England have five players who would start ‘for pretty much every other international team’ | OneFootball

Why are we pretending England don’t have two world-class players? And three others who wouldn’t start for pretty much every other country?

Thomas Tuchel is a game-changer and everyone at the World Cup has their issues.

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Seeing reds

What referee, thinking for themselves, sees a replay of that and gives a 2nd red card?

VAR makes it at least twice as likely you can find someone to bribe. Danny, Austin Spurs

At 84 minutes I was starting to compose an email saying how refreshing it was to see a game without VAR ruining it like we see week in week out in the PL.

Stick to football

I was a bit taken aback by one moment in ITV’s coverage of the opening match of the World Cup. Jon Champion made a withering a mark about the Mexican president. He implied that Claudia Sheinbaum was very unpopular. I won’t pretend to be an expert in Mexican politics, but I was also fairly sure Sheinbaum is a famously, unusually popular head of state (generally 50-70% are pro.) I see this has also baffled and irritated other losers online (thank God.)

What happened? Does Jon Champion have some very right wing Mexican friends, that he assumes are representative of the wider population, and who coloured his views? Has he been exclusively talking to Mexican businessmen since he arrived on those shores?

You know what, maybe I do support keeping politics out of football (if you are Jon Champion and/or have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.) Finbar, Navan

Captain, leader, pundit

On the preview show of the 1st day of the World Cup 2026, Supersport TV on their Swahili Channel, put for us their African audience…fkn John Terry on the panel to start us off for this tournament!

Amidst a panel of other dignified Africans…like it’s a rare dessert of a privilege, like it’s a treat?!

Am I being pranked right now? Who decided this sh*t.

I feel very tested right now. I am doing the most to make some lemonade out of these lemon-aids and I’m failing already… PaddyG, MUFC, Mombasa, Kenya. 

Short and sweet

England were good against Costa Rica. Play like that against Croatia, Ghana and Panama and we’ll comfortably go through the group as group winners. But we’ll need to be more clinical in the knock out rounds against the bigger teams. Dan, London

Starters and finishers

Pundits are talking about starters as if the most important thing is starting your best 11 players. The Gordon v Rashford debate is all about which one is the best player. In reality Gordon is the better presser and Rashford is more likely to score. So surely its better to start with Gordon and bring Rashford on against those famous ‘tired legs’.

One of the biggest positives about this squad is that we potentially have 2 rapid, in form, proven international goalscorers (Rashford and Watkins) on the bench to go up against ‘tired legs’.

One of the biggest challenges will be for England fans to get tickets if we play Mexico in Mexico city or Brazil in Miami. Both will essentially be away games. But at least we have a potential route to the final that doesnt involve playing France or Spain.

Our biggest weakness as usual is our lack of a creative midfielder. I dont see how we can win a tournament without one. But at least we have a proper #6 now. Apparantly you have to be German to spot a £100m English holding midfielder playing in the premier league. Ben

How other nations view England and each other

This isn’t an attempt to refute Dion’s points about England’s chances as I pretty much agree with what he’s saying. However, I just want to give my perspective on his statement (which I also agree with) that: “I think English people look at their team in a completely different way to what people outside of England would.”

As someone who for many years lived abroad in a very international city and who is married to someone from another country: that’s true for basically every single national team. A lot of mails seem to try and counter English footballing exceptionalism by claiming that England’s exceptionalism is itself exceptional.

An Italian friend would swear blind that France’s arrogance is peerless, and the 2018 win was nightmarish for him. However, he attended a French international school so consumes French media and has French friends.

A German colleague found the Netherlands’ Cruyffian Total Football ethos to be an embarrassing attempt to be relevant way beyond their national footballing achievements. He also happened to be fluent in Dutch as he had lived in the Flanders region of Belgium for 25+ years.

A friend from Buenos Aires thinks Brazil’s Jogo Bonito is overpromoted marketing wank. Her husband is Portuguese so she is aware of Brazilian national media. He in turn speaks Spanish as they now live in Valencia and is sick of hearing about tiki taka.

The point being, that if you expose yourself to any other nation’s footballing culture (particularly through the lens of the media or online fan opinion) it can’t help but come across as deluded or arrogant or inward-looking.

In the round, a lot of my friends found England to be unusual in their fans being more down on their national team than a lot of other nations. (I see ‘It’s Coming Home’ used ironically far more often than it’s used genuinely.) After the 2014 World Cup they were broadly in agreement that we were proper sh*te, but now they think we might be underrating ourselves again. DHB CPFC

The pro/anti England discussion is fascinating.

I know there’s a Premier League premium and bias, but is there a serious suggestion that Bellingham and Kane are not world class (neither are in the EPL), or that Rice, Saka, and James wouldn’t start for pretty much every other international team (that’s 5 out of the 11 straight out of the can)? Then of course there are the new kids on the block – is Anderson just a hyped up £120m English runner? Is Nico O’Reilly just an over promoted kid? Is the Pep fairy dust sprinkled on Morgan Rogers as well? Why did Barca just buy our very own Princess Di lookalike? Back to Pep – he paid a motsa for both Guehi and Stones. Both the eye test and the stats indicate that they can play football at the highest level. And so it goes on.

And btw, every other team will face overwhelming heat vs pressing/game plan issues as well. We’re not the only country with rain.

For every England issue, I can give you an equivalent at one of the other teams; Rodri, Yamal, Torres all have question marks against them; France have midfield issues and Deschamps; the younger Argentinians haven’t exactly excelled recently (Martinez x 2, Romero, McAllister, Alvarez). You get the picture.

We have an actual coach who hopefully can and will make in game changes as required. It’s crass to mention it, but he’s also got some experience of winning things.

So I live in hope.

Peace and love, Matthew (ITFC)

Well, England v Costa Rica was a bit of an eye-opener.  I don’t mean the game itself, as I didn’t watch it, although I had fully intended to.

Before I go any further, this is a UK-centric mail and for that I apologise to all of you reading across the world.

The announcement that the game had been delayed ‘due to weather conditions’ made me think ‘Oh here we go’.  A few points occur.

Firstly, I’ll bet the UK TV services will be so very happy with the scheduling mayhem this intervention of nature will introduce.

Secondly, and whilst it was a meaningless friendly, I can’t have been the only one to think ‘You know what?  I’ve got the school run/work in the morning.  I’ll just check the highlights tomorrow’.

Thirdly, I wonder how those paying for adverts at ‘peak times’ are going to view games delayed, or even postponed, due to inclement weather?  (Although, if that means less gambling ads around football games, then you won’t hear me grumble).

Finally, pubs have been granted licence extensions for late English and Scottish kick-offs.  What happens if THOSE games are delayed and the drinking punters aren’t allowed to watch the game in full?  No doubt that eventuality will be met with calm restraint given how long said fans will have been drinking.  Won’t it?

The commercial opportunities to those so minded are obvious.  But, and I fully concede it is a BIG but, Mother Nature might just find a way to make FIFA sh*t its’ collective pants. Mark (International England broken after Harry Kane taking corners and especially Iceland).  MCFC.

Sick of Infantino

Much like a lot of mailbox contributors and F365 staffers, I’ve been finding it tough to work up any real enthusiasm for the World Cup as it’s approached. But over the past week, I’d actually managed to vaguely get on board. I arranged the office sweep, bought my son the sticker album – all that good stuff. The fact that it SHOULD be special compensates for an awful lot.

Then yesterday evening I had the misfortune to happen upon Sky’s coverage of Gianni Infantino’s press conference, and I was right back to square one.

I wish there was invective poisonous enough to puncture the man’s arrogant hide, I really do. Some cutting, filthy term that transcends languages and would ensure he got the message if I ever end up in the same room as him. But the shameless swine has clad himself in the most absurd, self-serving coat of armour imaginable, and attacks just bounce off him.

The obvious, awkward questions were asked yesterday, and straight-batted with a shrug of the shoulders. Everything gets rationalised with this nonsensical “Football is magic, we’re just waving the wand” rhetoric that he wheels out on repeat.

Ticket prices hitting scandalous levels? “Nah mate, they’d be worse if we left the market to decide, black market, blah blah. When we set the prices the money stays in football”. Ergo, he’s doing us all a favour. Diddums, how did we get that backwards?

Support staff – up to and including the REFS, ffs! – getting detained by immigration and even kicked back home? “That’s unfortunate, but, y’know, I’m not OMNIPOTENT so some bad things may happen”. Sorry for mistaking you for Zeus.

Iran suffering all sorts of humiliation on foot of the general intolerance for them from the main host nation? “I don’t know who else would have been able to ensure Iran would play” (that one is actually verbatim, which is a scandal all of its own).

The simultaneous display of a massive god complex coupled with total refusal to address the obvious issues with this and other World Cups is what really needles me. The weasel is so obviously in the pocket of any wealthy dictator he gets near, and he acts as some kind of bulletproof deflector vest for the issues with them. No accountability, no morality – just constant verbal chicanery as he cites “the dreams of children” and other tosh instead of giving a direct question a direct answer.

Those snippets from yesterday’s press conference above just add to a rancid rap sheet that includes his astonishing “today I feel like a migrant worker” speech in Qatar, the shameful lack of process involved in gifting Saudi the 2034 tournament, and the absurd Peace Prize handed out to the most fractious leader America has ever had. If I didn’t love the game I’d laugh at him – it’s fully cartoonish at this stage.

So yeah, back down to earth with a bump after a fleeting spell of looking forward to the actual football. I know I’ll never be able to boycott the tournament – that would feel too much like the ultimate win for f**ks like Infantino, and the only person harmed would be me. But the action on the pitch is going to have to go some to act as an antidote to that leering gremlin and his crew. Keith Reilly

Fixing football

I know the World Cup has kicked off and is about to take up all our time but I’ve been working on this and have some solutions for many of the problems in our game. Editor, if it’s too long and you need to serialise it, then go ahead. Looking forward to getting bashed or any alternative opinions!

VAR I believe we need VAR, but it is used wrongly. One of my earliest football memories was watching Maradona beat England with his hand and I don’t think a game of football should ever be decided by something like that, even if it doesn’t happen that often, an option has to be there to protect against this level of cheatimg. If VAR decides to review something then 3 officials should go into separate sound proof booths, get 60 seconds to review the incident, and then hit a ‘change’ button to choose to disagree with the onfield decision and vote against it, or do nothing if they support it. Not hitting the button means you agree with the onfield decision, whether by choice or the time running out. No conversing with each other and no going back to the match official for them to look at. That all takes too much time and heaps added pressure to the on-field official. The decision is then made in the VAR booth by a vote of 1-0, 2-0, 3-0 or 2-1.

If you can’t decide within however many minutes are stipuated then it can’t be clear and obvious and the game should move on.  The length of this  should be 1 or 2 minutes, 3 maximum if you really want. This process should take less time, and some grief away from the match official. I’d make one of the VAR officials reviewing these to be an ex-player for a different perspective. Alternatively, bring in a system like the NFL, and give teams a couple of challenges per half, then they will save them for only the most important incidents. If the decision favours the challenger they they keep it for another time, but if the decision goes against them, then they lose that one. Managers will have to choose wisely what to challenge, and there will be less stoppages. Any challenges would be looked at when the ball is next out of play, so it can’t be used as a tactic to stop a counter attack or gain any other advantage.

CONSISTENCY IN DECISIONS One thing that frustrates me is when anyone talks about consistency in decisions. I must be in the minority in thinking that it’s just not possible to get that. All decisions are subjective. Yes, match officials get training and guidance, but in the heat of battle, they all can see things slightly differently. Pundits constantly bang on about wanting consistency, but when they are reviewing game incidents, they frequently can’t agree with each other, so how do they expect others to do it! If you pull up 10 incidents a week and showed 10 match officials, they won’t come to the same decision every time on every incident. You can argue for consistency in a game maybe, or across the decisions of one match official over the course of a a season, but very few incidents are identical, there is always some variable that can change something. It’s not great to see different outcomes for similar incidents but I’m not sure this will ever change unless we have robotic officials who can process all the variables of an incident like a computer.

OFFSIDES We just need to make this simpler. It’s called football, let’s just use the foot and let everything else go, even if you can score with your head etc. We want attacking football right? We want more goals right? Let’s allow attacking players to be able to lean forward in anticipation of a forward pass. Don’t worry if a head or knee is ahead of a defender, just go with the toes on the foot, nothing else needs looking at then. Nothing worse than nit-picky offisides stopping attacks and stifling attacking football. Or for a radical alternative, let’s just scrap offsides now. Boy would football become more exciting and end to end then, with less dull slow passing sideways and back possession build up play, and more action around the goalmouths.

HANDBALL As above, just make it simpler, make it the hand and nothing else, let the arms go. Personally I’d make any contact in any way on the hand, handball. I’d give penalties for attacking players just flicking the ball up at opponents hands. Again, let’s favour goals, sorry defenders. Defenders should learn to have their hands behind their backs when facing an attacker anyway. I see some players do it, I used to when I played, it’s not that hard. Get those hands out of the way and then you won’t get penalised. Can’t be bothered with all this intent and accidental stuff. And doesn’t have to be a penalty if not stopping the ball crossing the goal line, maybe any other contact is an indirect free kick. A hand should never score a goal, or prevent a goal, accidental or not.

TIME WASTING Another easy one, get a bloody game clock. It stops when the ball is out of play, or a player is down injured etc. No time will need to be added on then and everybody can see the clock. All the delaying tactics and fake injuries to waste time will instantly bcome pointless and end. I think we just hate the idea of bringing in something that seems american, but it works. Stop being stubborn football. If you don’t like that, then add time for everything to stop the time wasting. Each substitution adds 2 minutes of additional play, plus the time the substitution takes. Same for players down injured, although this could penalize genuine injuries. Those goalies that go down tactically, make them wait to come back on like any outfield player, so you have an unguarded goal. This would stop the fakers, but again penalize the genuine injuries. The game clock is obviously the much better and clearer option.

GRAPPLING AT SET-PIECES A tricky one but just stop some of the blatant things. Maybe all outfield players need to have their arms by their sides until the free kicks or corner is taken. Stop all that stuff when players raise their arms either side of an opponent to ‘box them in’ and restrict their movements, ridiculous and so obvious. No holding of another players shirt. So much stuff goes on and there may be no easy solution but set pieces should occur as if outfield players don’t have arms!

SCHEDULE I actually don’t think we have too much football, or there are too many games. I believe players in the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s played just as many games, if not sure, than players today, with way less pampering and support. Today there are international breaks and multiple substitutes available. I remember players playing league games at the weekend, then an international midweek, then back to the league the next weekend, now they have 2 week breaks! I used to love those midweek internationals and preferred international football back then. Now I hate the long breaks with no football and would happily scrap them. I’m also fine with scrapping the Euro’s now. I love the World Cup due to the variety of teams and fans that event brings, but the Euro’s pale in comparison. I’d rather a Word Cup every 2 years. I also just about remember the days of 1 substitute, yes ONE! Players played way more minutes back then. Look how different support is these days, recovery, nutrition, all the support and first class facilities they have. Many past players used to drink, smoke, and eat fish and chips before games, and they still performed every week. Yes, much more discipline is expected today and that is a credit to today’s players that they can do it, but past players didn’t have the benefits of all that, they just got on with it. Some career ending injuries back then are now just 6 weeks out! Tackling was way worse back then.

Today’s game is luxurious compared to footballers lives from back then. I think they should be able to play 3 times per week these days with all the amounts of support in place. But as I said, I do tip my hat to them for the dedication this discipline takes these days as it is expected, and do believe mental health to be a factor that wasn’t before without social media etc. But go back and look at something like that dominant 80’s Liverpool side that won so many games and trophies, without all the luxuries and perks of todays game! And one final comment before I give a solution. Managers pick the teams, if they think there are too many games then rest and rotate more of your players. Nobody is making you play them every week. If you believe their welfare is threatened then show you care and rest them from games more! You have a choice! So, personally, I don’t want to see less football, if anything I want more.

So, if you still think these highly pampered and looked after near robotic athletes need more rest then the powers need to get together and limit how many appearances players can make in each competition. For example, if there are 38 Premier League games, make a rule that no player can make more than 30 league appearances in any season, whether starting or as a substitute. Easier to do with a league format but less so in cups, or with internationals, as teams play different quantities of games, so maybe the rule there is that you can’t play more than 3 successive games. It’s not perfect but I’m sure there is a rule that would work. Then all your players are playing less games. I don’t need to see the top players in games every week, I wish more younger players were included in first teams and there was more of a mix in teams. Scrap some of the youth teams and make first team squads bigger. The proposed FIFA rule about playing homegrown U21 players would help to rest senior players, and help with development of younger players. So there is no need to lessen the games, just share the appearances out more. There are many good players who get little game time.

RETROSPECTIVE ACTIONS Nobody likes the feigning of injuries in games, or when players go down as if they have been hit or claim a head-butt. Review these after games and issue restropective fines and points/bans for those incidents where there is quite clearly no contact, especially if an opposing player was sent off for it wrongly. It’s done for player/manager comments, and certain tackles, why not this annoying dramatics of some players.

EXTRA TIME/PENALTY SHOOT-OUTS Another tricky one, and I’m not sure there is a good solution. I did quite enjoy the golden goal when they used briefly. Maybe some sort of attacking stat is used at the end of the game and the team with the highest wins in the event of a draw. Most corners won, most saves forced upon the opposing keeper, most times hitting the woodwork? Some of these could be manipulated or too easily gained though so not perfect, and you’d rather it involved match action. How about removing the goalies for extra time, and then it’s first to 5 goals win the match? Could be fun!

OTHER CHANGES And how about some recognition for hitting the woodwork but not scoring, which provides exciting moments and great crowd reactions. Yet they are just deemed off-target shots and thrown in the stats with Row Z shanks. I’d argue they should be considered on-target, as if saved by the goalie. I’d love to see stats on which teams and players manage to hit the woodwork the most frequently in a season. It’s a very underestimated stat!