Can the England Football Team Learn From Its Cricket Team?

[Matt]

Following on from Englands recent successes over India in cricket...

Great credit can go to the England Cricket set up for putting the call out for really tall strong bowlers, its paying dividends. However in our darker days we had a predominantly English born batting line up, with a few exceptions I think its fair to say - nowadays including the wicket keeper 5 of our 7 top order batsman werent born on these shores

Heres one for you - is the cricket teams success a result of a relaxed attitude to who we allow to play for England, and is this something that the English football team should be doing?

I personally think this is a pretty big reason for our crickets teams success, 20/20 World Champions and potentially number 1 test nation.... shouldnt we be doing the same in football?

Im all for it to be honest, we are such a cosmopolitan society nowadays, I would hate to see people jumping on the England bandwagon as it were but I think we should take the cricket teams example and look at people who have a commitment and bonds to our country from an early age and use them to strenthen our national team.

Its not like this is a new concept - as far as I can see we are one of the few teams who really arent pushing this. When Germanies polish players were serving our arses to us in the World Cup noone was stood round saying 'well it doesnt really count because they arent Germans'.

My one reservation is the thought that, if we do ever win a world cup with this attitude would there be a nagging feeling in the back of your head that it wasnt truly a win born of England... but this was the same feeling I went through when we hired a foreign coach but that didnt subsequantly detract from any of my enjoyment/ pain.

[willk9]

The last paragraph sums it up for me really, take spain for example they won the world cup and european cup with a full spaninsh born and breed team. That is what the English football team should be aiming towards, if we want to be champions we have to be the best and I think having non english people in the team would almost seem like we where chucking in the towel and saying that our home grown players arnt good enough. If england did ever win anything I would not feel the same as if we had won it with a propper english side.

Also you can raise the issue if it was allowed, what would the rules be, anybody from the uk or if the have lived here X number of years etc....

[Iconic Drei]

I just feel like the current national squad needs one big revamp in order for us to even consider challenging for major honors..

One thing that the England Cricket team seem to have is a great team spirit within the entire camp, a bunch of lads who spend a lot of time with each other and consequently are very familiar with one another..

This is something that appears to contrast greatly with the current england football team.

[Rev John Ripsher]

The reason we are winning is because of a complete change of attitude , training , diet , contracts and a zillion and one other things .

We have a team that doesn't know the meaning of giving up . They have adopted the Aussie attitude of beat them , then rub their noses into the ground . Our team spirit is fantastic , you only have to look at their body language on the field to realise that it is full-on pressure all day , every day .

We have 11 players who can bat , this will allow us in the next test to only play 5 recognised batsmen and 5 bowlers , who will go through India like a dose of salts .

England now know how to win from all positions , how to close out when winning and how to come back when losing , and this is something I want Spurs to learn . Watch Man U then copy to good effect .

[dan-spur]

Regarding this - I read an article in the paper the other day about Ferguson's young lads in his United team and how it could affect the England team also. If they have a good season this year and form a spine of English players that also start picking up International caps it could be a re-visiting of the Becks, Scholes, Neville days. Purely from an English point of view, it would be great if the likes of Smalling, Jones and the rest (I can't remember their names haha) go on to establish themselves because it would re-invigorate the national side as well. And the winning mentality that Fergie has would be of great use to a national team whose best news recently was that the match had been called off!

Teams like City and Chelsea only stifle home grown talent. I'm not having a go at those sides because I don't give a **** about them, but the fact is that young British players don't get the kind of first team exposure the national side requires. That's why, although I have no love for United or Liverpool, I will be watching their games when I have time to have a look at players like Young, Carrol and Wellbeck and see if they can make a difference to our floundering 3 Lions.

[Billywhizz]

The difference being that the England cricket team are centrally contracted to the ecb, they barely play any cricket for their counties, it's all about playing for their countries. They are the most heavily funded international cricket team in the world, the sole aim is england's success, huge amounts of money is put into the grass roots and talent is fast tracked thru the system and they have an incredible backroom staff, every base is covered and we are bearing the fruits of that now, although it has to be said in no small part to the combination of Flower and Strauss.

This situation would never happen in football as club football is way too big, i doubt we will ever see a situation where the international side is more important than club football plus there's not enough int'l football being played throughout the year to make it work, whereas int'l cricket is played throughout the year.

[P UNIT 1980]

No. Different sport. Silly question really.

[Matt]

No. Different sport. Silly question really.

Because this topic hasnt been raised in football before? There were massive calls for Almunia and Arteta to play for England when they were having purple patches. Lewis Holtby has English parentage, supported Everton, was German U 21 captain and we never did enough to get him into the England set up. Decos a Brazilian who had a long career playing for portugal, 2 of Germanys world cup team that gave us a beating were polish.

I just think we should be getting on board with this.

[DorsetSpursFan]

Great credit can go to the England Cricket set up for putting the call out for really tall strong bowlers, its paying dividends.

Well, I suppose Crouch is very tall, I don't know if he is a good bowler or not though. Kristof van Hout is even taller than Crouchy so Belgium could be a team to look out for. The only problem I see is that if we do find some good tall bowlers they will all get sent off for deliberate handball???

[aRTy]

I don't think we need to allow other nationalities to play (otherwise we would have almunia now), but more a change of the system in general. Alot of our england players play with alot more flair and such while with the other players at their clubs but when we turn out for england we seem to revert back to the boring hoof ball style of play. Yes, it might of changed abit recently but IMO we need to do a barca / Holland and get the kids from as young as possible playng tippy tappy ball, we'll then see it easier to transition and play with ech other easier as they go up in standard as they'll all know that philosophy.

[Dancubus]

I think we need to be looking more into bringing through young players. That's it really. Football is huge in England, yet we don't bring through nearly enough quality youth.

The new home-grown squad rules will help. I guess that's the trade off from having the best league in the world. Everyone wants to play here and it means our youth players don't get enough chances.