The "pride in shirt stuff" is tiresome cliché.
Agree with that. It seems to be an English obsession. Italy and Germany undisputed heavyweights of European and global football don't have that problem.
English football has a myriad of problems some of which were summed up by Matthew Syed of the Times a few days ago.
For this tournament the players might have been tense but imo that falls back on the manager in this case.
Conte has taken an Italian team that not many were giving a chance before the tournament and makes them look like world beaters.
One could argue that the overall talent of that team is not better then England's
Imo English football and their fans have an over inflated self worth of themselves. They have not belonged to the upper echelon for more than 40 years now.
The Premier League distorts this over inflation even though their teams have not really contended for top honors either in the last several years.
Sorry if I offend sensibilities but English managers are ****, even if the results with international managers have only been marginally better over the years.
Losing to Germany in the last 16 in 2010 is not the same as losing to Iceland.
The players are better than made out to be and I don't think "pride in shirt" plays any significant role here.
The FA another delinquent in all this mess needs to strike out in a bold totally unconventional manner.
Conte is not available, he'll be making a lot of noise with Chelsea.
Go for Simeone. He is the other guy out there who gets a lot more from less.
His results with Athletico are peerless in the manager business
Offer him carte blanche and an open ended contract.
He'll be the first guy to realize if he can't get more out of this crew. My guess is he would without a doubt, whether that is enough to win a big tournament I don't know.
But at least then it will be clear this is as good as England is.
Never was going to be the case with Roy at the helm.