We hear all these stories of World Players who started off kicking about cans on the streets of their countries and have come good. All we see here is signs saying NO FOOTBALL GAMES. People are intolerant of kids yet it used to be the norm, kids were out kicking the ball, making makeshift goals and just going for it. I remember Kevin Kilbane playing in what we called 'The Circle' a few doors up from me, okay maybe not a world class player but he has done okay for himself.

I quote


I look at our school and see the restraints we put on the children yet years ago we would just let them go for it in the playground. When schools were closed years ago kids would nip over the fence and used the facilities, now they would be being chased off.

I'm probably chatting crap but maybe we need to look at the raw beginnings of a game we love...at times

Don't care if I don't get a response, I've got it off me chest

I don't think anyone could disagree with anything you said, but those days are gone and they ain't coming back. Even if kids were allowed to play football anywhere they wouldn't be, they've got xboxes and iPads now. The current crop of English players are boring and sterile and technically poor enough imagine how they will be in 10 years

But do they sit in playing them because they are not allowed to make a noise, kick a ball, be noisy, loud, normal kids who play what they see on TV? We've restricted kids by loading our streets with cars and neighbours with zero tolerance.

I think we need to look back at what started our past greatest on the road to success, I'm sure most would have been very humble. *coughs* TOM FINNEY

We've lost the heart and the real roots of Football

Yeah I remember when I was younger and a group of us met in the park, a car park or anywhere with a bit of space to play football, jumpers for goalposts etc. At school we used to play most break and lunchtimes in the playground (unless playing British bulldog) and used a stone, tennis ball or can as a ball if no football available

Not really sure that England had a whole load of success before this era either...

Seeing as Xbox and iPad are marketed in pretty much every country on the planet, are you just saying football in general is getting worse?

Bottom line then:

Microsoft and Sony killed our football.

Don't forget Apple.

Just as many kids in the Netherlands or Germany have Xboxes or iPads and they always do better than us....

When I was a kid a group of us would play on school field. Don't agree with football on the streets. Had a lot of problems with kids playing outside my house, blasting ball against house window and completely ignoring me when I told them to stop. Reported family to council and got it stopped.

You're not chatting crap, but you have to remember that times are different.

I was talking to an old school friend of mine recently & we were reminiscing about how we used to play 'Kerbsy' (kicking a football from one side of the street to the other, trying to hit the kerb to score points) outside his parent's home back in the day.

We were able to do that because hardly anybody in his street had a car.

Now, every house in his mum's street has not one, but at least 2 cars each & as a result of the plethora of cars in the street, Trafford Council made the street a one way street because of the double parked cars making impossible to drive 2 ways.

There just isn't the space for kids to play in the streets anymore & I'm sure this has happened all over the England.

They play football in my road or they take the ball to the park.

Where I live there is a gobby little chav who plays football in the street often kicking his ball into the neighbours cars. He'd invite around 8 of his mates around and they will have a kickabout on the road, despite having a fairly decent sized garden. They always seem to choose to have their kickabout after 21:00.

I can certainly see why in some cases people do not tolerate ball games.

There was a woman on tv a few years ago who wanted streets to be closed off so kids could all come out and play football in the street like in the 60's. Difference now is like its been said more cars around now. Also kids today don't seem to have any respect for people's property. The woman was clearly living in her own little world. I bet she wouldn't be saying that if she had the ball bouncing off her window or car every night.

The times, they are a changin'...

This is pretty true.........the generation who grew up in the after war period and 1950s with no computer games, little TV, kicking a ball around all day and night........they provided the players who failed to qualify for world cups between 1970 and 1982

just thinking about that........we hosted the WC in '66 and did we play in 70 as 'holders' without having to qualify ?

If so then we didn't qualify for a world cup for 20 years

Well every poor kid here can get one, certainly not the case in many parts of the world.

Apple Game Console ... IPlayed

All glitter and mediocre content?

Well H&S dumbnuts certainly don't create Brazilian conditions.

Before you do any sport in Britain you probably need insurance, fill out 1000 forms and ask for permission from 100 people.

There's a lot more to it but it is one of many factors.

I lived next to some playing fields and spent most weekends and holidays playing football there with many others. Can't remember the last time I went past and there was a game going on.

Kids have many other entertainment options these days and many are in the safety of their own house which will suit parental paranoia.

You also need to factor in many schools don't have the facilities they once had having sold them off or built on them. Apparently kids play a lot of indoor football (a good thing for technique at least).

In some countries, football is one of the only avenues out of a pretty impoverished existence - South America and Africa notably. They often don't have the luxuries we have in terms of entertainment that we have here. Football is still played on the streets and beaches much more so than it is here now.

We're a relatively small country so the fewer kids who play has a significant effect. Yet Uruguay prove that a country with 5% of our population (I think) can generate enough talent if the appetite and desire is there.

Young players here are financially rewarded long before they have earned that reward and this lack of incentive doesn't help. There's a kid in Chelsea's youth teams that have six figure deals without featuring for the first team (can't even remember his name). Once young players hit the first team, turning out for the England youth sides (U17, U19 and U21) is suddenly below them and they hardly turn up. That's a massive educational opportunity in international football that's being wasted as they no longer have the hunger to progress at a sport that pays them too much, too early.

There's no miracle cure given the many factors that have slowly eroded the working class spirit that underpinned football in this country at its infancy. Parallel to that, our football has been tactically stagnated for many years as other countries have evolved the way they coach and play. We've cottoned on now but it's taken a massive injection of foreign talent to bludgeon us into that mindset - diluting our chances ironically.

Maybe it'll come good eventually but a whole host of issues need to be sorted out and they're all not purely footballing ones.

A start may be for the England team to excite the impressionable - fill the team full of fearless, impulsive, arrogant youth and let them learn together through initial ignorance and the odd failure. Put a progressive, young and imaginative manager in charge who isn't a dinosaur of the 20th century approach to British football. You can't just play lip service to a more adventurous and youthful team, you've got to believe in it and stick with it. It's not the young players who have let us down in Brazil, it's the tactics and remnants of the previous era.

If we'd gone out in a blaze of attacking glory having whet the nation's appetite for a new breed of football, we may have attracted a new generation of eager disciples. Instead, the same disillusion and negativity prevail.

And that's nor going to get kids in the streets pretending to be the next big thing of English football any time soon.

It's not her fault.
I blame her parents Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Our performances were certainly an iOpener...

Just like them England and football underwent a conscious uncoupling!

You right about cars all over the place, a lot of the pavements in Preston are now dominated by parked cars, it's hard enough to walk on them at times. No space at all for children and in some cases no time for them either, they are shifted along.


Totally agree with BIB and a good post.

Some of what you say about fearless, impulsive and arrogant is a bit of what I mean but applied younger. Young ones go into controlled environments with sport including football. It's controlled by rules and people yet a true talent could be the kid who gets the chance (young enough) to hone ball skills in their own way without restriction. I often think kids thrive when given ownership of things, I do it with our 4/5 year olds. I give them equipment and let them have the freedom to explore what they can do not what they are being told to do. It's surprising what skills they can demonstrate given the opportunity.