[drewks]

As I've mentioned before the problem is that now every National side wants to play like Spain/Brazil rather than working to their strengths.
The English game was all about passion and tough tackling, however now that has pretty much been removed from the game that leaves us with a void to fill which results in us trying to play "Flairy" football when in reality this is not our strength.

During that tough tackling era, England suffered it's heaviest international defeats in 1953 and 1954 when we lost, both times to Hungary, 6-3 at Wembley, then 7-1 in Hungary.  Unfortunately, while I have always loved our domestic football, them damn foreigners always seem to play it better than us.

....but we also won the World Cup in 66 and dominated Europe for many years in the 70's though, Bomber 

Were we still playing the tough English style by '66, Drewks?  Either way, I have always thought we were luckier than blue pigs to have won the World Cup.  Right from being the home country, the Argentina win and the disputed goal in the final, everything went for us.  What did England win after that?  In my opinion, Ramsey's football style put English football back.

...not absolutely sure what era devwakey's talking about, bomber, I sort of assumed it was the same as me - the 60's, 70's and 80's (to a point), where our leagues were full of English players and maybe a smattering of Scots and Welsh players; English managers.....and an English style of play!
The point being that when we try and play more like South Americans or Europeans, we always are found wanting; why not try and play to what are our traditional strengths??
(sorry to have maybe partly hijacked the theme of the thread, meanbren   )