With one or two occasional exceptions, England have struggled to advance in every major football tournament since 1970, and even make hard work of qualifying.

As the English league is now deceptively strong, but in reality weak, in that there are hardly any English players, can England still be consider a "big" team?

Of course they are still a big team. They are ranked 10 in the world.

...and I am not sure how they make hard work of qualifying. They have made quite easy work of qualifying in recent times.

That's not weakness in reality, that's just a criteria you've chosen to apply to it.

They are still a big team, but they really NEED to bring in this competition!!!!
Will never forget the 1990 WC. Just a collection of truly trific players who would fight tooth and nail for their team (Butcher, Pearce, Parker, Walker, Linekar, Beardsley, Gazza, Waddle, Platt) etc.

Never forget that year!!!!

I think that anyone who plays England will always treat them as a team to be respected even if they fancy their chances.

One semi final in 40 years just isn't enough to be seen a a 'big team'. Germany have reached 8 semi finals in that time, Brazil 6, Italy 5, Netherlands 4, France 4, and Argentina 3.

I would say big enough, but they are still essentially a quarter final team at best, on a par with someone like Portugal.

So anyone outside the world's top 6 is a small team. Gotchya.

England have lacked the players to make a semi over the years. You probably need four or five genuinely world class players to reach a semi final, and they've rarely gone to a World Cup with a team like that (the 86 and 90 teams were probably the nearest they've had to such a team).

Have they ever been?

Depends how you define top team.

I'd make England a top 10 team after these:

Germany
France
The Netherlands
Brazil
Spain
Italy
Argentina
Portugal
England

So I'd put us as about the 9th best team in the world at the moment. Just my opinion. I know there are official rankings.

Presumably you don't regard Spain as a 'big team' either then?

Well obvioulsy its all relative but I think its clear in this case the phrase 'big team' applies to an elite group of teams, our international record is comparable to a team like Sweden.

Considering the phrase big team is meaningless I wouldn't, no.

Spain have a slightly different record, what with winning everything that matters in the last six years.

I think we need to establish some criteria before we can decide whether certain teams are worthy of such a title.

In my time watching football (since about 1998) I've never thought of us as being in the 'top tier' of international sides i.e. Brazil, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and maybe Italy. Anyone outside that group I feel we can compete with.

When I say 'compete with' I mean rival their records on the international stage. For example, in Germany's last 5 appearances at the World Cup they've reached the quarter-finals twice, the semi-finals twice and the final once.

Sweden
1982 DNQ (Did Not Qualify for Finals)
1986 DNQ
1990 Group Stage
1994 SF
1998 DNQ
2002 Last 16
2006 Last 16
2010 DNQ
2014 DNQ

England
1982 QF
1986 QF
1990 SF
1994 DNQ
1998 Last 16
2002 QF
2006 QF
2010 Last 16
2014 TBC

Do I need to say anything or do the facts speak for themselves?

Whilst England arent one of the elite teams in the world. They are a good team. How that translate into big, small, huge team I dont know, and it doesnt really matter.

An achievement, that I believe hasnt been replicated ever by any other team. That in itself speaks volumes. Who knows they may well add another WC to that.

Not if they keep on playing like they did on Friday they won't!

You omited the 1970s in which Sweden played in 3 world cups and England 1. But fair enough since 1966 England have qualified for 8 World Cups to Sweden's 7 and reached 5 Quarter finals to Sweden's 2. So we have a slighlty better record, probably won about 3 or 4 more matches.
I'm not saying England are a bad team anyway, were just not up there with the best. We are improving though and since the Premier league started and all the foreign players came into the game our record has actually got slighly better.

We are consistently in and around the top 8 teams in the world, our problem is that when we play any other 'big' team like Germany, Italy, Brazil or Argentina we tend to fall short. So I think it's fair to place just England just outside the top few teams.

They lost to the swiss in the opening game of the last world cup, and still went on to win the tournament. You would be foolish to write them of after one match.

Just what I was thinking.

They've never been a big team in the last 40 odd years and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. We have been too often flattered by Fifa rankings. We're an average team.

I would say since 1966 ...........not 1970