Natural cycle Strolls?, Or what do you think changed that caused such a dearth in the game?
Even our club, I started in 2006. Haven’t seen many midfielders that excited me the way Fabregas did. Perhaps that most is why I’m so uninterested by the Xhakas and Ceballos of this world. The gap in quality is just so apparent. No stats can cover it up.
Think the three foreigner rule in Italy being ended and the Bosman rule in general had a big effect in changing it.
Derailed and devalued some good Leagues very quickly.
Look at those Italian sides and the amount of quality home grown talent in their.
Also the amount of quality coaches in that League gets overlooked too easily.
Games just so uniformal now. Midfield units with very few creativity and a ton of non goal scoring midfielders.
It’s all levels of the game too. Youth football at PL level must be so fucking soulless. All we ever really see is the goals but how much pressure are those kids under to make it. This is why we’ve been seeing really put together kids coming through since the likes of Theo. I’d say something tiny can knock them out now and they don’t make it.
And coaching. So fucking mechanical. All about “Badges” and “courses” now. It’s like economics now, all a bit made up, no one really knows what they are at and when someone comes along and does something a bit different that works they all just copy each other unless they are real deep thinkers who are doing the innovating.
I’m always saying it, but I’m glad I have Rovers. It is different and it feels more like it used to feel to me.
Yeah one thing I hated was when kids became open market for the big clubs.
Kids on the books in the lower League clubs just poached now.
Stopped those clubs developing players and recouping some money on the investment and time they put in. Got way out of hand this academy stuff on every angle.
Lots of very bad fall out from this system.
Category system and EPPP did no favours there.
To be fair though bro, we haven’t had anyone to be excited about in midfield since. Ozil was exciting when we got him, but by that point we had fallen off and the rest of the squad was mostly garbage. That’s thing this club is unrecognisable from when I was a kid (and that’s not even that long ago) can’t even imagine what it must be like for the older heads like David hiller, Johnny H, Strolls, invincibledb10 and Ash gooner.
We always used to have very exciting players and lots of characters then that all slowly faded away. And now we just have a group of players who turn up to do their job, post on social media then go home.
Yeah man, I’ve always lacked this, but I’m literally a ten minute walk from Southend United now and they’re about to drop out of the football league, so as soon as they’ll let me back in I’m hoping to forge this kind of bond.
One of my favorite World Cups
Thought that was sweetcorn and little Green Giant characters at first 
The “Quickly Kevin, Will He Score?” 90s football podcast could be worth a listen, think I’ve mentioned them in here before. If I’m recommending an episode to get you lot into it then go back to either Merson or Dixon being interviewed on there, but recently they had ex-Spurs player Ramon Vega on, he was there in for Georgie Graham winning them the League Cup by effectively utilising his winning, gooner DNA. Its really funny hearing him go on about the culture shock coming to England from Italy, about how unfit and unprofessional the players and entire club set ups generally were.
He talks about how when he turned up at Spurs he was given a David Lloyd membership card, which left him puzzled because he had no idea what a David Lloyd was. He was still baffled when they explained it was a gym, and that Spurs didn’t have one on site at their training ground lol.
There are loads of other good episodes from the back catalogue too: Le Tissier, Jim Rosenthal, Clive Tyldsley, Darren Huckerby, Neville Southall, GNev, Carra, Le Saux.
Good stuff. And I promise that you get used to Josh Widdecombe’s voice fairly quickly.
One of my favourite videos, just some absolutely world class players having to discuss in great detail how to stop the best player in the world at the time. They got extremely lucky that he had seizures, that rewlly robbed us of an amazing World Cup final, that instead was completely one-sided because Brasil’s players heads were gone with Ronaldo not at 100%.
Fair play to France for taking full advantage, they had a stellar team themselves, but 2002 shows it’s a clear win for brasil if Ronaldo is okay in 98.
Totally Football Show are doing a review of previous Euros and started with Euro 96. Good listen but it’s amazing listening to how many iconic players were around then.
One of the most talented croatian players ever 
Amazing player. Never felt like Chelsea gave him a fair shake.
Watching that there really are no players like that today. The closest was totti and he’s retired and unique himself. I wonder if our parents feel like that about some of the players in the 70s/80s
Not exactly 1990s as he flourished 02-06 but I love shit like this and didn’t know where else to share this:
“33 years ago, Brazilian football magazine Placar would publish an article named “A Star Is Born”, referring to Roberto Assis. His then unknown brother, 7 year old Ronaldinho, was also in the picture”
Obviously Cruyff and personally would say he’s a level above.