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Posts Tagged ‘National Football Teams’

After only a few games of having Steve McLaren as our national football teams manager, I am already looking for him to be replaced. Yet again our English football association has dropped a clanger in appointing the wrong man. After the debacle of Sven Goran Errickson we know have another passionless manager, when are they going to learn?

It has been a poor week for English football. On Saturday the team were only able to muster a nil-nil draw against what was a well organised Macedonian team. Throughout the match I was basically bored, how can a nation who is well known for having probably the fastest premier league in the world, have one of the slowest national teams? This was a home international game, I could not see where the hunger or passion was likely to come from.

On Wednesday evening the team traveled away to play in Zagreb against Croatia. This was the perfect opportunity for the players to make amends for that dismal performance against Macedonia. This chance was not taken as the team were soundly beaten by two goals to nil.

For this second match the manager Steve McLaren had a few problems with his midfield as Steven Gerrard was suspended. So he decided to play Scott Parker, now I am sorry but David Beckham is ten times the player of Parker and is only not playing because of some personality clash that he and McLaren has. Come on Steve grow up will you, this is our national side and we want to see winners etc.

My attention is already drawn into thinking of who could be the next England manager and in my opinion there is only one man for the job, Martin O’Neill. It pains me to say being a Birmingham City supporter that he has done a great job at Aston Villa thus far as he did a few years ago at Leicester City. Martin is one man who can motivate players and I believe would bring passion and speed back into the English football team.

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The most famous sport at present is football due to the great publicity it has received from the mass media. Football is capable of gathering together millions of supporters from all over the world; it can set up friendships, as well as animosities among supporters. For that matter, teams have to do their best to become visible in the eyes of the fans.

A team needs more than just talented players and sponsors to be noticeable; it also needs a powerful identity. The best way to create a specific culture that your football players and supporters can appropriate is to adopt a representative set of uniforms. The color and the design of the uniform have to be in keeping with the color and the design of the football club.

In the case of national football teams, the uniform is even more important because it enables the viewers of the game to identify the nationality of the players. The uniforms are, for that matter, created as a combination of the colors of the national flag. These uniforms acquire more significance because they don’t just represent the culture of the football team, but also the culture of the respective country.

The football game becomes a battle between two countries, between two nations that try to prove their superiority. As a consequence, it is necessary to choose the best materials that can inculcate the idea of national power in the minds of the viewers. The colors have to be eye-catching, yet, not too aggressive in order to persist in the public’s memory.

Depending on the image you want to create for your country, you may use various materials for your uniforms. The most used one is spandex, but you can opt for tricot, micro and porthole mesh designs that will help individuate your team from the rest and suggest the idea of wealth and stability.

You need to remind your football players that what they are wearing is not just a simple uniform, but the ones representing the identity of your country; therefore, they need to have great results. In addition, you need to resort to a good company that deals with corporate and sport clothing design in order to help you create a culture for your football team and your country.

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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as it is formally known is one nation under one flag with all its citizens holding one passport and one nationality yet they have four national football teams to represent them. This despite the fact that they are a nation with a population that is about the size of Germany with territorial space that is half the size of France. All of which in my opinion making it unfair that they be allowed to present four national football teams to the world cup when all other nations are only allowed one.

Of course, in this argument I am aware that the average Briton would respond that they are four nations that make up one. This being the case since the UK is comprised of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which to a certain extent are not the same country though all their inhabitants are considered subjects (not citizens since they are a constitutional monarchy) of the same country yet it is to this argument that I would respond in the following manner. Before its disintegration the USSR or CCCP was also one nation comprised of many different nationalities, after all that is why it was called the “Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics” with an emphasis on the word republics; among them being Ukraine, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Estonia and other countries. It even being a case where some of these countries were larger than not only England but the UK as a whole and had even been for the most part of their history completely independent yet despite this factor the Soviet Union played as one nation and not each republic independently.

Another argument presented by the British to keep the present situation and this one perhaps being the strongest, is that since England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own separate football leagues; they should also have their own national teams. As that is how it has always been. I however fail to see this as reason to justify four national teams to represent one country and again I use the case of the Soviet Union. It being they who also could have easily established or allowed separate leagues in each Republic that was a part of their country and by doing so they also would have had several teams to represent them in world football which in their case would have been 13 national teams.

The UK however is represented by one team during the Olympics as they are in many sports though for the reason of separate leagues they are not in either football or rugby yet I feel that if they can make one team to represent them in some sports then they should be able or rather be forced to do the same in football and rugby as well. Regarding the next Olympic games to take place in London however, it has already been decided that there will be for the first time a football team called UK.

Of course I am also aware that a lot of people from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England would not be happy with one team to represent them but if one thinks over the matter; it is unfair to the rest that they should get four teams when everybody else only gets one. I however for my part feel that a united team would be stronger and have more depth as I could imagine how it would have been back in the sixties to see George Best on the same team with Bobby Charlton. This a combination that obviously worked for Manchester United in 68 when they won the European championship. As for other combinations which also could have proven suitable on the field, I could think of Jordan, Keegan, Dalglish and Brookings in the 70s or Lineker, Shilton, Rush, Armstrong and Whiteside in the 80s or Gigs and Gascoigne in the 90s yet it was not to be though perhaps it should have been.

Another reason perhaps why one team would be a good thing for all is that in all reality England is the strongest of these teams. As they have the best record of the four in the world cup by far; this leading to many players from the other countries choosing to play for England. This given that with England they stand a much better chance of not only playing in the world cup but of possibly even winning it.

This the case since in all frankness, Northern Ireland has only qualified to three world cups with their last appearance being in 86 in which they failed to make the second round or even win a match. It also being that probably their greatest player; “George Best” never got to taste the glory of a world cup.

As for Wales, though theirs was to play well and go out with their dignity in 58 (after only loosing 1-0 to a great Brazilian team in quarterfinals); they have not qualified to another world cup since or even really come all that close to doing so. All of which perhaps making some Welsh players choose to play for England instead given how they may present a case of having lived in England longer than in Wales and since the nationality is the same; it should not represent a problem to choose England over Wales.

As for Scotland, I have come to believe (jokingly of course) that if four out of four teams could move on in to the second round; they would find a way not to qualify. This being the situation since in 7 world cups and 2 European cups, they never managed to go beyond the first round. This despite the fact that in the 86 and 90 world cups which they played in, 16 out of 24 teams qualified. Actually looking back they would have qualified to the next round in 82 had they been using the system which was used in the 86, 90 and 94 world cups but unfortunately for the Scots it was not. Scotland would also manage the feat of not qualifying further than the first round in the European championship in 96 which by virtue of being held in England was practically played in their own country.

Regarding England, it is they who are the most successful team to come from the British isles since it is they who have not only won a World Cup but have managed a fourth place and to qualify to most of the world cups they have participated in yet I wonder how much stronger their team would have been with Best in Mexico 70 or Jordan, Gemmil and Dalglish in 74 and 78 or with Gigs in 2002. All of which making me of the idea that perhaps it is high time the British thought of having one strong team instead of four weaker ones.

In conclusion I would like to claim that I believe (along with many others) that it is really unfair that one country get to have four teams to represent them even if they have four leagues, as the Soviet Union with all its republics could have easily done likewise yet choose to have one team represent them. Naturally in all this, I am equally aware that such thinking could lead some to ask if it is really fair that the UK also get to have more teams represent them in European cups such as the Champion’s League and UEFA Cup?

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