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The English national men's football team represents England in international men's football and is controlled by The Football Association, the governing body for football in England.
Although part of the United Kingdom, England has its own representative side that plays in all the major professional tournaments, though not in the Olympic Games as the IOC only recognises Great Britain as a whole.
England are the most successful of the four Home Nations, having won the British Home Championship 54 times and the FIFA World Cup once. They have never won the UEFA European Football Championship, but have been Semi-Finalists twice.
Traditionally, England's greatest rivals have been Scotland.[1] England's most recent meeting with Scotland was a Euro 2000 play-off in November 1999, which Scotland won 1-0 at the old Wembley Stadium (although England won the two-legged tie 2-1 on aggregate). Since regular fixtures against the Scots came to an end in the late 1980s, other rivalries have become more prominent. England–Argentina and England–Germany are rivalries that have produced particularly eventful encounters.
England are the oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland. The two countries first played in the first international match, at Hamilton Crescent in Partick, Scotland on 30 November 1872.[2] Over the next forty years, regular games between the four Home nations - England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland - were the only football England played. The British Home Championship began in 1883, making these games competitive. The championships continued until 1984.
Prior to 1924, when Wembley was opened, England had had no permanent home ground. They had played their first ever games outside of the British Isles in 1908 and though the FA had joined FIFA in 1906, the relationship between the two had been strained and the British nations left FIFA in 1928, only rejoining in 1946. This meant that England did not compete in a World Cup until 1950, in which they were humiliated in a 1-0 defeat against the United States, and failed to qualify past the first round. A 6-3 loss in 1953 to Hungary was England's first ever defeat to a non-British team at Wembley and confirmed the end of English claims to dominate world football.
Walter Winterbottom was appointed as the first ever full time manager in 1946, though the team was still picked by committee until Alf Ramsey took over in 1963. Ramsey was the coach for England's greatest ever success, winning the 1966 World Cup Final against West Germany 4-2 after extra time. Geoff Hurst famously scored a hat-trick in the final. The 1966 World Cup had also been held in England. After this victory, the fortunes of England declined and teams of the 1970s were unsuccessful, qualifying for no tournaments at all. Ron Greenwood's England were knocked out of the 1982 World Cup without losing a match, then his successor Bobby Robson fared better, reaching the quarter finals of the 1986 World Cup and finishing fourth in the tournament four years later.
Graham Taylor's short reign as Robson's successor ended after his England didn't qualify for the 1994 World Cup, but then the 1996 European Championships were held in England, and under new coach Terry Venables the team had its best performance at a European Championship, reaching the semi-final. The England team of the 1990s and 2000s has been consistently in football's top twenty countries, but failed to progress beyond the quarter finals of any international tournament, and had a quick turnover of coaches, with both Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan lasting little more than two years each in the role. Sven-Göran Eriksson, in charge from 2001 to 2006, was notable as the first non-English manager of England.
Steve McClaren is the new head coach, with John Terry his choice to replace David Beckham as captain. The revised management team now features Terry Venables, the former head coach. Beckham was left out of McClaren's first international squad for the friendly match against Greece on 16 August 2006, and was not recalled until the friendly against Brazil on 1 June, 2007, almost a year later.
After a good start with three straight victories against Greece, Andorra, and Macedonia, England had a goalless draw against the same Macedonia side on home ground, followed by a 2-0 defeat to Croatia in Zagreb, which ended Paul Robinson's run of six consecutive clean sheets for his country. This defeat was the worst competitive defeat suffered by England in almost exactly thirteen years, since the loss to Holland by the same score in the qualifying matches for the 1994 World Cup. England's unimpressive form continued as they lost 1-0 to Spain in a friendly match, with the cold and disappointed crowd booing off the home side at the final whistle. England's return to competitive football in March 2007 resulted in a disappointing 0-0 draw in Tel Aviv against Israel with yet another jeering and booing from English fans.
On 28 March, 2007, England finally ended their goal drought thanks to a goal in the 54th minute of their match against Andorra by Steven Gerrard. The match ended with a 3-0 win for England, with the second goal by Gerrard and a very close-range goal from David Nugent, ending their run of 5 games without a win. England were heavily booed off the pitch at half-time by a primarily English crowd, angry at their team's failure to score in the first-half. However, even after scoring there were still loud chants off "We want McClaren out" and "There's only one David Beckham" (in reference to McClaren's afore-mentioned dropping of Beckham from the team in August 2006), as well as continued booing at the final whistle. It should be emphasised that the crowd's disappointment was a combined result of England's poor form in previous games and the under par performance of an England team, ranked 6<sup>th</sup> in the March 2007 FIFA World Rankings,[3] in a game against an Andorran team (mostly made up of part-time players) ranked 157 places below them in 163<sup>rd</sup> position.
A year on from the World Cup in Germany and things are looking up for McClaren and England now, despite the thought of the remaining qualifiers being mainly must win games. England's veterans are returning with the news of a fit again Michael Owen and a recall of an in-form David Beckham. Also after seven year absence football is coming home as England will return to the New Wembley Stadium for their home fixtures. England's first match in the new Wembley stadium will be a friendly against Brazil on June 1.
For the first 50 years of its existence, England played its home matches all around the country; for the first few years it used cricket grounds, before later moving on to football clubs' stadiums. England played their first match at Wembley Stadium in 1924 against Scotland, but for the next 27 years would only use Wembley as a venue for Scotland matches.
In May 1951, Argentina became the first team other than Scotland to be played at Wembley, and by 1960 nearly all of England's home matches were being played there. Between 1966 and 1995, England did not play a single home match anywhere else.
England's last match at the old Wembley was against Germany on 7 October 2000, a game which England lost 1-0. Since then the team has played at 14 venues around the country, with Old Trafford having been the most used. The FA have ruled that when the new Wembley is completed in 2007, England will play all of their home matches there until at least 2036. The main reason for this is financial. The FA did not own the old Wembley stadium, but it does own the new one, and has taken on debts of hundreds of millions of pounds to pay for it. Thus it needs to maximise the revenue from England matches, and does not wish to share it with the owners of other grounds.
The new Wembley held its first international game in March 2007, when England U21s played Italy U21s in front of 55,700 people. The match was drawn 3-3, with David Bentley scoring the first goal in an England shirt at the new stadium. However, Italian striker Giampaolo Pazzini scored the first goal, after just 29 seconds.[4]
England have traditionally worn white shirts with navy shorts and since the early 1960s, white socks. Their change kit is red shirts, white shorts and red socks.
Other away kits worn by England have included blue shirts, white shorts and blue socks during the 1930s, '40s and '50s and pale blue (first used during the 1970 World Cup and again from 1986-1992 as a rarely-used third choice kit). In 1973 England wore a change kit of yellow shirts and socks with blue shorts, and at Euro '96 an all grey kit was used as a second choice strip. This deviation from tradition was so unpopular amongst supporters that since then, England's away kit has remained red.[5]
In modern times England's kit has been supplied by Umbro, with the exception of the years 1974 - 1984 when it was manufactured by Admiral.
England rotates its kits every two years, with a new home kit released at the beginning of every odd numbered year and a new away kit released at the beginning of every even numbered year. The previous home kit (used during the 2006 FIFA World Cup) made its final appearance on 15 November, 2006 against the Netherlands. A new kit was released on 5 February, 2007 and was first used on 7 February, 2007 against Spain. The jersey has a single red stripe partially across the front of the shoulders. The crest and gold star appear on the left of the chest, with the Umbro logo, now gold, and the front shirt number appearing on the right. This symmetry also applies to the away jersey. There are now Umbro diamonds on the top of the right shoulder. A navy and white stripe depicting the three lions appears on the sides. The numbering and lettering font and colour is the same as the previous two home jerseys, and continues with silver Umbro diamonds, first seen in 2005.
For the first 65 years of competition, England footballers' shirts contained no identifying names or numbers.[6] Numbers were first worn in 1937 in a match against Scotland in Glasgow. They quickly became associated with a certain position, so to describe someone as 'England's number 9' would be to describe a player as the best choice for centre forward.[7] This terminology continues today, and the team has kept to the tradition of numbering players from 1 to 11 (12 upwards for substitutes), outside of major tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA European Football Championship, where permanent squad numbers are required.
Numbers are traditionally associated with a certain position, but there are no set rules. Furthermore, established players will tend to use the same number whenever they play.[8] Steven Gerrard, for example, retains the England number 4 no matter what position he plays in. However, when Gerrard does not play, another player will be number 4.
The first time that England wore names on their jerseys was at EURO 92 in Sweden. They have since worn player names on their jerseys at every major tournament. However, it was nine more years before names were worn outside major tournaments. This was due to the fact that England would issue new numbers (and therefore new jerseys) for every game. Outside the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Football Championship, England first wore player names for the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifying match on 6 October, 2001 against Greece at Old Trafford. With new technology, player names can now be affixed to the jerseys as late as the day of the match.[9]
This is a list of match results from the past year. Goal scorers in brackets.
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The following players have also been called up to the England squad within the last twelve months:
*Denotes draws include knockout matches decided on penalty kicks.
See also
In 2002, England featured seven times in UK broadcaster Channel 4's 100 Greatest Sporting Moments:
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