NETHERLANDS : Zoet; De Ligt, De Vrij, Van Dijk; Hateboer, Wijnaldum, Strootman, Van Aanholt; Promes, Memphis; Dost
ENGLAND: Pickford, Trippier, Rose, Walker, Stones, Gomez, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Henderson, Rashford, Sterling, Lingard.
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Oh dear! This is appalling!!!
One of the most catastrophically unbalanced team selections of the last 50 years.
But it’s only a friendly and managers always experiment in friendlies.
Recently, the noises from Gareth Southgate have been mainly corporate and strategic-sounding.
When he got the job the cupboard was bare.
England had no great players. And very few good ones.
So he has to go for youth. He has to sell the future, since we can’t get to a quarter-final with what we’ve got now.
On Thursday, Southgate said, “We want to find out what’s best for the future of the England team.”
So let’s forget tonight, and forget tomorrow, and investigate our future.
In Brazil in 2014, we didn’t win a match.
That failure was historic.
For the first time at a World Cup, England had failed to win one game.
We’d invented football, formed a professional league, and developed something that became the most popular sport in the whole world.
As well as not having any good players, we don’t have any proven English managers. So Roy Hodgson kept his job and we went to France 2016 and played Iceland.
England 1 Iceland 2. Was that a trauma for you?
Tonight? Koeman or Southgate?
Great players rarely make great managers but it’s early days for Big Ron.
Historically, our record against the Dutch is very poor.
But I was there the night we beat them 4-1 in Euro 96.
I was in the press box for every England game from 1982 until the Old Wembley closed.
Why did that Euro ’96 team work so well?
Because Terry Venables did something radical, as Alf Ramsey had done in 1966.
Alf played Nobby Stiles in midfield with Alan Ball, Martin Peters and Bobby Charlton.
That was bold because Nobby’s normal position for Manchester United was left centreback, alongside big Bill Foulkes. In other words, Nobby played in the Bobby Moore position.
That was Alf’s radical move.That was what won the World Cup and earned his knighthood.
Venables, a crafty but slow midfielder himself, wanted a team that could play at Teddy Sheringham’s pace, so he used three dribblers: Gazza, Steve McManaman and Darren Anderton. All of them could beat a man and carry the ball and give our defence a rest.
Paul Ince was good that night as well but Tel’s midfield wasn’t all about winning the ball, it was about keeping it and knocking it around in ways that could create a few good openings.
We never had another Ramsey, just as Holland never had another Cruyff.
http://arsenalnewsreview.co.uk/wp/the-massive-oranje-i/