Inside Left

THE immortal phrase “they think it’s all over now” certainly passed my lips when Barry, at fault for the third goal, slipped up to allow Ozil to pass him on his way to the touchline. When the ball was fired across the area, Mueller was left with a simple tap-in that even Chris Iwelumo could have scored.  They thought it was all over? It certainly was then.

The fourth goal proved the undoing for England. Without the personnel on the pitch or the inspiration from the dugout (didn’t Beckham look like a forlorn and frankly useless addition to the bench?) England’s campaign whimpered to a halt. Together with Mexico, who would be knocked out later on the same day by a rampant Argentina (the team that they’d would have faced if they’d beaten West Germany) England would be heading for the airport.

England’s hope-giving qualifying campaign proved to be no indication of the football on display once Capello’s side took to the pitch.  With the exception of Andora, England played a few teams that would not have looked out of place in South Africa. Ukraine, Belarus and Croatia are not easy sides (comparable, IMHO, with the likes of Slovakia and Japan who did qualify) but they where easily dispatched. Capello’s side scored 34 goals in qualifying, more than any other team taking part in the festivities in South Africa.

Once in South Africa, their opening games proved a damp squib, with only 1 win from three games and only Steven Gerrard and Jermain Defoe getting on the score card. The team had selection problems right from the get-go. Robert Green’s howler against USA proved his undoing, Rio Ferdinand was injured before a ball was even kicked in anger.

The selection of Emile Heskey, a striker whose six goals last season made many non-Aston Villa fans scratch their head, while Gareth Barry had a niggling ankle injury which cast doubts – and correctly, as it turned out – over his fitness and readiness. Like most nations rich in talent up the park, the English goalkeeping problem, a worry for Capello pretty much since he took charge proved well-founded. Green had a howler against the USA forcing Capello to recall the ageing (and not always reliable) James back to the squad.

Wayne Rooney never got going, failing to score and failing to impress. And John Terry, the former England captain, is never one to shy away from controversy – his press conference following the 0-0 draw with Algeria in which he hinted at unhappiness in the camp probably had more fire to it than the smoke suggested, and his campaigning for the inclusion of Joe Cole in the squad for the final crunch game against Slovenia suggested all was not well at Team England.

Capello’s training tactics and general camp regime, in a complete reverse from Steve McLaren’s casual, chummy approach, was too much for some of the stars of English football to bear, with Wayne Rooney and John Terry both complaining of boredom.

Following ‘clear the air’ discussions, England picked up the pieces to put in a much improved performance against Slovenia. The narrow win didn’t reflect the dominance the English held for most of the game, but, to paraphrase Bruce Forsyth, you get nothing in this game for style. A win by a single goal is as good as a 7-0 trashing.  Perhaps somewhat embarrassingly, the USA topped the group on goal scored – four, compared to England’s two.

But while football is all about winning, there’s something to be said for history, national pride, a little bit of jingoism and rivalry. And the way this campaign was going, England entered the second round with enough grudges and chips on the shoulders to last them a lifetime. In beating Germany, their opponents in the next round, they would ease Southgate’s, Pearce’s and Waddle’s penalty pains. In beating Argentina in the quarter-finals, the hand of God would finally be firmly slapped.

But in the end, history just didn’t motivate enough. The scale of the eventual defeat took many pundits by surprise. Germany had not been impressive themselves, the 4-0 win over Australia being nothing out of the ordinary given the gulf in class between the teams. Against Serbia and Ghana, Germany faced tougher opposition, and the usually machine-like ‘manschaft’ looked like they needed some WD-40.

Unfortunately for England, it all clicked into place for the Germans on Sunday. “Germany knock out dismal England” ran the headlines. The thing is, England where not dismal, Germany where just better. But it’s easier to put Germany on a pedestal, because that makes the defeat just that bit easier to bear.

Until the third goal went in, I actually thought England where the more likely to score. They where firmly encamped in Germany’s half, had a few chances on goal (with Lampard hitting the crossbar) and just looked a little more hungry for the goal. But a bad free kick, a Barry error and a lighting-fast (can I say “Blitzkrieg”?) break from defence later and the game was all over.  In the end, England where well beaten. The fourth goal  was the type scored against a team that had just given up – acres of space down the sideline, acres of space in front of goal and a big empty net to fire it into.

Almost immediately after the game, the calls for Capello’s resignation started. Or, at least, the questions about his future started. But this is a typical response from a team from whom so much more was expected. Incompetent referees, an unpredictable ball, vuvuzelas only get you so far, but at the end of the day the team failed to perform.

Inevitably talk was of a major crisis in English football, something that needs to be turned around if England are to make any progress on the World stage. Let the inquisition begin.

It’s an interesting parallel to the problem facing Scottish football at the moment, as The Scottish Football Blog pointed out. There are many differences between football north and south of the border, but both can agree that things need to change if either team is to be a force on the international stage.

Here we’ve had the McLeish report, an attempt at identifying and addressing the challenges facing present and future state of Scottish football. If the English FA are to go down the same path then you have to hope that the report that may  eventually be produced will not die the same quick and silent death that the McLeish report did.

Some of the issues that have been identified are obvious: too many foreign players and managers in the top teams (true), too many highly paid primadonnas who care more about the bottom line than the goal line (also true), not enough competition (they should check out the SPL, the home of one-sided competitions), and so on.

The funny thing is that England are actually a pretty decent side, let down in this case by bad selection choices, some bad PR and some terrible bad luck (not to mention karma). It’s a typical knee-jerk reaction to fire Capello, and it is also easy to blame the players, but really neither are exclusively at fault.  Like the Scottish national side, the English national side have been in a slow descent for some time now; the rate of descent is a lot lower than that of Scotland, but both are heading in the same direction unless that decline can be halted somehow.

In Scotland, the answer is a “Back to Basics” approach. Grass-roots football, investment in youth, investment in health, diet, education, coaching and facilities are seen as the way forward. If you where to take the McLeish report and do a global find/replace for “Scotland” to “England”, you may actually get somewhere, and the McLeish report would probably find more a receptive audience than in Scotland because there’s a product there that people want and that sponsors are willing to pay for.

The FA, in a move designed to inspire confidence in their manager are considering their options over the next two weeks, as is Fabio Capello, quite possibly. Calls for an ‘English’ manager have started again, but it’s hard to see who that could be. Harry Redknapp is oft quoted, but he’s got more skeletons in the cupboard than Jeffrey Dahmer. Roy Hodgson is off to Liverpool, and .. well, and who then?

The simple fact is that England should hang on to Capello. There’s no doubt he’s a decent manager, and given time to build he could work wonders. The Golden Generation of footballers should be ditched in favour of younger, hungrier players for whom putting on an England shirt against Algeria is as much of a big deal as putting on an England shirt and playing Brazil, Germany or Argentina.

And lastly, English fans should take a long hard look at themselves. England expects, and all that, but the gulf between expectations and reality on the pitch can seem very wide at times. Scottish fans have learned not to expect too much, starved of anything resembling success as we have been, but your average England fan still has an expectation and belief that English football is simply the best, which is not altogether unreasonable given that we’re told often enough it is by the hysterical media.

Perhaps this is the one good thing to come out of this World Cup campaign. A dose of cold, hard reality.

Whether anything will change remains to be seen. Whether the FA has the courage to even see the problems in English football remains to be seen also. Firing Capello is a relatively cheap option, compared to upsetting the apple cart and making the sorts of changes that English football needs to get it back to the point where it can go into a major competition with a self belief that’s not buttressed by talk of 1966 or images of Pearce’s tears.

The problem with the FA – and this goes for the Scottish FA also – is that football is not run by realists or even football fans. It is run by narcissistic administrators whose priority is not the technical welfare of the game, but rather good PR, increased sponsorship and TV deals.  And while the nation may be clamoring for change, the FA may well ignore the calls, look the other way and choose the path of least resistance.  The narcissist needs no audience, just a mirror.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.