Not the end...
... not for us anyway, we still have two more weeks over here including second-round, quarter-final, semi and final matches involving either Paraguay or whoever ends up beating them, and I'm determined to enjoy myself. But I feel almost duty bound to rake over the ashes of yesterday's limp defeat. Here are a few half-baked theories as to why this World Cup campaign was such a disaster for England:
Over-reliance on one player
Pretty early on, Fabio Capello sussed out that Wayne Rooney was by far our best and most creative player and thus built his formation and team around him. Rooney was by no means alone in being horrendously below par in this tournament, but he was the one player we desperately needed to be on his game. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold etc
Pressure/nerves
England did look nervous against the USA but this could be excused as opening-match syndrome, and we still could have won the game against our most difficult group opponents on paper. Then it was serious rabbit-in-headlights stuff against Algeria, which we never really recovered from. Why is this? These are highly-paid professionals, and Capello is a highly-paid coach who'd seemed to have cured them of this curse of underperforming as soon as they donned the national shirt. But against Algeria we played worse than we ever did under Sven, and possibly even worse than under McClaren (shudder). Other countries surely have media who hype their teams up before the tournaments too, and yet those players seem to be able to cope with such pressure. Baffling.
Too many foreigners in the Premier League
Yeah, that old argument again. Still, the fact remains that very few English players get the opportunity to ply their trade with the biggest English clubs and thus gain the big-match experience required for international level. This argument works when explaining why we have such poor strength in depth. It utterly fails to explain why the likes of Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney etc failed to play to the best of their abilities because they are more than used to playing in key games. Although as I said in an earlier post, in the Prem they are playing week-in week-out with a lot of skilful, sophisticated foreign types, and this may well be a lot easier than playing with each other (so to speak).
English coaching
Kids grow up to believe winning is everything and getting the ball forward is more important than such namby-pamby concepts as retaining possession, being comfortable on the ball, etc. An old argument, and one that will never likely be solved due to jingoistic, entrenched-mentality reasons.
Capello's iron fist (so to speak)
Under Sven in 2006, the players could basically treat the World Cup as an extended holiday complete with full WAG access. Sure we were rubbish in that tournament, but we still somehow got further than we did this year. The players made appreciative noises after their first camp with Fabio about how much more disciplined and focused it was (imagine - everyone sitting down for breakfast at the same time! They weren't complaining about the Sven and Schteve regimes at the time though, one notes). However, previously they've only had to live under Fabio's gaze for a few days at a time. Perhaps living under this regime for a longer period drove them stir crazy and unable to play football properly. Hey, it's a possibility.
Anyway yes, we're out and there are silver linings in that we won't have to drive all those hundreds of miles back to Cape Town, nice though it was, and we will get a refund on our now non-existent England QF and SF tickets. And as I said, we are still in lovely old SA. Although we'll be up in Johannesburg for the next week or so starting tomorrow night, so if anything happens to me you'll know why...
Over-reliance on one player
Pretty early on, Fabio Capello sussed out that Wayne Rooney was by far our best and most creative player and thus built his formation and team around him. Rooney was by no means alone in being horrendously below par in this tournament, but he was the one player we desperately needed to be on his game. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold etc
Pressure/nerves
England did look nervous against the USA but this could be excused as opening-match syndrome, and we still could have won the game against our most difficult group opponents on paper. Then it was serious rabbit-in-headlights stuff against Algeria, which we never really recovered from. Why is this? These are highly-paid professionals, and Capello is a highly-paid coach who'd seemed to have cured them of this curse of underperforming as soon as they donned the national shirt. But against Algeria we played worse than we ever did under Sven, and possibly even worse than under McClaren (shudder). Other countries surely have media who hype their teams up before the tournaments too, and yet those players seem to be able to cope with such pressure. Baffling.
Too many foreigners in the Premier League
Yeah, that old argument again. Still, the fact remains that very few English players get the opportunity to ply their trade with the biggest English clubs and thus gain the big-match experience required for international level. This argument works when explaining why we have such poor strength in depth. It utterly fails to explain why the likes of Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney etc failed to play to the best of their abilities because they are more than used to playing in key games. Although as I said in an earlier post, in the Prem they are playing week-in week-out with a lot of skilful, sophisticated foreign types, and this may well be a lot easier than playing with each other (so to speak).
English coaching
Kids grow up to believe winning is everything and getting the ball forward is more important than such namby-pamby concepts as retaining possession, being comfortable on the ball, etc. An old argument, and one that will never likely be solved due to jingoistic, entrenched-mentality reasons.
Capello's iron fist (so to speak)
Under Sven in 2006, the players could basically treat the World Cup as an extended holiday complete with full WAG access. Sure we were rubbish in that tournament, but we still somehow got further than we did this year. The players made appreciative noises after their first camp with Fabio about how much more disciplined and focused it was (imagine - everyone sitting down for breakfast at the same time! They weren't complaining about the Sven and Schteve regimes at the time though, one notes). However, previously they've only had to live under Fabio's gaze for a few days at a time. Perhaps living under this regime for a longer period drove them stir crazy and unable to play football properly. Hey, it's a possibility.
Anyway yes, we're out and there are silver linings in that we won't have to drive all those hundreds of miles back to Cape Town, nice though it was, and we will get a refund on our now non-existent England QF and SF tickets. And as I said, we are still in lovely old SA. Although we'll be up in Johannesburg for the next week or so starting tomorrow night, so if anything happens to me you'll know why...
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