English football Legend Sir Geoff Hurst has told CVG that he supports recent claims that games are making kids bad at football.
Earlier blame aimed at gaming came from Portsmouth FC boss Harry Redknapp, who said the "Xbox culture" is killing British football and that it's becoming harder and harder to find good "home-grown" talent.
West Ham keeper Rob Green echoed Redknapp's comments, telling the Metro newspaper earlier this week, "I think we would have the best team if we could go into every household and throw away every PlayStation, Xbox and video game."
Speaking to CVG last night, 1966 World Cup hero Hurst agreed with Green's outburst against gaming. "I agree with that. The problem we've got today is we're not producing enough England players," he said. "I agree with that absolutely 100 percent.
"[Gaming is] one of the number of things kids can do that we couldn't do in our time. There's a balance between actually playing a game live in a park and sitting in front of a television."
But Sir Geoff doesn't point the blame squarely at our favourite pastime, and even said that games aren't a "big part" of the problem. The former West Ham man says that players need a distraction from football - and always have.
"We played other games outside instead of playing football, throwing sticks and conkers - that was a game. You need that distraction outside of football, and because we've got so many distractions today not enough kids are spending enough time doing sport in general.
Hurst added: "There's a balance between sitting down enjoying your leisure time playing games and running around playing sport. Thesedays a lot of the games are more sedentary - you hear the term couch potatoes - and I see this with my grandson.
"There are these distractions and they have to have an impact on the amount of kids playing sport."
As for the amount of foreign players in the English Premiership, Hurst said, "The money's here, simple as. If you want to be a footballer and want to earn good money, where are you going to go?"
"1996 World Cup hero Hurst" - erk... what with the way everybody over has to refer to "1966" all the time when we do make it into an international tournament, that typo should never appear.
"1996 World Cup hero Hurst" - erk... what with the way everybody over has to refer to "1966" all the time when we do make it into an international tournament, that typo should never appear.
What about schools selling off playing fields for development, ridiculous blame culture resulting in the massive decline in school trips and extra-curricular activities, and parents not letting kids go out on their own because of the media-generated fear of paedo's lurking behind every climbing frame and goal-post?
The world is changing, maybe not for the better but what are you gonna do. Going round peoples houses and chucking out their consoles is not going to happen. And anyway i get the feeling there is always a massive over-reaction whenever England fail to qualify for a major tournament. If your players had given a bit more effort (god knows they get paid well enough) maybe this situation would never have arisen.
Well thats another down on the list for arguments about playing games is bad for us.
So thats now: (in no particular order)
1. Violent games makes us 'violent killing machines'
2. Playing games makes our grades at school fall.
3. Playing games slows our learning of reading and writing.
and now 4. Playing games makes us all crap at sports and makes the current England football team s**te!
Im sure there's more... feel free to add to that list.
Well playing games hasnt done me any harm, i did relatively well at school, ive got a well paid job, my own business, a lovely gf (who incidentally i havent killed... yet) and oh... i can read and write, although my grammar can be a bit balls.
Im not saying that playing games doesn't impact on these things its just that without proper research and proof there is an awful lot of blame pointed towards 'playing games'
I wonder who or what else is going to jump on the "playing games are bad for us" band wagon?
Poor old Geoff. I think he's sensing he's not going to get any television appearance money next year...
I don't wish to sound disrespectful... Actually I dont care.
P*** off Hurst, you got a flukey hat trick in a game we won with the aid of a biased 'homer' linesman 41 YEARS AGO, and I'm fed up of seeing your scrotumnal chops every second summer. I have no hazy nostalgic memory of '66 and all that' because I wasn't alive, neither were most of my fellow gamers. You guys weren't footballing geniuses yourselves. THe very reason we're not going to Euro 2008 is because we played 'knock to the big man up front' just as you did. Trouble is the games moved on. Its cultured. The ball doesn't weigh 30lbs anymore. By blaming something you've never even tried you're just giving soundbites for over weight 50 year old white van men to use as there own in order to toady up to TALKSPORT presenters. But I bet you'd change your tune if EA or Konami gave you a fat load of cash to pimp yourself out for yet another advert.
For your information Geoff old boy, I hated football until I played the likes of Sensible Soccer and ISS and now play it once a week. Before that I just took at as a hideous form of teacher approved bullying.
You, Greaves, Charlton and all the other sad old bastardos living off former glories should find a nice retirement home, settle down and tell all your little football stories to people that actually watched the damn thing.
Sport isn't given enough precedence at school. School playing fields are getting sold off, as are parks etc... where we could play footy as youngsters.
The Youth system in this country is awful as well. The emphasis is on winning matches rather than developing skills and technique and an appreciation of tactics and teamwork.. Then again, it's no suprise as it's cheaper to buy johnny foreigner than train our own lads.
Video games have fekk all to do with it. There's plenty of youngsters who'd rather have a real game of footy. Hell, I'm a big games player, even so, at 35 years of age, I'd still rather go for a kickabout, even in rubbish weather.
The root of the problem is at school, where PE and games are seen as a skive and not taken seriously. PE and sport not only promote physical fitness, but should instill a sense of discipline, self confidence, teamwork and (despite being un PC these days for some daft reason) competitiveness.
I had about 6 hours of sport and PT a week at school (not including break times, lunch times and after school activities). I wonder what the average child gets these days?
geoff hurst must be gutted c&vg could oonly find a pic of alan ball (i think that's who he is as i only like rugby. a true mans sport. not this f**kin nacncy football crap).
Why don't people blame TV more. At least even Ps3 owners are moving their fingers. I don't move at all when i watch TV. What about reading? Is that bad for you? Because i just move my eyes when i read.
There have always been two types of people, those who like sports and those who dont. Even before video games were invented. The likes of people, like myself, who spend alot of their spare time playing computer games wouldnt be out kicking a ball about even if they didnt exist!
I'd much rather kids were indoors playing games then outside being hooligans smashing s**t up for the hell of it, getting involved in gang violence and stuff.
Why don't these Footballers talk about all the violence and vandalism caused by football hooligans? Surely that's more important than moaning about England losing talent because we like to play computer games, rather than go out and kick a ball in a cold and wet field. And nearly every street and bit of grass I live near doesn't allow ball games anyway.
I always found the barrier to playing football in my high school was that if you weren't the absolute best of the school, and you didn't play for say a local club or something, they wouldn't even bother remembering your names. Playing football was a compulsory, and most fun part of a school week at school, yet they'd make sure they seperated you out into 'people who play for local clubs' on one field, and every1 else on another. And all the teachers would watch the elite people, and ignore ya. As far as I was concerned, as much as I love football, the premiership is a big fat joke because of the money, and if there wasn't such an elitist attitude about football in this country, we might do a little better.
P*** off Hurst, you got a flukey hat trick in a game we won with the aid of a biased 'homer' linesman 41 YEARS AGO, and I'm fed up of seeing your scrotumnal chops every second summer. I have no hazy nostalgic memory of '66 and all that' because I wasn't alive, neither were most of my fellow gamers. You guys weren't footballing geniuses yourselves.
Fair enough, knock the man for talking about what he plainly knows nothing about, but most of what you just said is uncalled for and b******s. I dont give a toss if you were alive or not, until any of the current or future crop of millionaire players get close to what that team achieved they are pretty much untouchable and certainly shouldnt be the subject of the drivel that you have just spouted.
As far as I can remember, if you weren't absolutely fantastic at football you'd get picked last for every team and chastised by the teacher and other more, shall we say, remedial children who happened to think that football was the greatest thing ever invented.
The fact that I cared more about Target Renegade on my Spectrum and got ripped for it by all the footy fans back in the 80's is ironic now, because it's those hypocritical loons who now buy EA's Fifa every year and made the PS2 the biggest console on the planet.
The other thing is, P.E. and sports in general are by far and away the most badly taught subjects in education. At no point were we taught how to actuallu play football. The assumption was made that "Hey! Everyone loves football!!! So what's to teach?" My brother, sister and myself all loved videogames growing up and my brother is doing a Biology phd, my sister has a masters in English and I'm a civil engineer. So my point is, if videogames are effecting football, it's only because the kind of apes who are uniquely gifted at the sport haven't got the capacity to spread their attention to more than one thing at a time.
I for one, am doing perfectly well in life with videogames playing the same role they've played for me since 1985. Maybe if they started teaching football like maths and languages we'd have a world class team. But then is football really that important?!
Why don't these Footballers talk about all the violence and vandalism caused by football hooligans? Surely that's more important than moaning about England losing talent because we like to play computer games, rather than go out and kick a ball in a cold and wet field. And nearly every street and bit of grass I live near doesn't allow ball games anyway.
I'd like to see some figures to stick up these guys ass's:
total deaths resulted in video games... total death resulting in football hooligans....
i bet i know which one would come out top. i only know of one video game death where a silly woman a few months ago held of from going to the toilet to win a wii. she won the wii but dies after. sad but true.
What complete crap. If England didn't go on to every game thinking they're better than everyone, then maybe they would win. Or maybe if they didn't think the minimum is enougg and go that extra mile and win, then they would maybe have a chance. Or maybe, if the players didn't go to a f***ing party the night before the match, then they'd do better!
Why do England have an excuse everytime they do s**t in tournaments. Games are now the blame??! How about parents not giving a s**t what their kids do or what games they play etc? This country creates its own problems and then blames something else for it. Or then you have something like "hey, people are drinking too much. What should we do? - I know! Extend the licencing hours!" What complete crap.
I play games but I also go training as well. Its sad how games seem to be the fault of everything that goes wrong. People are that low that they can't look at themselves to see where the fault lies...
Not sure if anyone else has made this point but doesn’t the majority of countries in the world play video games? Watch TV and have poor facilities. Not to sure about Brazils tendency to video games but im sure that their available and im sure that we have better schools and parks to play football. Why don’t thy find a solution rather than an excuse.
English football Legend Sir Geoff Hurst has told CVG that he supports recent claims that games are making kids bad at football.
Of course its video games fault. Its nothing at all to do with the complete lack of funding and attention that is given to grass roots football, or the fact that schools and councils are having to sell off playing fields to developers to either make ends meet or to meet government housing targets, the lack of investment in youth teams and academys by a lot of the bigger clubs, schools reducing the presence of Physical Education on their timetables due to afforementioned lack of funds, or the disillusionment people are developing towards football because of the current cheating and celebrity culture prevelant in them game not to mention the disgraceful behaviour of some of the 'fans'?
Think I covered most of the main points there...
Or it could, weirdly enough, be that we're just not as good as the media and pundits believe we are, I know that's almost a treasenous thought there and one of my housemates would kill me if she knew I dared to suggest that.
English football, the Premiership in particular, needs to take a long hard look at its-self before it jumps to blaming other sources for its woes. If kids enjoy football then they'll play it but, as some others have already said in this thread, the drive to win games at all costs is killing (some would say has killed) the spirit of the game.
And there was me thinking we had freedom of choice over what we did. Silly me.
Playing games, you get to stay in the warmth and you don't get injured (unless you're a Wii-owning moron). In real life these things do happen and you can't drive at 160mph down the street to get to your local club. Or at least not more than a couple of times if you're lucky.
If all countries have access to games (and I'm pretty sure Italy, France and Germany do - their teams are pretty good, right?), there must be some other reason for it. Lack of funding for local clubs and youth organisations is a major factor. The weather is almost certainly another.
Is it all about fitness? Because surely taking a car to work or school reduces fitness levels, since back in t'day when you had to walk everywhere, people were much fitter. Let's get rid of cars, because they make us worse at sport. When you had to hunt and kill your own food, people had to stay fit or they couldn't catch anything. Let's get rid of supermarkets, because they make us worse at sport.
"1996 World Cup hero Hurst" - erk... what with the way everybody over has to refer to "1966" all the time when we do make it into an international tournament, that typo should never appear.
Seems gaming is still being beaten with the idiot stick, weilded by morons with little knowledge of the industry.
Few teachers interested in creating extra-cirricular activities involving sport for kids; councils hammering No Ball Games signs all over the country; of the few playing fields left, most are badly maintained with used hypodermic needles and various forms of dog eggs littering the grass.
Just a handful of reasons why England it s**t. And Scotland. And Wales. And Northern Ireland. Nothing to do with the fact only a handful of Premiership managers are English, or that some clubs field a first team containing one or two British players. The rest being foreigners brought in to affect a short term success at the detriment to a long term policy focusing on rearing your own talent. If youre a Premiership club, the latter usually ends up with you being relegated and costing the club about Ł20-30 million.
So it's not gaming that is costing the Home Nations placings in major tournamants, it's the fear of failure in the highest echelons of the English league. Teams like Portsmouth splashing the cash to buy in foreign talent and ignoring home-grown players. Harry Redknapp and his cronies are just following the tired and well-trodden road of blaming other mediums for their failings.
What complete crap. If England didn't go on to every game thinking they're better than everyone, then maybe they would win.
I agree with this guy. The media certainly hypes up the England team to the upper echelons of greatness. This was shown recently with the world cup draw and all post reaction comments from various sources. Michael Owen was in the paper saying none of the croatian team would make the england squad. Yet over the course of two games they still managed to stick 5 past england. In a paper they were going through the qualifying group england are in for the world cup. Appart from mentioning how England are going to rip appart croatia in revenge they went on to deride the other teams as also rans. Coming just after we were held to a goaless draw at wembley by Macedonia and took an hour to score past Andorra, who most teams in the group beat by a comfortable margin.
Stop holding the england team up as gods. Yes support them and get behind them by all means but see them for what they are. Until this egotistical attitude in the media and the players supsides then england with never win anything.
right guys i hear what both sides are sayin here, the gamers our sayin that it passes the time when your friends cant be bothered to come out because it is raining and is also a great way to meet loads of people. the athletes among us (i wish i was lol) it is a great way to get fit if ya go out n have a kick around with your m8ts and if you cant play on any grass go and play on the street its just as good except when you fall on the floor but still its just as good , you meet new people and also its a great way to pull women really because if you get a 6 pack women are more likly to go out with you than if you have a bit of weight on ya.
all in all i play games on my PS3 but still like a good kick around. Everyone complains bout us not having talent if we did something about that we would be great again in sport. COME ON ENGLAND.
and plus the hooliganism at football is getting a problem but then again so can be gaming if you find yourself playing games none stop then it has gone to far but then again starting up riots after football matches is wrong but still its going away from the point... WE NEED TO DO MORE ABOUT CHILDHOOD OBESITY FOR OUR CONTRY PLEASE PLEASE DO AS MUCH EXERCISE AS YOU CAN ... THEN WE CAN PLAY THESE FOREIGN PLAYERS AT THEIR OWN GAME
You know there's another country that's both a surprisingly large gaming country and has a football team that isn't as bad as Engalnd.
In South America they call it "Brasil". Over here it has a "z" in the name which makes it look cooler.
Video Games dont make bad footballers. They don't make murderers or anything else. Are thre really not 100 kids who prefer playing football to games and have enough talent to be professionally trained in this country?
Kid's dont start playing games as much as, say, me because they're there; they start because they tried doing sports and all the things the "cool" kids do but wern't particularly good at.
It's amazing: people in this country really will come up with any excuse for England's failure rather than just the simple "Our team sucked ass cause of iffy tactics and poor player commitment".
Alot of people think Steve McLaren is a bad manager. Games didn't make him that way - he doesn't play them
When I was at school I had a bunch of friends who were pretty good at football, but none of the teachers ever tried to get them to develop their skills or anything. Despite having to play football for every week for god knows how many years not one of the people in my year was invited to develop their skills, and take their football skills a bit further. The older generation in this country just don't seem to be bothered about training younnger generations to play football to the best of their ability - I'm quite sure other countries have Xbox360's and PS3's as well, and a lot of them are still doing better than us at football. You also have to have a look at current trends - I'm a skateboarder, and after skating for about 5 and a half years, I can tell you that there are loads of kids picking up skateboards instead of footballs... and in some cases there are a large number of kids doing BOTH rather than sticking to just one of the activities. The government doesn't provide enough proper areas for either activity though, so I guess everything would improve if the people with the power just provided some decent leisure space.
As for video games making you stupid - completely unproven, I got higher grades at school than most of the people who called me a geek because I played video games, and the same goes for many other people I know. You get bad grades for procrastinating all day whilst playing video games. There are people who just put off doing serious work for school/college/uni because they'd rather have a few hours playing Half Life 2... I should know, I'm one of them!
I think Geoff Hurst was referring to England players not performing and not the general public...If shaun Wright Phillips wasn't on telly every 5 minutes with his old man playing Boxing and Golf on the Wii and actually playing real football, then England would have had a better chance... the fact is..all premiership footballers are paid big money by their clubs and only get stick off the public when they play for England, so they don't have the passion for it... and they make more money from endorsements than they do from international football...I bet Michael Owen made more money from Pro Evo 2008 than he did from playing for England..
We have pretty much no talent identification programmes in this country for anything other than Cycling, Rowing and Diving. Despite the fact that those 3 sports are what our country is best at, football is shoved in the face of every single school kid. Its pretty much the option, love football or don't do any other sport. And thats what's happened. Football is killing off every sport in this country with the way that its run, the ridiculous salaries that are paid to players, and the fact that no other sport is promoted in the same way.
My old school (thank moose my school days are gone) got rid of practically every space for doing sports other than rugby, football and cricket, when they were expanding the school buildings to accommodate a larger 6th form. Is it any wonder why so few people actually bothered taking part in PE when all that we could do was play rugby, football, cricket or do athletics. I made an effort to introduce ice hockey and even found a coach and struck a deal with a local ice rink for us to get the facilities cheaper, the school turned round and said that there was no space in the curriculum for it because they needed as many people as possible playing football and rugby so the school teams would have a better talent pool to pick for.
1966, who cares! It shows exactly how good we are at football if the last time we did well was 41 years ago.
Read the start of the second paragraph, saw the name "Harry Redknapp", and gave up. Games aren't killing football, it's p**sing around and being suspected of "conspiracy to defraud and false accounting", for example, that's ruining English football.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
(i think that's who he is as i only like rugby. a true mans sport. not this f**kin nacncy football crap).
(i wish i was lol) it is a great way to get fit if ya go out n have a kick around with your m8ts and if you cant play on any grass go and play on the street its just as good except when you fall on the floor but still its just as good , you meet new people and also its a great way to pull women really because if you get a 6 pack women are more likly to go out with you than if you have a bit of weight on ya.
