- Oct 17, 2008
- 14,163
Good points. Either way you fall on this, I can’t get excited about international football generally nowadays outside of major tournaments which I devour. I’m all Albion, all the timeYou could be right. But multiple generations of players and coaches would all have had to have had this mentality.
And remember we're talking about players who have had massive success in English football, which has always been a highly competitive domestic league. And these England teams were led by players who have been victorious in European football. Robson, Adams, Gerrard, Cole, Walker. There's no shortage of obvious winning mentality players in the last 50 years
I don't really buy they just put on and England shirt and lost their winning mentality.
It's much more likely to me that on a relative handful of occasions they came out on the wrong side of some fine margins against teams who also have proven winners and proven quality players on their side (Other times, we've stuffed it up, as has every other top tier nation). I think the, "we're mentally weak" argument discredits the other nations, and their players and achievements and discounts the massive dollop of luck you need to do well in knockout football.