they are the baseload charges for electricity generation per MWH across Europe. Except in the U.K., where it's the average annual household bill (which is a meaningless figure anyway, of course).
The figure for the UK should therefore be €359.47 which is somewhat below the average.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
Reading that thread confirms that I was correct in not watching the series.
"Nottingham Cottage" sounds "very regal"?
It’s a massive family house by (almost) anyone’s standards, only really a ‘cottage’ when comparing it to the castle next door!
Is it massive? It's 123 square metres (Wikipedia).
Nearly a third of Dublin homes listed on daft.ie, including flats, terraces, etc, are larger. If you look at a rural area then two-thirds of properties are larger.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Some of us that prefer other games can't help thinking it might be nice if it did.
2 MPC members vote for no rate hike. What planet are they living on?!
Last month I'd have agreed with you, but they [finally] took serious action last month and no time has been given yet to see it through, and inflation has already peaked and is forecast to come down potentially rapidly now.
Petrol is soon going to be recording serious deflation not inflation.
They were very late to start raising rates, but there's a real risk they'll again soon be fighting the last war again.
The problem with that is that the Fed (which also increased rates by 0.5%) was pretty hawkish in doing so yesterday and made it clear that there was more to come. Last month we had a problem because the BoE had fallen behind the curve that the Fed is creating. The risk now is that even although we have matched their increase the perception is that we are still not as focused on bringing inflation down sharply as the Fed is with a consequential weakening of Sterling and (ironically) more inflation from dollar rated products.
For a lot of reasons we need to get back to real interest rates. 3.5% when inflation is at 10.7% is frankly absurdly low and we need to fix this as fast as the economy can bear.
Arguments for a freeze and an increase of .75%
49: Two members preferred to leave Bank Rate unchanged at 3% at this meeting. The real economy remained weak, as a result of falling real incomes and tighter financial conditions. There were increasing signs that the downturn was starting to affect the labour market. But the lags in the effects of monetary policy meant that sizeable impacts from past rate increases were still to come through. That implied the current setting of Bank Rate was more than sufficient to bring inflation back to target, before falling below target in the medium term. As the policy setting had become increasingly restrictive, there was no longer a strong case for further tightening on risk management grounds.
50: One member preferred a 0.75 percentage point increase in Bank Rate, to 3.75%, at this meeting. Although there was some evidence of an inflection point in CPI inflation, there was greater evidence that price and wage pressures would stay strong for longer than had been projected in the November Report. Another more forceful monetary tightening now would reinforce the tightening cycle, importantly leaning against an inflation psychology that was embedding in wage settlements and inflation expectations, and was pushing up core services and other underlying inflation measures. Pulling forward monetary action now would reduce the risk that Bank Rate would need to rise well into next year even as the economy slowed further.
A little research indicates that the figures for European countries are mostly monthly figures for high consuming households, while ours is annualised for the average household. For example, the average monthly bill in Austria for a two-bed flat is around €197 (although that includes water as well) which if annualised works out at only slightly cheaper than the UK bill for an average family.
As I suggested some weeks ago, if you're going to tell lies to support your rampaging anti-English xenophobia, at least try to make them intelligent ones. I appreciate your distinct lack of intelligence (or perhaps, lack of rationality which means you can't properly use what intelligence you have) may make this hard for you.
In fact, having finally run them to earth via a different tweet, they are the baseload charges for electricity generation per MWH across Europe. Except in the U.K., where it's the average annual household bill (which is a meaningless figure anyway, of course).
The figure for the UK should therefore be €359.47 which is somewhat below the average.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
FWIW I agree with you. England, with the exception of Bellingham and occasionally Shaw, were far too static and rigid in their play.
It was embarrassing to watch, or perhaps not embarrassing as we have achieved some degree of success in tournaments but France (and I suspect other top 10 teams) were in a different league.
France were more clinical, but we comprehensively outplayed them for vast tracts of that game. They were kept in it by Lloris and the officials
There was a potential two goal refereeing margin, as well as loads of fouls on Saka ignored, and their keeper made four or five saves more than ours
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
I'm sure the SNP will blame him, but I was thinking more about the implications elsewhere in the public sector. It will probably make it harder to resolve the ongoing tension with the EIS and SSTA, both of whom are due to strike next month as well.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
A little research indicates that the figures for European countries are mostly monthly figures for high consuming households, while ours is annualised for the average household. For example, the average monthly bill in Austria for a two-bed flat is around €197 (although that includes water as well) which if annualised works out at only slightly cheaper than the UK bill for an average family.
As I suggested some weeks ago, if you're going to tell lies to support your rampaging anti-English xenophobia, at least try to make them intelligent ones. I appreciate your distinct lack of intelligence (or perhaps, lack of rationality which means you can't properly use what intelligence you have) may make this hard for you.
In fact, having finally run them to earth via a different tweet, they are the baseload charges for electricity generation per MWH across Europe. Except in the U.K., where it's the average annual household bill (which is a meaningless figure anyway, of course).
The figure for the UK should therefore be €359.47 which is somewhat below the average.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
This is Southgate's safety first approach which I have had an issue with for years. I understand why they did it 4 years ago at the WC, England didn't really have the team, now we blessed with so many skillful attacking players that cause trouble in the Champions League week in week out. Perhaps still having to have Maguire and Stones at CB continues that vision that England can't afford to play expansively in case they get caught out and those two don't have the pace to cover.
However, this slow deliberate style of play is why we have rarely beaten a top 10 team under Southgate and a general over-reliance on set-piece goals. Top 10 teams are too organised and don't make enough mistakes to create the required number of opportunities to score from open play.
We had enough opportunities in both 2021 and 2022. It's not Southgate's fault that his players missed penalties.
I'm sure the SNP will blame him, but I was thinking more about the implications elsewhere in the public sector. It will probably make it harder to resolve the ongoing tension with the EIS and SSTA, both of whom are due to strike next month as well.
The rise of union militancy should worry Starmer. It could easily wreck his first term as PM
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Much of this is right. Much less has changed since 2000. Frasier has been on again regularly in the mornings recently, and its episodes on at the moment are from the late '90s and early '2000s. Nothing looks very different, except for the absence of digital media, either visually or culturally.
Incidentally to the rate rise, the Bank of England has over the last 2 weeks sold almost all gilts it purchased on a temporary basis back in September/October.
A very significant profit for the BoE on that particular intervention!
On the subject of several things being better in Northwestern Continental Europe, a good article from Martin Kettle here today, on the need to go in what is actually a more German direction in industrial relations. I knew little about how far Britain had actually already attempted to do this, in fact before the Germans, between 1926 and 1929, knowing only the failures both of feudally-minded management and obstreperous unions in the 1970's, "solved" by Thatcher one-sidedly in favour of management ; and with the increasingly obvious economic and social costs we're i seeing all around us today .
Why the hell should unions get a seat on the board....they don't represent the majority of workers, and most of those they do represent are public sector workers. I can think of worse idea's but not by much.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
Forgive me for the observation, but methinks you might not be quite so expert on the game as, say, Gareth Southgate?
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
If you’d seen the same match but with the shirt colours reversed, you’d be saying how lucky we were to scrape through
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Very sensible to step away from the footie discussion.
Tesla stock was massively over-valued, and Musk took a load of personal loans against his Tesla holdings, to enable the Twitter purchase.
So, as the Tesla stock falls (it’s been behaving more like a tech company stock than a car company stock, both on the way up and on the way down), he’ll be facing margin calls on the loans, hence the need to sell the stocks and dilute his holding in Tesla.
There’s also rumours of Starlink being floated out of SpaceX, or even SpaceX itself going public next year once Starship is flying.
Musk is rapidly Ratnering his portfolio through his erratic behaviour at the helm of Twitter. Alongside the political bad taste in the mouth I expect it's going to undermine markets' already somewhat shaky faith in his ability to manage large companies.
I think he overpaid financially for Twitter, right at the top of a peak bull run, and he’s going to have an awful lot of work to do to see the company to profitability.
It’s an interesting exercise to watch someone take an already-existing company and treat it like a startup though, moving fast and breaking things. Doubly so for a company so political and divisive in nature. With the benefit of future hindsight, that may turn out to be a good or a bad thing. What’s certain is that he’s cut costs dramatically, and is encouraging a much broader ‘conversation’ than previously, especially among US commentators...
What's also fairly certain is that he's also cut advertising revenue fairly sharply, and is obsessing over technical features (eg video improvements) which even if implemented quickly, aren't likely to have much impact on revenue.
And he's added a recurring billion a year to costs, with the bid financing.
Yes, the new business model is going to look quite different to the old one, with a significantly larger percentage coming from subscriptions rather than advertising, the latter being increasingly susceptible (in the US at least) to both activist boycotts and a generally declining economy. The key will be if it’s possible for Twitter to extract five-figure, or even six-figure, monthly subscriptions from large companies and news organisations.
What’s also true, is that, despite a lot of prominent people saying they’re leaving the platform, very few have actually done so for more than a few days.
I think it will be okay in the end, but Musk is usually somewhat over-optimistic about timelines on his projects, but he overpaid and it wil cost him money in the meantime.
Given the world cup is on it's hard to gauge how much engagement or membership is actually being lost. I wonder also how many have left softly, and not actually deleted their account?
I'm sceptical about the subscription model. I cannot conceive of a reason to ever personally pay for a tick, and for brands, I daresay a fair number will start to wonder why they're paying $xxx per month to have everyone tell them how shit they are (leaving aside those who are already paying in to advertise). I can't really see a way clear to turn it around, and he's publicly damaging his reputation as a business operator at the same time.
He's bought himself into a corner with it as well; I guess he'll keep it afloat artificially for a fair while.
Reading that thread confirms that I was correct in not watching the series.
"Nottingham Cottage" sounds "very regal"?
It’s a massive family house by (almost) anyone’s standards, only really a ‘cottage’ when comparing it to the castle next door!
Is it massive? It's 123 square metres (Wikipedia).
Nearly a third of Dublin homes listed on daft.ie, including flats, terraces, etc, are larger. If you look at a rural area then two-thirds of properties are larger.
Are British houses really that small?
Gosh. That's quite a small house. H and M were a bit hard done by there.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
If you’d seen the same match but with the shirt colours reversed, you’d be saying how lucky we were to scrape through
If the shirts were reversed I would say the ones in blue were static. Plodding, even.
As I said it's about the style of play. England were static; France fluid. The only player we had that seemed to approximate the French dynamism was of course Saka. Not to say that our method can't yield success but other teams are far more mobile and fluid than us. When Loris distributes at the back everyone is on the move; when Pickford did, there was a huge committee meeting about it just outside our own 18-yard box.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
Forgive me for the observation, but methinks you might not be quite so expert on the game as, say, Gareth Southgate?
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The 2020s will be remembered as the decade of TikTok dances.
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The 2020s will be remembered as the decade of TikTok dances.
You'd have thought that would feature, yes. But we must wait till 2052 to know for sure.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
Forgive me for the observation, but methinks you might not be quite so expert on the game as, say, Gareth Southgate?
Nor you on Brexit as Boris Johnson.
I think probably half the population are more expert than that bluffer.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
Forgive me for the observation, but methinks you might not be quite so expert on the game as, say, Gareth Southgate?
Nor you on Brexit as Boris Johnson.
I think probably half the population are more expert than that bluffer.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
Get back to your dressage, Captain.
Let's try to move on from your "my one big idea" fiasco shall we - you can answer the comment if you want or are able.
Ok. But before we 'move on' it I do think it deserves an encore -
"When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again. It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static. I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues."
Erm, I am no football expert, but from my limited knowledge I would say that that approach seems to have worked quite well for a number of English premier league clubs Champions League winners
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
It's the style of football which is the most marked contrast. England were static, and when they received the ball they put their foot on it and pondered the next move. France, in this instance, were more fluid both on and off the ball. Especially on.
Forgive me for the observation, but methinks you might not be quite so expert on the game as, say, Gareth Southgate?
Nor you on Brexit as Boris Johnson.
I think probably half the population are more expert than that bluffer.
His pitch appears to be the reasoned voice of bigotry, and it's working with the target audience. ...And DeSantis’s actions continue to attract attention among those with ties to the former president. Former senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, appearing on Fox News on Wednesday afternoon, called DeSantis’s remarks on same-sex marriage, which the governor delivered a night earlier on Laura Ingraham’s show, “quite eye opening and remarkable” and showed he is not a moderate...
Note for @HYUFD , there are zero headlines for Pence in recent days.
The mid 2010s to early 2020s have had a clear political trend towards populism, but that seems to be in abeyance. Culturally, rather than politically, the last 20 years have offered relatively little that's radically new. Once again an interesting day to day test of this is to compare a 1999 episode of Frasier with a modern sitcom, and then the compare the 1999 one with a 1979 equivalent programme, which will produce all sorts of different shocks ; radically different production styles, speed of camerawork, script , physical environment and colours, expectation of attention span from the viewer, and cultural attitudes on display from the protagonists.The slowdown in cultural change will quickly tend to become obvious, I think, across most sitcoms that you might want to try.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
Well my (first) point isn't to try to define decades - just to say that the past is different to how it's perceived. Most people in 1967 weren't hippies or smartly dressed go getters: they (and their houses) actually looked, and lived their lives, how we imagine people looked in 1957. Etc. Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.) I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Very sensible to step away from the footie discussion.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Yes, spot on. Decades are artificial constructs but having constructed them each one is exceptional and at the same time not exceptional. Which decades are deemed by consensus to be the best or the most interesting etc depends largely on the age of the influence mongers forming the consensus.
Very sensible to step away from the footie discussion.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
Tensions between France and Morocco supporters briefly spilled over in the centre of the city as flares were lit and police responded with tear gas. France has a large Moroccan community of some 1.5 million people.
Celebrations in cities across France were largely peaceful, although police used tear gas to halt trouble involving far-right youths in the centre of Lyon.
There has been rioting across numerous cities in France, Belgium and Holland after every Morocco game, but the BBC highlight the far right. CNN levels "mostly peaceful" descriptors.
Of course in France, it isn't just the Moroccans, they have a bit of a culture of smashing shit up after winning or losing.
As the ex-colonial power there is of course plenty of baggage around a France v Morocco game.
Legendary French striker, 89 year old Just Fontaine, was born in Marrakech and started his amateur career with Casablanca
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The sixties were self-consciously swinging even at the time, and certainly remembered as such by the eighties.
I think your theory is bunk.
Having said that, I tended to view the nineties as vaguely the same as today, until I watched the movie “The Paper” last year. Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei. 1994? It might as well have been made in 1974.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The 2020s will be remembered as the decade of TikTok dances.
We're surely due a memorable decade. The 20th century had the Roaring Twenties and the Swinging Sixties, the rest were all a bit crap with the 10s and 40s in particular blighted by war of course.
I cannot see any of the first three decades of this century carving out a special name for themselves, even accepting kinabalu's point that it takes a few years to see a decade in true perspective.
Perhaps we will witness the Throbbing Thirties or the Fab Forties this century?
(Although with global warming it could be the Thirsty Thirties and the Fiery Forties, I guess.)
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
I'm sure the SNP will blame him, but I was thinking more about the implications elsewhere in the public sector. It will probably make it harder to resolve the ongoing tension with the EIS and SSTA, both of whom are due to strike next month as well.
I know some people with a very poorly grandmother/mother in hospital in Scotland at the moment. She hadn't been taking her medicine - she had difficulty swallowing so her pills were just dropped on the floor. Couldn't feed herself easily so that wasn't happening either. My friends obviously remonstrated with the staff, but frankly it'll be a miracle for her to make it out alive, let alone better. These people don't need a payrise, they need the sack and starting again.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
I love the soundtrack to Get Carter by Roy Budd, especially this track Looking For Someone
Income tax rates for higher earners are expected to be increased in Scotland for the next financial year.
The BBC understands the deputy first minister, John Swinney, will announce the changes in his budget statement.
He is expected to put up the higher rate of tax from 41p to 42p in the pound and to increase the top rate from 46p to 47p.
The tax threshold for the top rate is also expected to be lowered from £150,000 to closer to £125,000.
The Scottish government has frozen the threshold for the 41p higher rate in recent years - it currently begins at £43,663 in Scotland, compared with £50,271 elsewhere in the UK.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
Well my (first) point isn't to try to define decades - just to say that the past is different to how it's perceived. Most people in 1967 weren't hippies or smartly dressed go getters: they (and their houses) actually looked, and lived their lives, how we imagine people looked in 1957. Etc. Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.) I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
Thatcher was so influential in and coterminous with the 80s that her sudden exit did maybe help to give it a full stop more quickly and definitively than is the norm. But it didn't become a fully mature decade with a finished shape and personality until around 2008 at the earliest.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
Another thing I repeatedly find interesting is that it can often be hard to tell the date of amateur youtube videos from any time in the last 15 years or so, as if we're living in a new kind of permanent present. That would be inconceivable between the early 1980's and early 1990's, and also between the early 1980's and early 1970's.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
This is Southgate's safety first approach which I have had an issue with for years. I understand why they did it 4 years ago at the WC, England didn't really have the team, now we blessed with so many skillful attacking players that cause trouble in the Champions League week in week out. Perhaps still having to have Maguire and Stones at CB continues that vision that England can't afford to play expansively in case they get caught out and those two don't have the pace to cover.
However, this slow deliberate style of play is why we have rarely beaten a top 10 team under Southgate and a general over-reliance on set-piece goals. Top 10 teams are too organised and don't make enough mistakes to create the required number of opportunities to score from open play.
We had enough opportunities in both 2021 and 2022. It's not Southgate's fault that his players missed penalties.
There might be a case for Southgate designating a second penalty taker, to avoid the second-guessing around whether Lloris expected Kane would duplicate the first. The situation was a bit odd anyway since the clubmates might well have practised against each other at Spurs.
On the safety first front, was Declan Rice allowed more freedom to come forward?
On the static vs moving front, both finalists, France and Argentina, play with ten men and an eleventh who spends most of the game ambling slowly round the pitch to little effect before scoring or creating a goal.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
On the subject of several things being better in Northwestern Continental Europe, a good article from Martin Kettle here today, on the need to go in what is actually a more German direction in industrial relations. I knew little about how far Britain had actually already attempted to do this, in fact before the Germans, between 1926 and 1929, knowing only the failures both of feudally-minded management and obstreperous unions in the 1970's, "solved" by Thatcher one-sidedly in favour of management ; and with the increasingly obvious economic and social costs we're i seeing all around us today .
Why the hell should unions get a seat on the board....they don't represent the majority of workers, and most of those they do represent are public sector workers. I can think of worse idea's but not by much.
Perhaps corporate performance would be better if they did? Or is it speaking a different form of Germanic that makes the difference?
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
Well my (first) point isn't to try to define decades - just to say that the past is different to how it's perceived. Most people in 1967 weren't hippies or smartly dressed go getters: they (and their houses) actually looked, and lived their lives, how we imagine people looked in 1957. Etc. Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.) I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
Thatcher was so influential in and coterminous with the 80s that her sudden exit did maybe help to give it a full stop more quickly and definitively than is the norm. But it didn't become a fully mature decade with a finished shape and personality until around 2008 at the earliest.
Again, this doesn’t sound right at all. The sound, politics, and spirit of the eighties were understood both at the time (“Greed is Good”) and almost immediately in hindsight.
Your argument makes more sense for the 90s, which I don’t think took on a definable flavour until, say, 2015.
Other teams are far more fluid than we are, most noticeable against La France.
When we got the ball we stopped, thought about it, stood still, passed, stood still, passed again.
It seems that many/most other teams are constantly moving and each individual player is never static.
I'm not sure we're going to win too much against the Top 10 if that style of play continues.
This is Southgate's safety first approach which I have had an issue with for years. I understand why they did it 4 years ago at the WC, England didn't really have the team, now we blessed with so many skillful attacking players that cause trouble in the Champions League week in week out. Perhaps still having to have Maguire and Stones at CB continues that vision that England can't afford to play expansively in case they get caught out and those two don't have the pace to cover.
However, this slow deliberate style of play is why we have rarely beaten a top 10 team under Southgate and a general over-reliance on set-piece goals. Top 10 teams are too organised and don't make enough mistakes to create the required number of opportunities to score from open play.
We had enough opportunities in both 2021 and 2022. It's not Southgate's fault that his players missed penalties.
There might be a case for Southgate designating a second penalty taker, to avoid the second-guessing around whether Lloris expected Kane would duplicate the first. The situation was a bit odd anyway since the clubmates might well have practised against each other at Spurs.
On the safety first front, was Declan Rice allowed more freedom to come forward?
On the static vs moving front, both finalists, France and Argentina, play with ten men and an eleventh who spends most of the game ambling slowly round the pitch to little effect before scoring or creating a goal.
Kane said before the game that he always practised penalties with reserve keepers, not Lloris
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
There can be problems over here still but the police play a role as well. In 2020s Britain a bloke shoving a flare up his arse launched internet memes, not a baton charge or water cannons as might be the case on the continent or even here back in the 80s.
Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has been released from prison after serving eight months of his sentence for hiding £2.5m worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
The sixties were self-consciously swinging even at the time, and certainly remembered as such by the eighties.
I think your theory is bunk.
Having said that, I tended to view the nineties as vaguely the same as today, until I watched the movie “The Paper” last year. Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei. 1994? It might as well have been made in 1974.
My point is that what each decade was 'all about' emerges in hindsight and its shape needs a certain temporal distance to be discerned.
Eg what you've just noticed. The 90s has its shape now. The 00s doesn't but will get one before the 10s do. Etc.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Certainly no later than 1990, I would say. Even that preceded the TV era and all its effects (not least the domination of the big few European leagues in hoovering up talent from all over the world). There's an argument that 1993 (CL won by Marseille) and 1995 (Ajax) were a different era too.
The real “Big Bang” moment in European football, was the founding of the Premier League in 1992, and the start of the massive influx of TV money seen since then.
Yes - especially with the European Cup becoming the Champions League at the same time.
The year club football died.
Not really. Still plenty of club football out there.
Club football in the 70s was pretty shite tbf... Hooligans, rampant racism, deathtrap grounds, mud pitches, leg-breaking tackles, ponderous football, etc, etc.
Sadly the hooligans bit is back. Big style. Largely cocaine-fuelled.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
A lot of goes under the radar, because it is focused away from the top leagues.
Fair enough but I don't see trains being trashed or running street battles outside grounds.
I personally don't believe it is as bad as the 70s, but there is a surprising amount going on which really doesn't get much coverage. There is definitely plenty of footage of running street battles.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
I'm sure the SNP will blame him, but I was thinking more about the implications elsewhere in the public sector. It will probably make it harder to resolve the ongoing tension with the EIS and SSTA, both of whom are due to strike next month as well.
I know some people with a very poorly grandmother/mother in hospital in Scotland at the moment. She hadn't been taking her medicine - she had difficulty swallowing so her pills were just dropped on the floor. Couldn't feed herself easily so that wasn't happening either. My friends obviously remonstrated with the staff, but frankly it'll be a miracle for her to make it out alive, let alone better. These people don't need a payrise, they need the sack and starting again.
Good luck with that. There might be a case for pills being replaced by French-style suppositories or other delivery methods. Replacing health care workers with shelf-stackers, not so much.
Constituency: SNP 50% (+1) Lab 25% (-1) Con 13% (nc) LD 7% (-1)
List: SNP 40% (+2) Lab 24% (nc) Con 13% (-1) Grn 11% (-1) LD 6% (-2)
(YouGov, 6-9 Dec; changes from 30 Sep - 4 Oct)
Interesting for Scottish domestic policy, irrelevant for indyref2 now the SC has ruled the UK government and Westminster can refuse it indefinitely. It will likely need a hung parliament and SNP balance of power at the next election for any change, otherwise even Starmer probably doesn't grant one for years
Deleted picture of Franco
If you know anything about Franco's time ruling Spain you would know that worse than just an insult to insunuate that Starmer or HYUFD* is similar to Franco.
*(it is unclear to me which you were referring to)
Take it up with HYUFD. He is a great admirer of Franco, on record with praise for him, his regime and his successors.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
I know what you mean, but in the 60s if you watched something set in the 20s you would consider that period drama. It is just we are old I'm afraid. I find lots of stuff crops up that I think is obvious and younger people look at me as if I'm talking gibberish. The other day I was trying not to get the names Kas and Cass mixed up. I remembered it was Cass by thinking of Mama Cass. I said this to the person concerned (I would guess in her thirties). Had not a clue what I was talking about.
Anything to do with music, popular culture and especially electronics dates very quickly (though at the Abba Voyage show the other day I was struck by how many young people were there). More interesting, perhaps, are the subtle ways that widely-accepted culture changes. For all that some here rail at woke attitudes, they're very widely accepted as normal even among older, quite conservative people. To declare that you dislike gay or black people has moved from being common to being offensive to being simply peculiar, like declaring that you don't trust anyone with brown hair, and when did anyone last sneer at "women drivers"?
Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has been released from prison after serving eight months of his sentence for hiding £2.5m worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.
Dunno. I took 13/2 against France at the off but am considering how much to hedge on Argentina. France have looked vulnerable at the back in most matches they've played. Can the team beaten by Saudi Arabia beat the team who lost to Tunisia?
France played their reserves against Tunisia, while the Argies played their first team against the Saudis (though that scoreline was rather against the run of play).
The argies also struggled when the Netherlands went to a more direct route one approach, something the French do adeptly too.
It will be pretty close, but I fancy the French.
By rights it should be Argentina and Messi's. Argentina have not won it since 1986, France won it last time in 2018 and in 1998
Using this argument by rights England should have beaten France, because England have not won it since 1966, where as France won it last time and in 1998.
England won't win it until FIFA stop stiffing us with dodgy referees whenever we look like getting close.
Ahem, that equalising goal in 1966 normal time was definitely dodgy, but we won as a result...
True, but we had some clout back then so we got an even break, and better sometimes.
We've been at odds with FIFA for decades now and it shows. It's become very much more obvious now that we have a decent team. It took a great French side plus a crooked ref to beat us this time. We should be proud of our side.
The ref in the Argentina/Netherlands game raised a few Dutch eyebrows.
That said, and I'm not the first to say this, we do seem to have accepted this defeat philosophically.
We did what was expected of us. No more no less. One main issue with the England team is they don't often overperform which is what you need to win Trophies. We are very solid but don't often beat the other top teams
England are the only European team to have made the last 8 in the last three major international competitions, and they made the top 4 in two of them and the top 2 in one of them. I think that's a pretty good record and with a slightly different rub of the green the team would have lifted at least one trophy. If they can maintain that consistent quality then they will win eventually.
We're established as top tier now under Southgate. A real achievement. As for winning the WC or the Euros - but esp the WC - in the next decade or so I think we can be optimistic but it's still odds against. There's such fine margins at the business end of the knockout stages. You have to win 3 big pressurized matches in a row where in at least 2 of them the teams will be well matched. So you need to find a performance AND things have to fall for you. This latter aspect is underappreciated imo. There's a high element of randomness in play. And it doesn't all even out over the piece because WCs, like goals within a match, are rare events.
Yes, football is very unsatisfying in that regard. The opportunities to play other top 10 teams come round so rarely, and football is such a low scoring game dependent on how one or two moments turn out. England is at the stage now where they would expect to win against any of the teams outside the top 10, but wouldn't expect to beat other top 10 teams. It's sort of an achievement that England have got to this level. And yet you can't help feeling given England's size and resources that this is the minimum level England should really be at. Getting to a quarter final of a major tournament is no better than par.
Test cricket is also hard to win, and can also turn on brief moments. But test cricket overcomes this shortcoming with the concept of the series. Imagine if test cricket involved not just ten countries, but all the countries - with matches against the top 10 only coming round once or twice every two years.
This is integral to the WC's appeal though - that it's only every 4 years and involves match-ups you rarely or never see in the meantime. It's why it feels so special. As to winning it, football is THE world game and there are so many countries aspiring to succeed. The breadth and depth is huge. In previous times not so much, meaning more chance of a country developing a team streets ahead of the rest and able to win the WC without relying too much on the randomness factor. One thinks of Brazil in 1970.
Not now. To win the WC in the modern era, with the game as this turbocharged globalized supersport that everybody wants a piece of, is the hardest thing in international team competition. It needs so many factors to come together. If we ever do manage it - or perhaps better put, if it ever happens to us - it'll be amazing. "Amazing" in both senses of the word. Here's hoping. I'm 62.
I take your point. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to compare England with our three major European rivals - France, Germany and Italy. In such a comparison, we are well behind all three since 1966.
"Since 1966" covers much more than the modern era. And those three are only our "major European rivals" because they have won the most, so it's a little bit of a circular argument.
Interesting to consider when the Modern Era starts. I'd say the 80s but that could be just talking my age. Maybe a bit later would be more accurate. Certainly 66 was another world. It's part of our national dna, which I buy into, they think it's all over, Hurst's hattrick, Russian linesman, "you've won it once now go out and win it again", Nobby's toothless jig, Mooro wiping his hands on his shorts before shaking the Queen's hand and being handed the Rimet - brings a lump it really does - but compared to now it was jumpers for goalposts, Winning then was easier than getting to the semis these days.
Modern era starts from the WC when you first paid proper attention to the games. For me that was Mexico 86 or at a push Spain 82. For a Gen Z youth though the 1980s is very much the olden days.
Interesting decade the 80s. Across many walks of life - economics, pop culture, sport, working life, technology - it's the transitional decade, between the definitely old school 1970s and the definitely modern 1990s.
At the start of the 80s there was no Neighbours or Home and Away, our economy was still in the pre-Thatcher phase, the Berlin Wall was resolutely upright, people didn't have home computers. By the end we'd had the big bang, globalisation was getting into gear, electronic music was dominant, everyone had a computer or games console and the internet and email were just around the corner.
Showing your age there though. Who knows what Neighbours or Home and Away is nowadays?
To my kids, the idea of the 90s may as well be black and white when you speak about it. Couldn't pause or rewind the TV, no streaming or choosing what you wanted to watch, no online deliveries, if we wanted to speak to a friend on the phone we'd have to use the landline and call their landline. The internet while it existed was rarely used and required dial up modems that couldn't be used if anyone was on the phone..
The 90s are already getting dated. For me the millennium was a transition - not just from the 20th century, to the 21st, not just from childhood to adulthood, but to the modern handheld/digital/detached/on-demand world that we live in now.
Time does play its tricks. I watched something the other day set in the 80s that was categorized in the tv menu as a "period drama". No way, I said to myself. An 80s prog isn't period drama. But then I watched it and, yep, that's exactly how it looked and felt. Unfamiliar and distant.
Every decade was actually largely how you picture the one before.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
Hmm not sure about this. I reckon decades always take a shape but only do so looking back and with sufficient distance. At least 20 years. So the 60s started to take a shape in the mid 80s and it was finalized by the early 90s. The 90s were an indistinct fuzz until around 2012 and needed until quite recently to complete their journey to decadehood. The noughties are quite fuzzy atm but will 'fill out' over the period from 2027 to 2032. As for the decade we're in - the 20s - this won't assume a fully fledged shape and personality until around 2052. So I'll be 92 by the time the period we're living through now has any sort of definition. Quite a thought.
Well my (first) point isn't to try to define decades - just to say that the past is different to how it's perceived. Most people in 1967 weren't hippies or smartly dressed go getters: they (and their houses) actually looked, and lived their lives, how we imagine people looked in 1957. Etc. Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.) I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
Thatcher was so influential in and coterminous with the 80s that her sudden exit did maybe help to give it a full stop more quickly and definitively than is the norm. But it didn't become a fully mature decade with a finished shape and personality until around 2008 at the earliest.
I'd say the 80s were properly cooked the moment John Major came to power. The 80s had Thatcher, Reagan the end of the Cold War and a sort of dreamily optimistic pop music which hadn't really happened before and hasn't really happened since (by which I don't mean all pop music in the 80s was dreamy and optimistic, but that - well, listen to Stepping Out, or Electric Dreams, or Don't Stop Believing and you'll see what I mean.) All came to an end very suddenly. There was relatively little bleed between 80s and post-80s. I'm not saying they were uniquely brilliant. In many respects (chiefly the end of the Cold War) the 90s were far better. But the 90s didn't have the same instantly recognisable shape. Checky shirts and steady but unremarkable growth do not by themselves a cultural touchstone make. Culturally, the decades since the 80s are so hard to get a feel for because - and this goes back to my second point earlier - aside from mobile phones, they aren't so very different from each other. We can look back fondly on our indestructible non-smart Nokias with snake, but it's not really the Breakfast Club, is it? It doesn't even sit neatly in one decade or the other.
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So, pretty much comparable with Switzerland.
(Which begs another question. Why would we be in pounds and the Swiss in Euros not francs?)
Mr & Mrs Sussex level gas-lighting.
That said, a theory I trot out quite regularly is that we have culturally stood pretty still since the mid 90s. Modern music isn't so very different from the music of 25 years ago - music of 2022 is certainly more alike music of 1997 than music of 1997 was like 1972, or music of 1972 of 1947. Ditto television, film, clothes. Look at a picture of 1997: it looks different, but not that different.
I grant you technology has moved on a lot. But my main reference point is popular culture.
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, the main difference in film and television is the cultural politics. Watch a film or television programme from the late 90s, and the only really thing that strikes you is that the producers have not particularly tried to ensure all minority groups are represented in the way they would today; nor is there a background noise of judgement. Watch Point Break again, for example. There are goodies and baddies, but the baddies are not baddies because they represent the American Cultural Hegemony Which Must Be Dismantled, they are baddies because they carry out bank robberies.
But that aside, Point Break looks like it could have been made - if not yesterday, only a few years ago. The same could not be said, back in the 90s, of, say, Get Carter.
"#FRAMAR on one side the Moroccan supporters on the other the French supporters. Full-throttle mortar fire"
https://twitter.com/MLMontpellier/status/1603134044459376640
ETA he later managed Morocco rather successfully
However, this slow deliberate style of play is why we have rarely beaten a top 10 team under Southgate and a general over-reliance on set-piece goals. Top 10 teams are too organised and don't make enough mistakes to create the required number of opportunities to score from open play.
If only the chartered accountants and louche North London bohemians could get their heads around how football works these days.
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/63325200/?search_identifier=8fd79bd824c5ab7b387857d28baccacb
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/61273671/?search_identifier=8fd79bd824c5ab7b387857d28baccacb
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/2-bedrooms/kensington-and-chelsea-royal-borough/
https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/nottingham-cottage-interior
Nearly a third of Dublin homes listed on daft.ie, including flats, terraces, etc, are larger. If you look at a rural area then two-thirds of properties are larger.
Are British houses really that small?
GMB union rejects improved NHS pay deal in Scotland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63986827
Wasn't expecting that.
49: Two members preferred to leave Bank Rate unchanged at 3% at this meeting. The real economy remained weak, as a result of falling real incomes and tighter financial conditions. There were increasing signs that the downturn was starting to affect the labour market. But the lags in the effects of monetary policy meant that sizeable impacts from past rate increases were still to come through. That implied the current setting of Bank Rate was more than sufficient to bring inflation back to target, before falling below target in the medium term. As the policy setting had become increasingly restrictive, there was no longer a strong case for further tightening on risk management grounds.
50: One member preferred a 0.75 percentage point increase in Bank Rate, to 3.75%, at this meeting. Although there was some evidence of an inflection point in CPI inflation, there was greater evidence that price and wage pressures would stay strong for longer than had been projected in the November Report. Another more forceful monetary tightening now would reinforce the tightening cycle, importantly leaning against an inflation psychology that was embedding in wage settlements and inflation expectations, and was pushing up core services and other underlying inflation measures. Pulling forward monetary action now would reduce the risk that Bank Rate would need to rise well into next year even as the economy slowed further.
There was a potential two goal refereeing margin, as well as loads of fouls on Saka ignored, and their keeper made four or five saves more than ours
You must have been watching a different game
Again, from my inexpert view, I would say England were probably just as good if not better than France. the differences are reflected in the global league table that I looked at on the night of the match. There is very little between them.
A very significant profit for the BoE on that particular intervention!
I'm sceptical about the subscription model. I cannot conceive of a reason to ever personally pay for a tick, and for brands, I daresay a fair number will start to wonder why they're paying $xxx per month to have everyone tell them how shit they are (leaving aside those who are already paying in to advertise). I can't really see a way clear to turn it around, and he's publicly damaging his reputation as a business operator at the same time.
He's bought himself into a corner with it as well; I guess he'll keep it afloat artificially for a fair while.
As I said it's about the style of play. England were static; France fluid. The only player we had that seemed to approximate the French dynamism was of course Saka. Not to say that our method can't yield success but other teams are far more mobile and fluid than us. When Loris distributes at the back everyone is on the move; when Pickford did, there was a huge committee meeting about it just outside our own 18-yard box.
DeSantis has repeatedly said he doesn’t pay attention to polls, but his efforts keep resonating with Republican voters.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/15/desantis-trump-gop-same-sex-marriage-covid-00074027
His pitch appears to be the reasoned voice of bigotry, and it's working with the target audience.
...And DeSantis’s actions continue to attract attention among those with ties to the former president. Former senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, appearing on Fox News on Wednesday afternoon, called DeSantis’s remarks on same-sex marriage, which the governor delivered a night earlier on Laura Ingraham’s show, “quite eye opening and remarkable” and showed he is not a moderate...
Note for @HYUFD , there are zero headlines for Pence in recent days.
Situation comedies from the 1970s are rich seams of social history. I commend Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and I Didn't Know You Cared not only for their (slightly dated, but still worthwhile) humour but also for a look at what the 1970s actually looked like.
Though I'd say the 80s were fully formed by 1993 - I remember the 80s nostalgia industry being in full force by then; and 80s discos being a thing ("Mrs. T's Big Night Out", weekly at Sheffield University. Fun for the first couple of times but quickly got repetitive. Because the DJ could only play the records he physically owned, rather than having free reign over an almost inifinite selection, and he always chose 'Come on Eileen' over the preferable 'Geno', which he didn't have.)
I still don't really have a handle on what the 90s were like, however.
"the top 10 teams" ...
https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/men?dateId=id13792
Not that you'd have a clue. I bet you could audit their accounts pretty well, though, no argument there.
Speak to plod and they will say that the situation is back to the "bad old days".
I think your theory is bunk.
Having said that, I tended to view the nineties as vaguely the same as today, until I watched the movie “The Paper” last year. Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei. 1994? It might as well have been made in 1974.
I cannot see any of the first three decades of this century carving out a special name for themselves, even accepting kinabalu's point that it takes a few years to see a decade in true perspective.
Perhaps we will witness the Throbbing Thirties or the Fab Forties this century?
(Although with global warming it could be the Thirsty Thirties and the Fiery Forties, I guess.)
https://youtu.be/507mzQGC0nk
The BBC understands the deputy first minister, John Swinney, will announce the changes in his budget statement.
He is expected to put up the higher rate of tax from 41p to 42p in the pound and to increase the top rate from 46p to 47p.
The tax threshold for the top rate is also expected to be lowered from £150,000 to closer to £125,000.
The Scottish government has frozen the threshold for the 41p higher rate in recent years - it currently begins at £43,663 in Scotland, compared with £50,271 elsewhere in the UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-63988944
Some serious fiscal drag been going on there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-VY2L-GHAU
On the safety first front, was Declan Rice allowed more freedom to come forward?
On the static vs moving front, both finalists, France and Argentina, play with ten men and an eleventh who spends most of the game ambling slowly round the pitch to little effect before scoring or creating a goal.
Here is Wrexham and Oldham fans have a nice afternoon out,
https://twitter.com/Jamie31426413/status/1576205069653250048
https://twitter.com/KJ00355197/status/1576454711250767873
The sound, politics, and spirit of the eighties were understood both at the time (“Greed is Good”) and almost immediately in hindsight.
Your argument makes more sense for the 90s, which I don’t think took on a definable flavour until, say, 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eedH28a4Fus
https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/63987543
How as Boris got out of the clink after serving less than 1/3 of his sentence?
https://twitter.com/thomyorke/status/1603310664726245378
Eg what you've just noticed. The 90s has its shape now. The 00s doesn't but will get one before the 10s do. Etc.
This is not bunk!
Here's a traditionally tasty fixture.
https://twitter.com/CasualChaps/status/1595536155793055793?cxt=HHwW4oCzhcTrvaQsAAAA
I'm not saying they were uniquely brilliant. In many respects (chiefly the end of the Cold War) the 90s were far better. But the 90s didn't have the same instantly recognisable shape. Checky shirts and steady but unremarkable growth do not by themselves a cultural touchstone make.
Culturally, the decades since the 80s are so hard to get a feel for because - and this goes back to my second point earlier - aside from mobile phones, they aren't so very different from each other. We can look back fondly on our indestructible non-smart Nokias with snake, but it's not really the Breakfast Club, is it? It doesn't even sit neatly in one decade or the other.