Leekbrookgull
Well-known member
Howard Kendall,JohnHollins and 
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Midfielders who should have played more for their country.
- Thread starter Leekbrookgull
- Start date
Brian Potter
Well-known member
Stan Bowles , Tony Currie
Leekbrookgull
Well-known member
- Thread starter
- #4
Tony,ok for midfield. Stan a striker.
Beach Hut
Brighton Bhuna Boy
Le Tiss and Hoddle
Gully
Monkey in a seagull suit.
Gareth Barry.
The Auditor
New member
Duncan MacKenzie
scooter1
How soon is now?
Paul Gascgoine
Cadiz Seagull
Grey bearded old man
Not Le Tissier
Good enough at club level but short of international class. And if you aren't international class you need to make up for it with determination and fitness- not his strong points.
But Hoddle was different gravy. International class to spare, we should have built a team around him.
Da Man Clay
T'Blades
- Dec 16, 2004
- 16,286
Agreed, certainly should have played more for England.
Cadiz Seagull
Grey bearded old man
That may be true (although personally I don't agree); but my point is that he never really hacked it at international level. Although I accept you could argue he never really got a chance. I don't know how many caps he got but I suspect not that many. With this type of player you need to give them lots of games, not least so that other players can get used to them and read what they are likely to do.
Hercules Rockerfeller
New member
Gascoigne is the best plater this country has ever developed, in my lifetime anyway. Le Tiss showed what amibition he had in the game by wasting his career at a shithouse club. He never got properly tested at club level, so was never ready for international football. He could have been good, but not as good as gascoigne. The boy was a genius, albeit a flawed one.
I know who I would call on if England needed a creative player, when they were both at their prime, for a vital match.
Eggman
Well-known member
Agreed, I wonder when will see an English midfield player like Gazza again.
Buzzer
Languidly Clinical
- Oct 1, 2006
- 26,121
Le Tiss always refuted the "no ambition" charge. He said he was ambititious - just that he wanted to win with the club he loved. A trait to be admired not dissed, in my eyes.
He played week in and week out in the Premiership - how's that not being tested? Quite simply - he was flair to the power of infinity when England managers put more store by utilitarian work horses (Geoff Thomas, Carlto Palmer?) - even Gascoigne suffered under that rule. Remember when Graham Taylor wouldn't play Gazza against Ireland as he said that Gazza's style didn't suit England.
FFS - we should have built sides around the likes of Hoddle, Gazza and Le Tiss.
He played week in and week out in the Premiership - how's that not being tested? Quite simply - he was flair to the power of infinity when England managers put more store by utilitarian work horses (Geoff Thomas, Carlto Palmer?) - even Gascoigne suffered under that rule. Remember when Graham Taylor wouldn't play Gazza against Ireland as he said that Gazza's style didn't suit England.
FFS - we should have built sides around the likes of Hoddle, Gazza and Le Tiss.
The Auditor
New member
IMO he only seemed to get selected when he had gone past his best...
hart's shirt
Well-known member
Absolutely spot on - a wonderful, wonderful player.
And didn't he wear a Brighton shirt during Jimmy Case's testimonial at the Goldstone?
From Wikipedia:
Matthew Paul "Matt" Le Tissier (born 14 October 1968) is a retired footballer who played for Southampton and England.
He is rated by many Southampton fans as the club's best ever player. An attacking midfielder, Le Tissier is the second-highest ever scorer for Southampton behind Mick Channon, and is currently the only midfielder to have scored over 100 goals in the English Premier League.
On leaving school in 1985, he had a trial at Oxford United, but they rejected him for being overweight, so he signed for Southampton instead.
Le Tissier played his first professional game on September 2, 1986 and went on to play 443 league games for Southampton, 52 League Cup games, 33 FA Cup games and 12 other official games, making a total of 540. He scored 209 goals for his club including 48 out of 49 penalties (the one save came from Mark Crossley). His top scoring season was 1993-94, when he scored 30 goals, made more remarkable due to his struggling side. The following season he won the coveted Match Of The Day Goal of the Season award for his drifting 40-yard lob against Blackburn Rovers.
Already well established in Southampton folk-lore, he scored the last goal in the final competitive match played at The Dell on May 19, 2001 against Arsenal. After being out most of the season due to injury, he was brought on as a substitute near the end of the match to the delight of the fans, and sticking to a "boys-own" script, he scored a spectacular left-footed volley on the turn from outside the penalty box to earn The Saints a 3-2 win; this turned out to be Arsenal's last away defeat for over a year.
As a Channel Islander, he was eligible for any of the Home Nations teams; at one point he was rumoured to have been linked with Scotland, although this was denied both by the Scottish Football Association and by Le Tissier himself.
He played 8 times for England from 1994 to 1998 without scoring. He was widely overlooked by then England manager Terry Venables, who received regular criticism for not picking Le Tissier. Le Tissier himself has claimed that had he been French or Italian, he would have won many more international caps.
His crowning international moment was his hat-trick for the England B team in a game against Russia in which he also hit the crossbar twice, prior to the 1998 World Cup Finals. Despite his sterling performance, in a bitter-sweet end to his international career manager Glenn Hoddle failed to select Le Tissier for the full World Cup squad, or even the preliminary 30 man squad.
Le Tissier could use both of his feet equally to pass or shoot, which when combined with his loyalty made him a Southampton fans' favourite. His renown spread worldwide as a regular scorer of spectacular goals, often seemingly created "from nothing", and often when Southampton were in trouble of relegation. For this ability he became known as "Le God" among Southampton supporters. In one famous incident, the television commentator responded to one of his most skilful efforts with the single word "Unbelievable!", which later became the title for a successful "video autobiography" of the player. Critics condemned Le Tissier as a 'luxury player' whose talent was hampered by not covering enough of the pitch, in an era when "work rate" was much respected. In retrospect, it is probably more accurate to see Le Tissier as a more "continental" style of player, relying on his natural skills to compensate for his "lazy" style of play, and to what was undoubtedly a persistent weight problem. His commitment to a financially less-well-off club like Southampton was unusual in the money-driven world of football. In his autobiography he told of rejecting moves to AC Milan and Chelsea FC, (the latter having been managed at the time by Glenn Hoddle, who later rejected him as an England player), and tore up a contract he signed with Tottenham Hotspur F.C. in 1991.