Former England manager, Sam Allardyce has made an incredulous claim, stating that in his opinion, England’s Eric Dier is just as good as Sergio Busquets.
Busquets has won everything in the game including a World Cup, Champions League, La Liga titles and so on
Eric Dier, on the other hand, hasn’t won anything yet as he impresses for Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League.
Allardyce stated this after England won against Spain in a game where Dier was clearly better than the Spanish midfielder especially in his bruising yet clean tackling and some of his passing.
“The praise about Busquets must be stopped, it was never evident last night, he looked out of sorts.” said the former Bolton Wanderers manager
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“He’s no better or worse than Eric Dier, for me.
“Busquets is a sitting midfield player who breaks up play, intercepts, passes it very quickly and is intelligent. That’s what he is. He’s not much more than that, but he gets a lot of praise for it.
“Whereas Eric Dier does a similar job, but sometimes gets loads of criticism for it.
“He [Dier] has got the capability of being that.
“Busquets has been a great player for Spain and Barcelona, don’t get me wrong. He’s a very effective player and is the first pick for every manager because he plays such a simple game.
“But we laud him as a genius, whereas our own we don’t, we criticise. Eric Dier was far better than Busquets last night.”
Allardyce also hailed Dier’s tackling especially a full-blooded one he was yellow carded for on Sergio Ramos.
“I loved it! A tackle like that can set the tone.” he added
“As a manager, you look at who is going to get the fans on the edge of the seats. People will say that you can’t think of something like that to do it, but when you watch a game of football and you see that level of commitment, you saw the cheer it brings from the fans.
“It says, ‘we’re going to get stuck in tonight, we’re going to make an impression on Spain in all aspects of the game to win it’.
“That got a big cheer from the fans in the stadium and probably all the fans in England and certainly set the tone for the match.”