England’s dire plight in this years World Cup has struck me a mighty blow. Each time I try and lift my weary fingers to type I am gripped by a feeling of despair, woe and anger that slams my laptop closed before I can try.
I am also struck by the old adage, if you’ve got nothing nice to say then perhaps it’s better to say nothing at all.
I watched England’s dismal capitulation against Germany in the front row of a crowd of 90,000 at this years Glastonbury and thank goodness I had Stevie Wonder in tow to lift my chin off the floor, it could have got messy.
Once things had been placed in their proper perspective however I remarked to my friend how this was probably the least painful England exit from a major tournament I have had to endure. Whether this is consoling or not I am still not sure.
Of course we could hark on about the injustice of the goal that never was but if we’re going to be honest with ourselves we went out because we were rubbish, abject, uninspired and frankly not good enough!! *Sigh…. hard words for me to write.
What now? Lets blame someone is usually the way we like to go and its no surprise that Mr Capello seems to be the man with the big red target on his back.
Oh how short sighted and fickle people are. Six weeks ago an expectant nation considered themselves rightly lucky to have one of the most successful managers of this generation at the helm, a man who had guided us through our best qualification in recent memory.
Now we are bemoaning our luck at the prospect of being stuck with this incompetent and overpaid foreign buffoon for another two years.
I despair at the knee jerk manner in which people think and sacking Capello will not only be a mistake but take attention away from the real villains of the piece, the players.
Roy Keane was recently interviewed by the BBC and gave the most commonsensical evaluation of England’s plight that I have heard thus far. It made me feel rather silly for even believing that we stood a chance of winning the competition at all. I invite you to follow the link and see if you agree:
Whatever your personal opinion on Roy Keane I think he is spot on.
But lets get this straight. I’m not saying Capello’s World Cup was blemish free and there is no doubting mistakes were made. But how can a manager, regardless of tactics and formations, legislate for his players defending like they did against Germany.
People hark back to squad selection and there seems to be a view that if Adam Johnson had been there instead of SWP or Joe Cole had a few more minutes on the pitch it would have been all so different. Rubbish!!
Our big players failed. Nothing has frustrated me more than people telling me that you can’t play Gerrard on the left because he will always have the tendency to drift in. Slurry!
Have some discipline man and stick to the position you were told to play. The one game he stuck to his role on the left was against Slovenia, our best game of the World Cup.
Of course inquests need to be made and there is clearly something rotten going on with English football. Sacking Capello at this stage is no solution.
In summary my thoughts are thus.
1. The Premier league should be reduced to 18 teams and a winter break established.
2. A limit of foreign players in English teams should be imposed. (impossible to implement I fear)
3. Despite what I have said I want future English managers to be English
4. Thirdly and most importantly our entire youth coaching system needs to be overhauled.
I was recently given a startling statistic which I believe spoke volumes about the problems we face. There are currently in the region of 150 English UEFA A Qualified coaches working in England, about 95% of these coaches are working for professional teams.
Compare this to Spain. They have over 750 similarly qualified coaches with over 600 of these coaches working within schools and education. This goes some way to explain not only the added quantity of Spanish talent coming through but also its vastly superior technical quality.
Money is not the issue as to why these changes cannot be made and anyone who thinks that Capello’s much publicised paycheque is a huge burden on an FA with fantastically bulging pockets is very much mistaken.
The FA is a rudderless ship filled with very few football men and with far too much focus on commercial activity.
When, how and who will make these changes is a matter of much debate and my fear is that as long as the money is flooding in, the only thing England will be able to have any pride in is the quality of its Premier League.
One thought that could be a ray of light for the future. Bobby Robson’s Euro “88 campaign resulted in three dismal defeats in a row, he was still learning as an international manager. Italia “90 went rather better for him. As long as there is air in my lungs I suspect blind faith will usually overcome sound judgement.
But its getting harder and harder to believe.
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