The BBC and others have been spouting on about this great achievement so I thought I'd double check how many Englishmen were actually in each club's 18-man squad.
Man United - Ferdinand, Carrick, Scholes, Rooney, Foster.
Chelsea - Cole, Lampard, Terry.
Liverpool - Carragher, Gerrard, Spearing, Kelly.
Arsenal - Walcott, Gibbs.
That's a total of 14 Englishmen from the 72 players in those squads. What's more, Foster, Spearing, Kelly and Gibbs were unused subs and Walcott only came on as a late sub which means those "English" sides actually only had 9 English players in the 44 starting players - just over 20% or 1 in 5 - no wonder everybody likes Aston Villa and Martin O'Neill!!!
I find it very sad and what's more people will still ask why we are so useless when it comes to the big international tournaments, here is the answer folks.
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Its our love of the game in this country that has brought about these events. We love our football, spend oodles of time and money on it, tickets,tv,travel.forums,chat etc etc . Its in our culture,history,blood. How many of us have played on a Sunday morning. Or watched the kids at school or in a saturday team.
Dont like all the razzmatazz of the Prem but thats part and parcel of the entertainment business and underpinned by our love of the game and the money we are prepared to spend on it.
That's fine, I agree with all of that, its just that people should not be perplexed by our consistent failures at international level as a result of so few Englishmen playing the the ECL.
Strikers are a particular problem, the only English striker we have in the ECL is Rooney and he is not an out and out striker. Our best strikers (Owen, Defoe, Agbonlahor) are not getting ECL football so will find top international football a tough prospect.
That should cheer Henry up.
Ha! That's hilarious and I bet 99.9% of the audience completely missed the irony.
I like Wenger and admire Arsenal's football but for such a distinctly English club to turn its back on English players and become some sort of Pan-African/European/Latino talent academy leaves a very bitter taste.
If you split it down further I imagine that it's probably amoungst the highest proportion of players from a single nation out of that group of 72, which would go even higher if Neville and Brown were fit and playing.
Personally I'd prefer if we had 14 players who were up there with the best in the world than 50 mediocre players to pick from for the national side. I'd take quality over quantity anytime.
Our players just arent that good on the world stage.
the days of teams having all englishmen or british are long gone and will never have again with the Bosman / eu garbage so what;'s the point of getting bothered about it.
addickted - Liverpool in the 70's/80's were all british teams weren' they - - - Lisbon Lions were amazing considering all the players were born within a certain distance or Parkhead - never to be repeated
Yes, but that's not how it works is it? As outlined above only NINE of those players started for their team and did not include a goalkeeper or a goalscoring striker - two crucial positions - nor a specialist defensive midfielder. Guess which three positions remain unfilled in the England side?
Its no surprise that players like Carson, James, Defoe, Bent and so on have struggled internationally when they are not playing at the intermediate level of the ECL.
Quiz question though - which former Charlton Player scored in the 1977 European Cup final?
In 1990 we had no foreigners in the league and reached the SF's of the WC, but then again we failed to qualify in 1994 when there were still few foreigners in the EPL.
To be fair in the 1964-1970 period England had a very, very good side. Since then, not so much.
Hmmmmmm, not quite sure about that one, especially Arsenal. It's like watching Lennox Lewis beat Mike Tyson, you want to get excited but you would still prefer it to be Big Frank doing the biz.
Bang on mate.
for the record the team in 77 was
Clemence, Neal, Jones, Smith, Kennedy, Hughes, Keegan, Case, Heighway, McDermott, Callaghan
78
Clemence, Neal, Thompson, Hansen, Kennedy, Hughes, Dalglish, Case (Heighway), Fairclough, McDermott, Souness
Grobelaar didn't play unti 1984 and Molby never played in any of the euro cup wins
If so I'm gonna pull out now :-)
it was the molby bit made me look up as I was sure liverpool never had any foereingers in ther cup winning teams apart from Grobellar and Craig Johnston - the paddy's apart
81 team - Clemence, Neal, A.Kennedy, Thompson, R.Kennedy, Hansen, Dalglish (Case 86), Lee, Johnson, McDermott, Souness
84 team -Grobbelaar, Neal, Kennedy, Lawrenson, Whelan, Hansen, Dalglish (Robinson), Lee, Rush, Johnston (Nicol), Souness
i mean the first world cup i remember was 1978 didn't qualify
1982 another let down brooking and keegan couldn't save us
1986 how did lineker not put the header in against the argies
1990 semi's penalty heart break
1994 didn't qualify...
influx of foreigners with or without them we're so so as a national team .....
but the premierships big 4 are a pleasure to watch imo the quality of football is different gravy
and i know i was pleased they all got thru cos i'd rather watch an english side do it than an italian or spanish club side do it
obviously the money has gone crazy at the top level but i genuinely think if you are good enough you'll play in the champions league if you are english or not(remember the old european cup would only allow one team from each nation plus the previous winner to play in it)
i know i'd prefer to watch charlton mixing it against the greatest teams in the world with a really small chance of winning than having a great chance of beating huddersfield
Top level football is an INTERNATIONAL game now.
If you get the chance to see it again you see that the Argie defender running in with Lineker actually gets something on the ball, somehow just deflecting it away from him.
Should have got to the hand of god goal, and his little pigeon steps backwards were to blame for germanys goal in 1990. He even cost us 3rd place that year, get tackled in the box leading to a goal.
i thought shilts was trying to be too clever in the penalty shoot out v germany 1990 , waiting till the penalty was struck then diving rather than gambling which way to go...