Talking trash

Say it often enough...

...and you fool a lot of folk. It still 'aint true, though.

There's no end of “if only there were a limit on foreign players, England would be world beaters” bull going on.

I find it boring, uncomfortably borderline racist in a UKIP, “I blame all those darkies” sort of way, distasteful, and tedious beyond belief. Most of all, I find it wrong.

Here's why:

England football team. One success. 1966 World Cup. The home team. Since then:

1968: beaten in the semi-final, European Championships, by Yugoslavia.

From this point on, 1970: World Cup, 1972: Euros, 1974: World Cup, 1976: Euros, and so on.

1970: Brazil World Cup. I was playing schoolboy football with a bandage on my left wrist, as an improvised sweatband. I can do this one from memory. Lost in the quarter finals to Germany.

Get this run of results, way before the Premiership and the influx of those nasty foreign hoards:

1972: failed to qualify for the finals.

1974: failed to qualify for the finals.

1976: failed to qualify for the finals.

1978: failed to qualify for the finals. Scotland made it there, I think.

1980: European Championships, didn't make it out of the first group stage.

1982: Went out in the first knock-out round. To Germany. A familiar ring to that, as there is to...

1984: failed to qualify for the finals.

1986: Lost in the quarter final to Argentina.

1988: Didn't get out of the group stage, including a loss to the mighty Republic of Ireland.

Premiership? Foreign influx? Still a couple of years to go.

1990: Lost in the semi. Germany. Penalties. MM born. First word: “goal”.

1992 / 1993 Season: the Premiership starts here.

So, 1991 / 1992 season was relatively foreigner-free, and...

1992: Didn't make it out of the group. A group that included Sweden (population not very many) and Denmark (recalled from the beaches and amusement park holidays as late replacements.

1994: failed to qualify for the finals.

1996: At home! Football came home! It was a great tournament. England went out in the semi. Germany. Penalties.

1998: Went out in the second round. Argentina. Penalties.

2000: Didn't make it out of the group.

2002: Lost in the quarter final, to Brazil.

2004: Lost in the quarter final. Portugal. Penalties.

2006: See above.

2008: failed to qualify for the finals.

2010: Lost at the first knock-out stage. Germany.

2012: Went out in the quarter final. Italy. Penalties.

2014: Done for after two group stage games.

If you can see any real difference in the before and after Premiership results, well done.

If you can't, it's because there isn't any. So don't join in with the sheep talking rubbish. Foreign players don't 'hold back' English players. You don't succeed at International Tournaments with sixty or seventy or eighty middling players. You need to gel as a team. You need five or six genuine world class players, one or two absolute out-of-this-world players, a lot of hard graft, a liberal sprinkling of luck, at the right times.

You need more dissent from the populist point of view.