SouthCoastShankly » Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:31 am wrote:dundreamin » Sun Nov 25, 2012 10:54 pm wrote:Better than being blagged into all this science S.*i*e. People are being told lies about all this *****. A LFC 70,s or even 80,s would walk the prem. Don't believe all you are told
IMO I don't think they would. Almost all players from that era that comment on style of todays game say the main differences are the speed of the game and the quality of the passing (driven largely by the quality of the pitches). The older team would get passed out of the game if they had not had months of training to adapt the to the speed and passing quality the game has today.
there is nothing special about modern players, whenever they play away in europe on a poor pitch (and when i say poor pitch it would be a bowling green by 1970`s standards) half of them look like they`ve never even played the game before, a few bobbles on the pitch and their control goes to f**k. if they had to play on the mud baths and frozen ice rinks that the players from yesteryear had to play on they`d be useless.
they are not even quicker, in the 1970`s the newcastle striker malcom mcdonald appeared on the t.v program superstars and ran the 100m in 10.9, thats fractionally slower than walcotts best time and whats more mcdonald was built like a tank, he was a target man centre forward. mcdonald wasnt even renowned for being that quick in the 70`s but mud is a big leveller, it`s hard to sprint on slippy surfaces.
the other thing is the physicality, lets see how quick the likes of walcott and henry would be after the likes of tommy smith and norman hunter had crashed right through them a few times without even getting a booking.
these modern players do have the benefit of sports science and nutrition etc but it`s not the be all and end all, modern british middle distance runners can get no where near the times the likes of seb coe and steve ovett ran in the late 70`s and their training methods were archaic by modern standards.
how many modern british sprinters have beat alan wells time of 10.00 seconds flat? in 30 years only 2 and both of them were caught taking performance enhancing drugs.
these modern training methods and sports science arent the miracle they are often portrayed as, the medical side (i.e recovering from injuries etc) has improved massively though.
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