When did English football clubs stop playing dinosaur football?

[bluemoon32]

Bergkamp's great goal vs Argentina came from a 50 yd punt upfield, although it still needed a touch of genius to score in the style it was put away.

Fuck knows what Bergkamp would be worth in todays game, insane talent

 

[Ste68]

I think he has to take a lot of credit for the way our English lads play these days. At every level now we're so comfortable with the ball. Go back 15-20 years and we had players like Gerrard and Lampard for England who would try a Hollywood pass almost every time they had it. It looks fantastic when it came off, but most of the time it just gifted the ball back to the opposition. And our full-backs then we're more than happy to just launch it forward into the channels at every opportunity.

The technical quality between your average England player now compared to just 15 years ago is like night and day.

Hasn't the biggest change come from the change in rules around the amount of time youth players are allowed to play football and train at academy level. Forget the exact changes but between certain ages within the UK players were losing out on thousands of hours training in comparison to European sides. When this changed I think it has allowed young UK based players to develop a higher level of technical ability. This combined with more and more sides looking to play a possession based game and playing out from the back has helped us rapidly close the gap on the top sides.
Hopefully the next step will be to see UK coaches emerge who have the ability to use the talent available to them and can instill enough self belief to go and win something.

 

[pabostock]

Interesting take on the Champ Final: I watched the recorded game and compared the number of "flops". A flop is an incident where a player goes down, no foul is called by the ref, but the fallen players rolls aound as though he's been permanently crippled or he's trying to gain an Oscar. City were guilty of 7 such "flops", Inter committed 22. What prompted my quick study was seeing the highlights (before I was able to see the whole recorded game), where two Inter players went down, play carried on,and the ref stopped the game because the players did not get up after a couple of minutes. No foul was called. And none of the "flops" warranted a trainer or medical staff to go on the field. So there were 22 acting jobs on the part of Inter. A sad commentary if that was the best of Italian football!

 

[GoatersLeftShin]

I think the seed was planted by Wenger when he came to Arsenal. The way he got them playing was probably the first time you'd seen modern European football played in England. I don't remember the teams from before the 80s but I don't remember any other team coming close to what Wenger did with Arsenal. It wasn't just the football, it was the diet, the training methods - he started a revolution. Of course in the 90s, Arsenal were the best team to watch - hard but could play and had some phenomenal players.

He brought over players from France and Spain and they also showed the English players what was required to be the best.

I think he influenced a generation of other managers who came after him in England.

Of course, Pep has transformed the game full stop and more so than Wenger. I do think England are on track to win a major tournament and 100% the country should be thanking Pep for showing us how to play football.

 

[DD6028]

For a one dimensional football nation we sure did well in Europe long before massive investment into the English game ha

Us and Scottish team were regularly competing for Europe's top prizes. Our boring agricultural footballing style sure never stopped us dominating European cup before being banned lol

 

[DD6028]

Sure Pep has taken footballing excellence to new heights at city, Bayern and Barcelona but still I think it's a myth that whole league has improved become all easier on eye football

Still see lots of boring games over here and abroad. And probably always been the same throughout the ages

City and Everton were playing like a pep team in 60s. Cryuf f Ajax took game to new heights but still they laid off expansive stuff in several European games

 

[DD6028]

I think he has to take a lot of credit for the way our English lads play these days. At every level now we're so comfortable with the ball. Go back 15-20 years and we had players like Gerrard and Lampard for England who would try a Hollywood pass almost every time they had it. It looks fantastic when it came off, but most of the time it just gifted the ball back to the opposition. And our full-backs then we're more than happy to just launch it forward into the channels at every opportunity.

The technical quality between your average England player now compared to just 15 years ago is like night and day.

Remember 15 20 years word was scouts looked for more size and strength than actual ability. Don't know how true rumour was like