LEE PAYNE

Tag: team

  • FIFA 23 – it’s not really in the game, is it?

    This is going to be a tad niche, even going by the previous things I’ve written. What follows will only be of interest to you if you’ve played the computer game FIFA. A hugely successful game, yes, and one that tops the charts every year, but I doubt something my usual readers will have had much to do with.

    The next edition, FIFA 23, is coming out at the end of September and having owned every one since 2001 I’m seriously considering not buying it. It’s because it feels like it’s increasingly being made for a younger audience, an audience that speaks a different language to me. All the nonsense about “xG”, “top bins” and a new goal celebration called “The Griddy” – this isn’t the football I know and love. It is also obsessed with its Ultimate Team mode (which makes developer EA an absolute fortune), and I have no interest in it.

    I have always liked playing Career Mode, where I can put myself in the game as a manager and take over pretty much any club in the game. Invariably, this would start off with me taking charge of my beloved Norwich City. You can play out fifteen seasons, and as well as playing each match you could buy and sell players and bring youth players through.

    But there’s so much more this mode could do. In terms of youth scouting, you hire a scout who you can send on a trip. You determine where they go, how long for and what sort of players they are looking for. Each month the scout will send you a report listing the players they’ve found. The list will show roughly how good the player is now and roughly how good the scout thinks the player could become. How accurate these assessments are depends on how good the scout is, i.e. how much you’re paying them. You can then choose to sign the player, reject them or scout them for a bit longer.

    The trouble is, if you sign a player they are simply added to a youth squad that doesn’t do anything. There are no Under 18 or Under 23 teams in the game, so youth players just remain on this list until you either promote them to the first team or they get fed up and threaten to leave. The players do very gradually improve, but if you’re managing a Premier League or Championship club they are very rarely good enough to play in the first team straight away. You usually end up selling them for a nice little profit and then you might come across them playing against you a few years later, but there’s very little for you in developing a young player in the mode’s current state.

    What FIFA’s career mode really needs is a proper system of U18 and U23 leagues. The young players you’ve scouted could then play some games against other clubs’ academies, keeping them happy and providing them with tangible ways to improve. The manager of these sides could provide you with a report on each match, telling you the result and who played well and who didn’t. The U23s would also be an opportunity to give players who need game time in your main squad a run out. Perhaps FIFA could even go really deep and allow you to start your career managing an U18 or U23 side yourself, rising through the ranks to eventually take the reins of the first team. This would give career mode a whole new dynamic, giving you an incentive to stay at a club for a number of years to see these young players you’ve scouted break through and become mainstays in your first team.

    Now I’d like to move on to international management. At present, you have to start off managing a club and then when you start making a name for yourself you are offered a job managing a national team. If you accept, however, you don’t leave your club side – you continue to manage it alongside whichever country you’ve accepted the offer from. This is most unrealistic, unheard of really in actual football. FIFA should allow you to manage a national team and only a national team. You should be able to request scouting reports on players you can pick in your squad, organise friendlies and training camps, and take your side into a World Cup or contintental competition. This would make you feel more involved and therefore care more about the country you’re in charge of – at the moment the international breaks feel like a chore and an unwanted intteruption to managing your club.

    Those are my two biggest wishes for career mode. There’s more I could say, and more I could ask for from the rest of the game. Quick substitutes, for instance. But it’s clear that FIFA 23 will be another cash cow, unwilling to make the changes to truly put it amongst the elite. This year’s edition will be the final one to bear the FIFA name – can we hope for better from the new iteration, EAFC? I won’t hold my breath.

  • England seal a superb series whitewash

    England vs New Zealand
    3rd Test (of 3)
    Headingley, Leeds
    23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th June 2022
    Result: England (360 & 296-3) beat New Zealand (329 & 326) by 7 wickets
    England win the series 3-0

    England received the trophy after winning the series 3-0

    It was only innate English pessimism that put any doubt in the ability of our re-energised Test team to knock off the 113 runs required to win the third Test and seal a 3-0 series whitewash.

    Tickets for the final day at Headingley were free, just as they were at Trent Bridge last week, but some stayed away as grey Yorkshire skies on Monday morning brought showers of rain that prevented any play until after lunch. I think allowing free entry on the last day of the matches in this series has been a great idea, and I suspect a deliberate ploy to get the fans back in love with Test cricket, which had been in a desperate state over the last couple of years.

    With an entire session lost to the weather, part of me was watching the clock, worrying whether England would have enough time to seal the victory. I was a fool – once they did manage to get on the field, they had it done and dusted in just over an hour.

    Before this series, chasing anything more than 250 would have been daunting, but in a very short space of time Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have the squad believing they can win from any position. At Trent Bridge, they chased 299 in a mere 50 overs and in Leeds they went after the target of 296 at more than five runs an over. This final act was a formality, a New Zealand side run ragged longing for the plane home.

    Joe Root averaged 99.00 in the series

    It has been a series full of highs for England, but the brightest lights were Joe Root – officially the player of the series – and Jonny Bairstow, so it seemed fitting that they were together at the crease at the end. Root was 86 not out and would surely have gone on to a third century in the series, while in his current form Bairstow is brilliant fun to watch. Confident and totally at ease with his game, on his home ground he followed up his first innings 162 with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 71 from just 44 balls. With ten to win, he cracked a four off the very much part time bowling of Michael Bracewell and I said out loud: “will he try to finish this with a six?”. Next thing I knew, the ball was sailing into the stands. Jonny, you beauty!

    Jack Leach was the deserved player of the match for taking 10 wickets across the two innings. In my piece about the Trent Bridge Test, I said the Somerset spinner “just doesn’t seem like he’ll ever worry a batter”. He is a very likeable cricketer and is clearly highly valued by his team mates, so it was nice to see him do so well but I maintain that if England are going to dominate in Tests they will need to find a better spin bowler. Ollie Pope also had a good series, playing at number three for the first time. He rounded off his series with an 82 to go with the hundred he scored in Nottingham. Matty Potts bowled some excellent spells and, in his captain’s words, appears to have taken to international cricket “like a duck to water”, while Jamie Overton did not look out of place on debut, scoring a superb 97 with the bat and sending down some hostile short pitched bowling.

    In fact, the only England player to come out of this series badly is Zak Crawley. He made a tortured 25 on Sunday, during which he ran out his opening partner Alex Lees because he was too busy admiring his own shot, played flashy drives at deliveries that weren’t there to be driven and finally slapped a dreadful shot into the hands of Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson. He looks utterly out of his depth, but is in the squad for the India match next week. With a break after that until the South Africa series in the middle of August, it seems he may have a chance to get some runs for Kent, because surely he will need them if he’s going to keep his place.

    Zak Crawley scored just 87 runs in 6 innings in the series

    So, having gone into this series with one win in their last seventeen Test matches, England are celebrating a 3-0 clean sweep of the world champions New Zealand. Next up is India at Edgbaston on Friday, followed by three games against South Africa and then the tour of Pakistan in the autumn. The new regime has breathed new life into the red ball side and the fans will be looking forward to, rather than dreading, each fixture. But what of the visitors? It was a year ago that they were crowned the inaugural winners of the World Test Championship, but since then they have lost key players – wicketkeeper BJ Watling and batter Ross Taylor have both retired – and their usually reliable captain Williamson has been out of form. The only partnership England struggled to break was the one between Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell, who between them scored more runs than the rest of the New Zealand team combined. They struggled with injuries, Colin de Grandhomme and Kyle Jamieson both going home early, while Williamson missed the second match with Covid. Their team selections were strange, they didn’t play a proper spinner in two of the three Tests and the one when they did he was only given two overs.

    All that aside, however, it needs to be said that it is always a pleasure to play against New Zealand, the true gentlemen of the sport. England have had some terrific tussles with the Black Caps in recent years (this being the obvious one) but they always play the game in the right way and in the right spirit. I look forward to our next meeting.

    Watch the highlights of the fifth, decisive day of the third Test

  • Newspaper column: Friday 9th August 2019

    My first column of the new football season was published in the Pink Un pullout, inside the Norwich Evening News and Eastern Daily Press, on Friday.

    I tried to call on my fellow Norwich City fans to stick with the team this season, even when life in the Premier League is tough. I also made my predictions for the season.

    The column can also be read online by clicking here.

  • The England team should be for the nation, not just Wembley

    Last night, England played a friendly against Norway. The official attendance for the match at the 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium was 40,181 – the smallest crowd to have seen the men’s national team at the ground since it was rebuilt. There are a number of explanations for the poor turnout – expensive tickets, families unwilling or unable to venture to the match after the first day back at school, parents tightening their belts after a summer of spending – but the overriding feeling was that people had simply lost interest in the team. The desperately disappointing World Cup campaign means the players will have to convince the public that it’s worth coming to see them. Only performances on the pitch are going to address that particular issue. A dour 1-0 win, through a Wayne Rooney penalty, isn’t going to do it. The small attendance last night, however, opened another debate entirely – is it time the England team played away from Wembley?

    The rebuilt Wembley is a fantastic arena, but the England team should tour the country.
    The rebuilt Wembley is a fantastic arena, but the England team should tour the country.

    The reason why every single England home match is played at Wembley is simply cost. The rebuilt stadium came in way over budget and was incredibly expensive at £798 million. Despite the stadium being in use since 2007, Wembley is still being paid off. The semi-finals of the FA Cup are also played at the national stadium for the same reason. Yesterday, the head of ‘Club England’ Adrian Bevington said it might be “eight or nine years” before England matches can be played away from Wembley. Ignoring the typical money matters, the idea of moving England matches would be beneficial to fans and to the team itself.

    Playing games around the country would bring forward the idea that the national team belongs to the nation again. Fans in, say, the north east would be able to go and support the England team if a friendly was at St James’ Park much easier than the weeks of planning it must take to head down to London. There is also a chance that the youngsters would be inspired by seeing the national team play on their doorsteps. The England women’s team already do this, as do the various age group teams. The England cricket team do not confine themselves to Lord’s – every summer fans can see them play as far north as Durham to as far south as Southampton. I wonder if even were Wembley to be paid that The FA would even consider sending the senior team on tour.

    Wembley Stadium and Ashburton Grove – a tale of two stadiums

    Around the same time Wembley was being rebuilt, Arsenal were making progress on their ground Ashburton Grove (better know due to sponsorship as The Emirates). While Wembley came in over budget at £798 million and about four years late, Ashburton Grove was built on time and on budget.

    While Wembley was being rebuilt between 2000 and 2007, the England team did indeed play around the country. Most of these matches were played at Old Trafford, but Anfield, St James’ Park, Villa Park, and even Portman Road played host at some point. I believe that – once Wembley is finally paid off – the idea should be considered again. Even if this is just for friendlies, with qualifying matches continuing to be played at Wembley.

    In an article for his paper The Telegraph on the eve of the Norway friendly, journalist Paul Hayward went as far as to claim that The FA should sell Wembley Stadium and invest the proceeds in grass-roots football, coaching and player development. I am not sure I would go that far. I have been to the rebuilt Wembley – first for a stadium tour and then for the friendly against Ghana in 2011 – and there is no denying it is a magnificent arena. Hayward does, however, make some interesting points. Europe’s other top football nations such as Spain, Italy and world champions Germany, do not have a national stadium and tour their countries for all matches. He says the selling of Wembley would not mean it would be demolished or become a white elephant – the concerts, American Football matches, boxing and a whole range of other events that already take place their could continue.

    While the selling of the national stadium is unlikely, there is without doubt an angst about Wembley since it has been rebuilt that was not there with the original. It is not universally loved, it is not the pinnacle of every football fan’s season to see their team there, and it is not the undisputed ‘home of football’ it has always claimed to be. I believe sending the national team around the country would be for the good of the game in this country, but ultimately it is for The FA to decide. Anyway, it’s San Marino next month.