‘The’ Football
It was vaunted as men against boys. In my experience, whenever I’ve played football against anybody much younger than myself they have run rings round me. And so it was to be…
The Lampard ‘goal’, thankfully didn’t matter, because we’d never have heard the last of it. It would have been the hand of God, Beckham’s red, Ronaldinho’s ‘did-he-mean-it’ and Ronaldo’s wink all rolled into one. The Sun (the newspaper, not the star. Not the newspaper the Star, oh you know what I mean) would have created enough fury that anybody called Miguel or indeed anybody who had even heard of Uruguay would have been killed in the street.
The Germans knew when their luck was in, and decided the best course of action was to revert to efficient, teutonic type and put us out of our misery. We made it easy for them really, not playing a second holding midfielder as almost every other side has in the World Cup. Barry, try as he might to link the play, was overrun. John Terry’s bizarre decision to stride forward like a cockney Beckenbauer was proved foolish when Upson, Johnson and Barry were caught short for the decisive fourth.
The talk will be of technique, superior foreigners, where are the academies, the up and coming youngsters? Most of it is nonsense. Technique does not win football matches, as anyone who watched Watford/Wimbledon in the 80s and 90s will agree. The thing England lack is organisation (if Capello cannot organise the side then who can) and discpline. The discipline sorely lacking in Gerrards 50 yard Hollywood passes to the advertising hoardings, sorely lacking in Terry’s lope up the park with 20 minutes left leaving his defensive partner alone and lost, and the discipline to play as a team rather than the bunch of mismatched individuals.
In today’s Daily Mirror, one of the ex players leading the inquest was one Stan Collymore. Stan enlightened us that it was technique, the ability to play one and two touch football at speed, that was lacking. He gave examples, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Germany and er, Croatia. The same Croatia who exhibited such sparkling style to concede 9 times against the heavy footed neanderthal England in the qualifiers.
We always think we are either the best team in the world, or the worst. We are neither.
