*Official Football Thread*

its always the spanish and i know england have no change of winning the world cup our squad just is not good enough especially our wide players and we need to drop either gerrard or lampard to the bench because they cannot play together plus we need a decent goal keeper because i have never trusted david james but i hope we qualify first when we can concetrate on the world cup

I grew up supporting Scotland in World Cups because England were too inept to get there. I would love Scotland to finally banish all those ghosts and get to at least a second round. Whatever sacrifices need to be made to give England even the slightest chance of winning a world cup again have to be made. I can't even begin to describe what seeing that must feel like. By the way I've never said I wanted any one else to win the european cup - retaining that is far more important in the bigger scheme of things especially if you're wanting to overtake any records because unless you haven't noticed Liverpool are in front of us there too. But I'd also like the last four in the european cup to all be english - to make eufa sick.

love to see jose mourinho do one over alex ferguson again at inter milan

m100 Wrote:In the late 70's and 80's when Rangers and celtic did not dominate scottish football to the extent that they do now and occasionally aberdeen,hibs, dundee united would be thrown into the mix then Scotland qualified for every world cup finals. At this same time Liverpool dominated English Football and England failed to qualify for anything between 72 and 1980. We've just had England fail to qualify for a European Championship which, with the players available we should have walked away with. Look at the bigger picture!

I don't think there is any bigger picture. Club is more important that country for me and I think the majority of the players and fans now days. But to say that England missed out on Euro 08 because of United and Chelsea winning the league for a few years is ridiculous.

England missed out on Euro 2008 and because McClaren was tactically out of his depth on his own at the highest level.

As for Scotland's qualification to competitions in late 70's and early 80's and England's failure, it has nothing to do with teams dominating, I'm pretty sure most of Scotland's players for those tournaments would have been playing in the uncompetitive English league of the time.

They were also coached by Jock Stein, who is one of the best managers the world has ever seen.

England failed because they were complacent, cocky and again poorly coached.

check out the excellent planetworldcup.com

Jock stein only coached scotland at one world cup in 1982. In 1974 they were coached by willie ormond(?) 1978 was ally mcloed (as no scotland fan will ever forget. In 1986 it was alex ferguson and the starting line up included seven who were based in scotland only one of whom was from celtic (no rangers in the starting 11) and in 1990 they were coached by andy roxburgh again seven of the starting 11 were based in scotland including one from hearts. The scotland team which beat holland in 1978 was made up of players from partick, man city, man utd, aberdeen, rangers and nottm forest. In 1982 against brazil only one player was on the field from what would now be called a big club.

Yes Mcclaren was out of his depth, shouldn't have been appointed in the first place but then again the fa have botched almost every appointment since sacking Sir Alf. Yes the players are cocky, complacent etc but if they had genuine competition for their places rather than being picked because of who they play for then we might get somewhere. What Jock could have done with todays resources we can only wonder about but I think we all know he wouldn't have taken any crap.

Some good points there, I only mentioned Jock Stein as originally you said late 70's to 80's. I agree with you about him not taking any crap.

I was going to type out a longer answer but I just thought a debate about the Scottish world cup teams of the 70's and 80's has to be one of the strangest topics on this forum (apart from ones started by Cherryryder) and I would rather be looking at naked women.

As for the original topic of Liverpool winning the league we will just have to agree to disagree there.

Fair enough to combine the two - check out the link I've put in babe subjects, 'football babes'.

yes mate its very nice liked the emma butt video

Just came across this on yahoo
Newcastle United striker Shola Ameobi called the police to report a burglary at his home before realising it was just very messy.

The 27-year-old thought thieves had broken in to his £500,000 house in the city's Jesmond district.

He phoned police and detailed several items that were missing. A police source told the Daily Mirror: "We were told thieves had taken a number of things, the most important one being the chequebook.

"Given what soccer stars earn, that was obviously a matter of great concern."

However, Ameobi subsequently admitted his mistake and found the 'stolen' items amid household clutter.

"We got a call back saying nothing was missing after all," said the source. "Perhaps he had had a party and the place just looked as if it had been burgled."

A police spokesman confirmed: "We received a report of a theft from a house in Jesmond but it appears to have been a genuine misunderstanding

If his home's 'very messy' he must feel very 'at home' playing for newcastle. Perhaps their defence is hiding under all his clutter.