Bishop
Les Ferdinand
That but also people hold certain nations in their heads as being of a certain elite level desire all the evidence to the contrary because historically they were that, but if you actually watch and pay attention to what they have these days it's just not the case.
Take Brazil for example, they had flipping Richy getting games for them not that long ago. In no Brazil pre 2014 squad would he have ever even been considered, the depth they had was too deep and the quality too high.
People are are stuck in the top nation legacy mindset but the Netherlands haven't been a top team in over a decade and the calibre of player they produce now is nothing like the quality that they produced in the 90s and 00s, there is literally no comparison. Those two nations used to be filled to the brim with world class technicians. Now they are both meh.
Football I think has became too machine like. A player with any discernable quality gets scouted too early and plucked out of their home league meaning they lose that critical time where they develop in their unique football culture. As a result they just become your generic homogenised European top 5 league guy. It used to be the case that each football culture created a certain type of player, Spain, the Balkans, Argentina, Brazil, The Netherlands, Scandinavian, Germany etc, etc, etc now they for the most part are just churning out identikits. We've lost the flair, the outrageous technique, the vision, the passing.
