English national football team of amateurs
The English national football team of amateurs was a selection of non-professional players who represented England in football matches against teams from other nations. It was founded at the beginning of the 20th century and was motivated by the fact that in the increasing professionalism of football, amateur footballers had little chance of being included in the English national team .
The English amateur national team mostly competed against other country selection teams from Europe , which were often mixed from professional and amateur players. Despite her amateur position, she was very competitive and was not even defeated in a series of 20 games between 1906 and 1910. Under an agreement between all British football associations the team represented the United Kingdom when Britain during the Olympic Games in 1908 in London and 1912 in Stockholm, where she in both cases gold medal won. Also in 1920 in Antwerp, she participated in the Olympic football tournament under the name of Great Britain, but resigned already from the second round against Norway.
The amateur team existed for many more years, although later they only competed against pure amateur opponents and no longer dominated them so clearly. It was dissolved in 1974 when the Football Association abolished the formal distinction between amateurs and professionals. The position of the former amateur team is now taken by a semi-professional team made up of players from the National League system (below the Football League ).
The German national soccer team played their first international matches against English national teams against the amateur team and lost three times (0: 9, 1: 5 and 0: 3) and played once (2: 2). In the statistics, these games are listed for the DFB, but not for the FA for the A-national team. In later years the German team was able to improve the statistics against the English senior team. Therefore, at times the paradoxical situation arose that both the German and the English associations had negative statistics for their encounters with the respective other national team. At the moment, the English senior team's record against Germany is even (13 wins, 6 draws and 13 defeats), while the German senior team's record against England is still negative with 13 wins, 7 draws and 16 defeats, although the German victories to be counted as a draw in the 1990 and 1996 penalty shootouts.
To date, at least five countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Thailand) have suffered their highest international defeats against the English amateur team.
The top scorer is Vivian John Woodward , who scored 44 goals in 30 games. He also scored 29 goals for the senior national team in 23 games .
