Is English Football reaching a tipping point?

Eebo

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We have just witnessed a season where City have utterly dominated the wealthiest ever premier league with more player and managerial talent than ever before, all done playing Pep's possession based football.

The conventional wisdom from the press, pundits and old boys club of managers that this couldn't be done, that the Premier League was somehow special and what worked abroad couldn't ever work here has been thoroughly destroyed.

In addition, Pochettino at Spurs has had them punching well above their financial weight for several years playing a possession and high press system.

In the Summer, England suddenly start to play out from the back with Stones and Maguire taking the ball into midfield, and try to press energetically and we have a far more successful World Cup than anyone predicted, and get to the semi finals (albeit with an easy run).

Now Bielsa rocks up at Leeds, and starts to introduce similar ideas in the Championship, wins his 1st 4 games with rave reviews, demonstrates that it is not just elite Premier League teams who can adopt these systems

Meanwhile miserable Mourinho persists with his shit on a stick brand of football and is getting pelters from all directions.

I am not arguing for a minute that there is only one way to play football, and these things go in cycles, but it looks like we may be at a point now where English football is about to change completely.

How do you think this will play out in the longer term?

Do we think there will be a seismic shift towards technique and possession based football and a new generation of coaches or will the lower Premier League and Football League clubs want persist with 'traditional' British style football despite the evidence that there are other ways that work?
 
It is long overdue imo. We needed to drastically rip up how we play football in our country from grass roots upwards, unfortunately the big wigs and even pundits/press etc believed that it never needed to change - well Pep has blown that right out the water in front of the watching bigwigs and the whole world and broke all domestic records in the process
 
It will be what delivers England a Euro title or maybe just maybe a World Cup.

Alan Brazil described mourinho and his football as ‘a dinosaur’ this morning. He’s exactly right, too. He also said it must be painful for their fans to see us and Liverpool playing our brands of football.

What Pep has done is take it to a new level, and everyone wants to follow suit. I’d say it’s here to stay.
 
I think it'll take a lot more for it to take hold, you'll have to wait until the pundits and journalists have grown up on successful systems like ours. Barcelona under Guardiola were accepted in Spain as they'd grown up on Cruyff and Michels. Bayern under him were never really accepted in Germany. Even now the English media have spent the summer painting last season a fluke.
 
We have just witnessed a season where City have utterly dominated the wealthiest ever premier league with more player and managerial talent than ever before, all done playing Pep's possession based football.

The conventional wisdom from the press, pundits and old boys club of managers that this couldn't be done, that the Premier League was somehow special and what worked abroad couldn't ever work here has been thoroughly destroyed.

In addition, Pochettino at Spurs has had them punching well above their financial weight for several years playing a possession and high press system.

In the Summer, England suddenly start to play out from the back with Stones and Maguire taking the ball into midfield, and try to press energetically and we have a far more successful World Cup than anyone predicted, and get to the semi finals (albeit with an easy run).

Now Bielsa rocks up at Leeds, and starts to introduce similar ideas in the Championship, wins his 1st 4 games with rave reviews, demonstrates that it is not just elite Premier League teams who can adopt these systems

Meanwhile miserable Mourinho persists with his shit on a stick brand of football and is getting pelters from all directions.

I am not arguing for a minute that there is only one way to play football, and these things go in cycles, but it looks like we may be at a point now where English football is about to change completely.

How do you think this will play out in the longer term?

Do we think there will be a seismic shift towards technique and possession based football and a new generation of coaches or will the lower Premier League and Football League clubs want persist with 'traditional' British style football despite the evidence that there are other ways that work?


Its the likes of Hughes and Warnock who will send players out to kick the *hit out of the opposition. You could even put the spuds thug Pocc, who clearly has no problems with his players trying to seriously hurting players. This isn't about getting stuck in, its simply about fouling players until they can't walk. Then there are turds like Danny Murphy, who advocate crippling the players to win games. So it comes down to the same issue, shithouse officials.
 
It is long overdue imo. We needed to drastically rip up how we play football in our country from grass roots upwards, unfortunately the big wigs and even pundits/press etc believed that it never needed to change - well Pep has blown that right out the water in front of the watching bigwigs and the whole world and broke all domestic records in the process
English football is still suffering from the problems created when clubs favoured size/strength over skill in their youth players.
 
Not many rival fans will accept it (and fair enough too), but Guardiola has done English football a huge favour - and Gareth Southgate, who is nobody's fool - was quick to say so too. It's demonstrated that this kind of football not only works in this country, but has the capacity to render the more traditional managers as being out of their depth, and unable to cope with it. Klopp too, to an extent has reinforced the point. Oddly enough, Roy Hodgson is inclined that way too, but felt unable to enforce that on England, while Wenger was very much out on his own at the time he was at his best.

So I'd argue that it's principally Guardiola, but definitely Southgate and Klopp as well who have changed a lot of perceptions. Southgate doing it with England also had the unifying effect that fans of all clubs quite liked the approach, while accepting it was very much a work in progress. But what it did was suggest a way that England could win a World Cup in future, and that's an enormous change in mentality. While Guardiola's philosophy has demolished everyone else, bar Liverpool who are now cut from not totally dissimilar cloth.

Yes. I'd say we've already reached that tipping point. And the English youth players who were able to go out and win European and World titles have also been a part of that. And the guy who put them on that path as the director of England youth development a decade ago? Gareth Southgate.

It's been a virtuous circle and it's going to make a huge difference.
 
English football is still suffering from the problems created when clubs favoured size/strength over skill in their youth players.

Pretty much.
You could see last season that Chelsea' youth team was nowhere near as physical and huge as in previous years, with one or two smaller players involved. As a result, the City side weren't just bullied off the pitch by bigger players, as had happened the previous year.
 
English football is still suffering from the problems created when clubs favoured size/strength over skill in their youth players.

certainly is...I highlighted this many years ago when my son was playing in terms of how football is taught to the kids in Spain compared to the prehistoric ways that premier league clubs and grass roots clubs were doing it - some of the stories I have heard (and yourself and others have probably heard as well) about how they weed the kids down on open day trials at clubs is shocking

The FA in this country has a lot to answer for - it needs a massive reboot, if only there was a switch like on a computer. The new FA trained coaches need to be educated in this philosophy and playing style that focuses on technical ability with both feet, movement etc etc
 
The FA in this country has a lot to answer for - it needs a massive reboot, if only there was a switch like on a computer. The new FA trained coaches need to be educated in this philosophy and playing style that focuses on technical ability with both feet, movement etc etc

What, you mean like the U17 World Cup winners, U20 World Cup winners, U19 European Championship winners - all playing fluid, passing, technical football better than anyone else?

That kind of reboot?
 

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