BLUNTLY TOLD: Buffon says England's failures due to clubs' liking for foreigners

BLUNTLY TOLD: Buffon says England's failures due to clubs' liking for foreigners

 ITALY captain Gianluigi Buffon has stuck the knife into English football by claiming the Premier League harms the national side.

Ahead of the Euro 2012 final against Spain (late yesterday), the World Cup-winning goalkeeper believes that the number of foreigners in the Premier League is stifling young English talent.
Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal in particular have been accused of favouring foreign stars over English youngsters and Buffon, 34, says the Premier League's standing as the best in the world is a major factor in the country's 46-year trophy drought.
"Having a competitive league doesn't necessarily mean having competitive players," he said.
"For a number of years now, the English league has had the best football and is the best league in terms of quality.



"The money that's in the game means they can go and buy anyone from all over Europe or the world.
"This can happen in Spain and Italy as well as England but the league in England is no longer very faithful to what the national side need.
"With this footballing globalisation, it's very difficult. You struggle to have players from your own country playing in the top league."



Yet Buffon admits England have been unlucky, particularly with shootouts. He added: "The England national side have their own strengths and they're a lot more physical than other sides," said Buffon.
"But England aren't very lucky. They've lost on penalties in the last five or six times, so the margins between winning and losing are very thin indeed.:" Mail on Sunda

ITALY AND GERMANY KICK OFF IN SECOND EURO SEMIFINAL

Germany enters the match as the only team in the tournament to have maintained a perfect record throughout the group and knockout stages. The team has not trailed for a single minute of the tournament and entered the competition as the favourite according to many analysts.

 Italy, meanwhile, is riding an emotional high after knocking out England in its thrilling quarter-final match-up.

The Italians looked to be the better side through much of the 120 scoreless minutes before capitalizing on a pair of England misses to take the penalty shootout.
A lot of the intrigue surrounding the Italian team at the tournament has been over whether the team will start striker Mario Balotelli from match to match.
 
The two teams last met in the 2006 World Cup semifinals with Italy prevailing 2-0 thanks to two goals scored in extra-time after the teams played nearly 120 minutes of scoreless football.

Germany has finished no worse than third in its previous three international tournaments. However, the Germans have never beaten Italy in a major tournament in seven attempts to do so.

Italy, meanwhile, has had its all three of its knockout-round matches decided by penalty kicks (going 2-1 in those matches) since it last defeated the Germans.

Injured Rosicky doubtful for Portugal clash

Tomas Rosicky is in doubt for the Czech Republic’s Euro 2012 quarter-final match against Portugal.

The Czech captain missed the last group game against Poland with an inflamed Achilles tendon, and it looks as though he will be on the sidelines again for Thursday’s encounter.

“Will he be able to play from the start? I don’t think so,” team manager Vladmir Smicer told the CTK agency.

“He hasn’t trained for eight days, he’s only been able to do some work on the bike.

“In order for him to play in such a tough match, he should at the very least have had three full training sessions in order to be 100 percent ready.”

The Arsenal playmaker has suffered with injuries throughout his career and was initially doubtful to play in the tournament at all after picking up a calf problem in the Gunners’ final Premier League game of the season.

But he is determined to recover in time for the clash with Portugal, and has been back in Prague seeing a specialist to try to overcome the problem.

He has now returned to Poland to join up with the rest of the squad and will be given the chance to prove his fitness in training.

“The decision as to whether he plays in the quarter-final will be taken after the official training session on Wednesday evening,” said Czech spokesman Jaroslav Kolar.

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