Refusing to Play for England
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 8:42 am
I know some of this has found its way into todays bollocks, but I thought it worthy of a thread on its own.
So basically Harry Redknapp has said that some of his players begged him to 'get them out' of having to go on England duty. I'm sure it's no great surprise to us, other than Redknapp actually having lifted the lid on the problem.
The players this would cover are:
Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Aaron Lennon, Darren Bent, Scott Parker, David Bentley, Jermaine Jenas, Michael Dawson, Tom Huddlestone, Jonathan Woodgate, Ledley King and Kyle Walker.
All of the spurs players mentioned were fringe players and so you could kinda understand why they wouldn't want to trek half way round the world for a friendly with Trinidad being played solely for the enrichment of the FA in its attempts to bribe Jack Warner, (for example) to sit on the bench and have little chance of playing.
If successive England managers didn't have a policy of blindly sticking with the superstars come the tournaments no matter how out of form they were, you would probably find more of the fringe players willing to be involved and Gerrard/Hodgson demanding names isn't going to help anyone
As much as the headline of 'rejecting your country' is a good way to tubthump about national pride, I can't help thinking that until selection is purely on merit, some of these guys (whoever it was), probably had a point, just like Paul Scholes did when he retired for exactly the same reasons.
All suggests to me that the witchunt over who said what is going to overshadow the entire reason why the players behaved this way in the first place, which is a flawed selection policy based heavily on a greedy FA wanting certain players in every team/squad due to sponsorship.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... gland.html
So basically Harry Redknapp has said that some of his players begged him to 'get them out' of having to go on England duty. I'm sure it's no great surprise to us, other than Redknapp actually having lifted the lid on the problem.
The players this would cover are:
Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Aaron Lennon, Darren Bent, Scott Parker, David Bentley, Jermaine Jenas, Michael Dawson, Tom Huddlestone, Jonathan Woodgate, Ledley King and Kyle Walker.
All of the spurs players mentioned were fringe players and so you could kinda understand why they wouldn't want to trek half way round the world for a friendly with Trinidad being played solely for the enrichment of the FA in its attempts to bribe Jack Warner, (for example) to sit on the bench and have little chance of playing.
If successive England managers didn't have a policy of blindly sticking with the superstars come the tournaments no matter how out of form they were, you would probably find more of the fringe players willing to be involved and Gerrard/Hodgson demanding names isn't going to help anyone
As much as the headline of 'rejecting your country' is a good way to tubthump about national pride, I can't help thinking that until selection is purely on merit, some of these guys (whoever it was), probably had a point, just like Paul Scholes did when he retired for exactly the same reasons.
All suggests to me that the witchunt over who said what is going to overshadow the entire reason why the players behaved this way in the first place, which is a flawed selection policy based heavily on a greedy FA wanting certain players in every team/squad due to sponsorship.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... gland.html