England, the co-founding fathers of the beautiful game known as football. With age comes wisdom and knowledge, not with this team. With age comes strength and experience, not with this team. With age comes triumph and glory, not with this team. Should a team with no depth, effect on the game or developed style of play be ranked 10th in the world? No. How can I stress the fact that England’s national squad isn’t strong enough, it is merely a fox among hounds.
Complacency is a problem that manifests and thrives in the England squad. Many players become too conceited due to their club achievements, yet they fail to perform on an international stage. This is a problem as players get used to being chosen for the starting eleven and feel they wont be dropped. One player in particular is Joe Hart; I believe that he should be benched for a few games. I’m certain Hart believes he is invincible. Harts over inflated ego makes him feel he has no competition, this is not helped by football pundits exaggerating Hart’s importance in the squad. I will agree that he is an outstanding goalkeeper, but for his reputation he just isn’t up to scratch. Therefore a couple of games on the bench wouldn’t hurt as we have seen from Manchester City this season. I think England needs more competition in their squad as that is what drives players to stay at the top of their game.
Something that I find exasperating is the constant struggle against, what people consider, “lesser” teams. By using the term lesser I mean in contexts of the FIFA world rankings which I would consider extremely biased. Of course to a certain degree we are a team that consists of quality players, yet when pitted against these apparently inferior teams we seem to struggle. When we do win it is generally against the run of play and it is seen as lucky. For example look at the recent match versus Chile, surprise surprise we lost. How is such a well renowned team like England losing to Chile? Chile do have some real talent in their squad such as Sanchez, Vidal and Vargas but really a side of that eminence shouldn’t be challenging England. We rarely see this problem of England struggling, against big teams. this is because they are almost always on the back-foot after ten minutes. This aggravates my usually passive nature and I find my self shouting vile names at the telly. Chile outplayed England even in their football, they played beautifully and charasmatically while England played it “safe” with their beloved route one tactic. This makes me wonder would a fan of a similar temperament as me, get as angry when supporting the likes of Spain, Brazil or Germany?
When you think of great passages of play who do you think of? England? Didn’t think so, let me guess who you thought of: Spain, Brazil, Argentina or Germany. This left me wondering, what are England actually good at? Long balls. That’s it. I do not understand how England can even score when all they do is monotonously hoof the ball forward, like the fat kid that always gets picked last and is destined to play in defence. People may try and defend England by saying that they get limited training time; but so do all the other top flight nations. Do you hear any other teams moaning about limited training time? No the training is sufficient. The reason we moan is because we find it hard to accept the inevitable that England will never get past the round of sixteen.
England has an abundance of potential in their youth squad, we have the likes of; Zaha, Ince, Danny Rose, Luke Shaw and many more. The young talent from our country is of a high standard. The youth in our squad are like black belts, they are good as they are, but given the right training and time they will flourish into masters. They also need to allow the youngsters to make mistakes and learn from it. Although this is not possible as whenever a new potential star is named he is immediately rushed into the starting line up. I do understand the need for this; England needs depth in their squad but why rush a process that takes time? We look all over the world and we see young talent growing, yet in England they continue to ruin what looks to be another group of promising stars on the rise.
To conclude I feel England can grow to become a great footballing nation again, but only if the correct time is allotted to the youth. Also if they do not start to increase their winning form, fans will become even more disheartened and and move to despair. If they do not start picking up their winning form, the columns of England’s patriotism will come crushing down on the Lions below.
February 6, 2015 at 5:06 pm
‘Complacency is a problem that manifests and thrives in the England squad.’ This is a bold statement, written with confidence. Your structure works well and you have varied your sentence structures for effect.
Targets:
1) avoid using exclamation marks.
2) double check you use of punctuation. Have you used a comma where you might have needed a semi-colon or full stop? Pay attention to the sentence structures in your fourth paragraph.
3) for tha majority of the time, you use a sophisticated vocabulary, however there are still instances where you repeat words or phrases. Look for these and edit. For instance, how many times have you used the word ‘which’? Or ‘this is due to the fact’
February 6, 2015 at 8:53 pm
i have tried to correct all the points you have given in this piece. Thank you for marking it on such short notice it is much appreciated
February 7, 2015 at 9:35 am
Very strong persuasive piece, definitely an A*.