Apologies for the change of url (if that's the correct geeky term) but as this is my sports blog I thought it a suitable place to vent my splenetic juices on the England football team.
Yesterday's embarrassing World Cup second round exit to Germany will be remembered as one of the more severe spankings that an England side has taken at a major international tournament. The usual hard luck stories, controversial red cards and skied penalties do not apply, as Fabio Capello's side slumped to a 4-1 thrashing. Yes, Frank Lampard had a perfectly good goal disallowed, but to blame our demise on that is to apply a generous amount of papering over some gargantuan cracks.
But why were we so bad? Common perception has it (i.e. anyone who works for Sky) that the English Premier League is the best in the world. It's top sides regularly appear in the latter stages of European club competition, with 2009/10 being the first season since 2003/04 that an English side did not appear in the Champions League final. Even the mid-table sides fare well, with a previously unheralded Fulham side going all the way to this season's ludicrously re-branded Europa League final.
Yet look a little deeper and the disparity between success at club and international level becomes clearer. Just eight of England's 23-man squad come from the so called 'Big Four' who have dominated the Champions League in recent years, and one of those is Michael Carrick! So sparse is our actual talent pool that Capello saw fit to recall the previously retired Jamie Carragher following an injury to Rio Ferdinand, and the Italian also narrowly failed to persuade Paul Scholes to follow Carragher back into the fold.
Carragher's recall seems all the more baffling when you consider that Capello preferred to select Ledley King for the tournament opener against the USA. Continued comparisons between King and former Manchester United alcoholic Paul McGrath are too absurd to comment on, with the only similarity seemingly the amount of knee injuries sustained since a week last Friday. At least McGrath can say he was pissed when he fell over. King is the most over-rated human being since Jeremy Clarkson, but he is not alone in this squad.
We've known for a while now that midfield duo Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard have more of a rivalry than a partnership. They are about as likely a couple as Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, yet still Capello persists with the pair. Compounding this error is the selection of Gareth Barry, a man so coveted by such luminaries as Rafa Benitez and Mark Hughes, but who spent much of last season making Xabi Alonso look like Johann Cruyff. The miserable sight of him chasing back in vein prior to Germany's fourth goal is an image that will take some time to erase from the memory.
While Capello has made some errors in judgement (and we haven't even mentioned the introduction of goal-shy cart-horse Emile Heskey in place of Jermain Defoe when England needed three goals in 15 minutes to stay alive), the players themelves must take some responsibility. John Terry should be charged with deception following his lame impersonation of a world class central defender, but the real damage caused by the Chelsea man is that which follows his frequent and increasingly pointless media outbursts. The latest of these saw Terry lobbying for the inclusion of Joe Cole, an act which seemed to have the opposite effect on the notoriously stubborn Capello.
As for the rest of the defensive line Matthew Upson was simply out of his depth, while Glen Johnson has never been a defender. All of which leaves us with Ashley Cole who, while reasonably steady defensively, offered nothing in support of Gerrard in attack and hardly justifies his English media tag as the best left back in the world. What world? Not this one.
Further forward, Wayne Rooney is still missing, no doubt reeling from the power-sapping effect of having been told not to swear at anyone. It's yet another boring truism to suggest that Rooney is not the same player if he has to keep his mouth shut. He hears it so often from the media and the fans that it is little wonder that he actually believes it himself. The phrase 'self-fulfilling prophecy' springs to mind.
The cold, uncomfortable truth is that England are not even a miniscule percentage as good as they think they are. They have players who are plainly uncomfortable in possession of the ball, while there is also not enough pace in the team. James Milner crossed the ball well at times, but can no more run past a full-back than I can, while speedsters Aaron Lennon and Shaun Wright-Phillips have all the end product of a Liberal Democrat manifesto. If you can bear to watch the whole fiasco again, notice the way the England players' first thought in possession is to move the ball back or sideways. Posession is lost when the ball goes forward, sometimes quite intentionally it seems as Emile chases another long, lost cause.
Most right-thinking football followers have agreed over the last 24 hours that England were and are way off the mark, but the distressing thing is that nothing will change. The same people who are up in arms about the defeat will go back to fretting about their chosen club sides in a matter of weeks, and will soon be treating England matches as annoying pauses in the bread and butter that is their league season. As fans we only care for a few weeks every two years, so how can we expect the players to care any more than that? Wayne Rooney's complaints at being booed following the depressing Algeria draw show clearly how disillusioned some of our players are with playing for their country. He later apologised, but the outburst is a clear sign that club football will always be the priority.
Unlike many I don't think Capello should go just yet. I would give him until the next European Championships in 2012 to put things right. He could start by ridding the squad of some of it's superstars and instead work on giving younger, hungrier players an opportunity. Yet as this is a results based business this seems unlikely. A switch to an inexperienced line-up now may be for the greater good long term, but it would place qualification for Euro 2012 in jeopardy. Like it or not, the manager who fails to guide England to a major tournament finals does not remain in the job for very long. Witness Steve McClaren, sacked by England and labelled the Wally with the Brolly for missing out on Euro 2008, but a man with enough nous to subsequently win a championship in Holland before landing a job with former German champions Wolfsburg.
And so to the good news. Only 47 days to go until the start of the new Premier League season, when we can all forget about Germany and bury our heads once more in the sand about our status as a football super power.
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