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what bollocks. bet cruyff believes in momentum

i hear he is not even english

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Why is it bollocks?

I think Leicester's season is a great example of what can happen with a well constructed team rather than 11 good individuals.

England's national team have been a good example over the years that individual talent is only one aspect of creating good teams. I think the current Belgium squad are very similar in this regard. They have hugely talented individuals but haven't done anything as a team and maybe never will.

If you're judging teams by big tournaments, i.e. variancefests, you're gonna have a bad time

not sure about england in the early 00s but Belgium were dominant in qualifying for 2014 and 2016 and narrowly lost to argentina in the WC quarter final. Seems fine.

He's pretty much the epitome of a journeyman.

England has been a team of terribly overhyped individuals who have received a great amount of exposure within tblitw.

There have been very few brilliant individuals for England and even when they have had two or three talented players the rest of the team has either been trash (Matt Upson starting for one) or the "talented individuals" have just completely ignored other aspects of the game, such as tracking back.

England has never deserved to be a top 5 favourite for a World Cup in eons.

world cup knockout stages is more about l̶u̶c̶k̶ momentum than having a good team spirit or whatever. Had Belgium made it to say the semi final that narrative would be the exact opposite. Suddenly they are a great team and not just a bunch of individuals.

at some point pure variance becomes unlikely in some cases
germany, until very recently, has been on par with england invidually yet have done much better in pretty much every single tournament

Fair, I don't want to derail from English Football though. Didn't realise I was doing it

Wes Morgan isn't a journeyman though

will mahrez & kante continue to perform at a world class level when they get their £40-50m moves in the summer. i think it's likely

will leicester repeat their success when their best two players are gone. i think it's unlikely

my suspicion is that team spirit/cohesion/chemistry/etc will mean bugger all once the talent that's powering this leicester boomtrain moves on

How do you define journeyman? He's represented 2 Football clubs for his entire career.

Here is what I would define as a journeyman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Branston

20 separate clubs I count there.

England were probably better than us until 2008ish (I admit this line is arbitrary and convenient to me)

2002 Kahn ran insanely hot and both Germany and England lost to Brazil. I mean our opponents until the final were literally Saudi-Arabia, Ireland, Cameroon, Paraguay, USA and South Korea (with home advantage admittedly)

In 2006, we had home advantage (and this is legitimately massive) and lost in the semis... England lost in the quarters on pens.

Then when you start looking at EUROs in 2000 and 2004, waters become even more muddy.

I don't want to discount mental factors entirely- if Germany and England ever face each other in an important penalty shootout again, I do think we'd have an advantage just because of what is on english players' minds. But I also think you could make lots of Sklansky bucks from average fans who think germany is 75+% in that spot.

btw swap eng & ger peno records and the narratives flip, if that's not the essence of variance then idk what is

Mentally weak Germans.

Leicester have ran extremely hot wrt injuries and also outperform their xG by quite a lot. Once those things go back to normal they'll be back in mid-table where they belong (which tbf is still great for Leicester) and Ranieri will get canned in November

From wikipedia, think that's where we're going wrong.

Can't swap this

Don't really care about bad narratives. Consequence of lack of info / tools to do proper analysis. Although stats person comes up with interesting stuff but still lacking.

Yeah, you don't know what a journeyman is, do you? The "journey" part is nothing to do with travel, it's from the French word for work.

Edit: Missed your new post, looks like the traditional meaning has been butchered so I stand corrected (kind of)

First rule of internet - never admit being wrong.

is this the time portugal KO'd us on penos for the right to eventually get beaten by greece in the most humiliating circumstances of modern football history

yep and Germany's population is like double that of England so frankly we should do better than you guys, although not to the extent of 7-1 big titles won.

A large part of it is variance, with some LÖL Ingerlund in there

A number of English managers always chopped and changed the side to fit in superstar names even when it was borderline ******ed. Stevie me and fat frank midfield 2 with Scholes being played on the left wing is a prime example.