So, the sun did come up this morning after all. The world didn't end. Big surprise that, at least if you've read a British tabloid newspaper today following England's knackerless performance against a comtemptuous German side yesterday. Inevitably, after the shock comes the anger, the frustration and the thirst for answers and for change. Three posts by my friends on the Gallifrey Base World Cup Thread neatly sum up many of the problems that we face. I hope the lads in question don't mind if I quote them, here:
Firstly, there's DoctorWho2010 who gave the following reaction: "I can't defend or pick a single good player for England today. Awful. Never seen something so bad (except Algeria). Shocking, shocking, shocking ... I would drop every single member who played this summer. I'd keep Milner and Lennon though. Give the U21s a chance. FA need to develop new talent and fast. They need a serious look at themselves and how the manage grassroots. Capello - I don't think he did much wrong I honestly think it's mostly due to the players ... Also I would have taken Agbonlahor. That game was crying out for a striker other than the options we had - I can't believe Heskey [came] on, we needed goals and needed Defoe on. Rooney should have been subbed. But if Crouch came on then they would only play the long ball.'
Some very good sentiments there and I know there's a temptation to throw out the baby with the bathwater but, as another poster - Peter - noted ...
"Am really quite cheesed off with the post match interviews with the England team, especially John 'I couldn't be arsed' Terry with his 'If we'd gone in at half time 2-2, then we would definitely have swung the game back our way...' REALLY? Don't you recall your defence torn asunder again and again and again? No doubt Rooney, Lampard, Gerrard, Terry et al will be blindly followed again next year at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and Anfield, being praised as the best thing since sliced bread - how soon we forget."
To which Primord replied: "They play a million times better for their clubs than they ever do in international games. Rooney looked relieved at the end of today's match, almost as if he was thinking 'Thank goodness this rubbish is over with and we get to go home tomorrow.'"
And this is part of the problem. Lampard, Terry and Cole (just for example) play in a club side that would, in all likelihood, have given Germany a far closer game than England did yesterday. Because they've got a Czech in goal, a Portuguese centre-half alongside Terry (who would never have played as badly as Upson did) and assorted Ivory Coasties, Germans, Brazilians, Argentines, Nigerians and Frenchmen in the team as well.
Same with The Scum and The Arse, and the Thieving Scouse Schleps and, in fact, Notlob Wanderers or Aston Villains or West Hamster United or even my beloved (though unsellable) Magpies for that matter. You will be lucky, next season, to find an English Premier league team that regularly lines up with more than six Englishmen in their first team. This globalisation and multinational corporate branding has made English football the envy of the world. It is watched by, even conservative estimates suggest, over a billion people across the globe every week and our club sides do - moderately - well in the Champions League (certainly on a par with, if not better than, Bundesliga clubs as well as Serie A and La Liga). But it means that the international pool of players we've got to chose from has dwindled. And, if you think that's bad, have a look at the academy sides of most Premier League clubs. Take mine, for instance. Last year, Newcastle's under eighteens got to the quarter finals of the FA Youth Cup and finished second in the Northern area U18 league. A pretty good season. Half of the team, for one reason or another, aren't qualified to play for England. I imagine, if you go to most clubs, you'll find a similar story. Arsenal's policy of 'find as many teenage Frenchmen as you can' or Moscow Chelski FC's scouring of the African continent for young talent has brought both clubs much success. But where's the next generation of the England team going to come from? Crewe? Hartlepool? It's not just a problem that affects England either. Look at Italy - Inter Milan are the current European Champions and featured a side in the final against Bayern Munich which included a grand total of zero Italians (one, Materazzi, came on a substitute twenty seconds before the final whistle).
The sad fact is, right now, right at this moment, the twenty three players currently packing to come home from South Africa probably are the best twenty three English players in England. Certainly, twenty three of the best, say thirty five. This 'drop the lot and play the kids' idea works well in theory but I don't imagine for a second that Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, Jack Rodwell, Fabrice Muamba, Jack Wilshere, Andy Carroll or Tom Cleverley would've done any better than Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney et al, and if you do, I believe you're mistaken. They're young and full of piss and vineger, they might've run about a bit more, but the gulf in class would've been the same, if not greater.
So, next year, I confidently expect The Scum and Moscow Chelski FC will be the top two in the Premier League and will probably both end up in the last four of the Champions League again. One of them might even win it this time. And that Rooney and Lampard will be scoring for fun again Stoke, Fulham, Newcastle, Blackpool and West Brom. Although I doubt Emile Heskey will do the same. I fully expect that when England start their Euro 2012 campaign against Bulgaria in September, the squad will be largely the same as the World Cup squad no matter whom the coach is. Maybe Hart will be in goal. Maybe Dawson might be tried at centre-half, but there won't be massive changes because there simply aren't the players to make massive changes with. And, I fully expect that England will probably sail through their qualification group, winning a lot of very boring matches 2-0 and that in two years time we'll all be sitting here talking about, largely, the same set of players and can they do it 'this time.' And they won't. Because nothing has changed. And nothing will change. And in 2016, Baddiel and Skinner will be rerecording 'Three Lions' again and this time they'll be changing the lyrics to 'fifty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming.'
For better or worse, Sky's injection of loadsmoney into the English game, the Bosman ruling and the Premier League's fast developing greed have combined to give us the most exciting, entertaining and rich football league in the world. And, a national side that, probably unconsciously, thinks a Wednesday night Champions League tie between Chelsea and Real Madrid is a far greater reflection of a World Cup final than the actual World Cup final. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the realities of English football in the Twenty First Century. We have become the victims of a trap of our own making. And football, generally, is the loser.
Firstly, there's DoctorWho2010 who gave the following reaction: "I can't defend or pick a single good player for England today. Awful. Never seen something so bad (except Algeria). Shocking, shocking, shocking ... I would drop every single member who played this summer. I'd keep Milner and Lennon though. Give the U21s a chance. FA need to develop new talent and fast. They need a serious look at themselves and how the manage grassroots. Capello - I don't think he did much wrong I honestly think it's mostly due to the players ... Also I would have taken Agbonlahor. That game was crying out for a striker other than the options we had - I can't believe Heskey [came] on, we needed goals and needed Defoe on. Rooney should have been subbed. But if Crouch came on then they would only play the long ball.'
Some very good sentiments there and I know there's a temptation to throw out the baby with the bathwater but, as another poster - Peter - noted ...
"Am really quite cheesed off with the post match interviews with the England team, especially John 'I couldn't be arsed' Terry with his 'If we'd gone in at half time 2-2, then we would definitely have swung the game back our way...' REALLY? Don't you recall your defence torn asunder again and again and again? No doubt Rooney, Lampard, Gerrard, Terry et al will be blindly followed again next year at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and Anfield, being praised as the best thing since sliced bread - how soon we forget."
To which Primord replied: "They play a million times better for their clubs than they ever do in international games. Rooney looked relieved at the end of today's match, almost as if he was thinking 'Thank goodness this rubbish is over with and we get to go home tomorrow.'"
And this is part of the problem. Lampard, Terry and Cole (just for example) play in a club side that would, in all likelihood, have given Germany a far closer game than England did yesterday. Because they've got a Czech in goal, a Portuguese centre-half alongside Terry (who would never have played as badly as Upson did) and assorted Ivory Coasties, Germans, Brazilians, Argentines, Nigerians and Frenchmen in the team as well.
Same with The Scum and The Arse, and the Thieving Scouse Schleps and, in fact, Notlob Wanderers or Aston Villains or West Hamster United or even my beloved (though unsellable) Magpies for that matter. You will be lucky, next season, to find an English Premier league team that regularly lines up with more than six Englishmen in their first team. This globalisation and multinational corporate branding has made English football the envy of the world. It is watched by, even conservative estimates suggest, over a billion people across the globe every week and our club sides do - moderately - well in the Champions League (certainly on a par with, if not better than, Bundesliga clubs as well as Serie A and La Liga). But it means that the international pool of players we've got to chose from has dwindled. And, if you think that's bad, have a look at the academy sides of most Premier League clubs. Take mine, for instance. Last year, Newcastle's under eighteens got to the quarter finals of the FA Youth Cup and finished second in the Northern area U18 league. A pretty good season. Half of the team, for one reason or another, aren't qualified to play for England. I imagine, if you go to most clubs, you'll find a similar story. Arsenal's policy of 'find as many teenage Frenchmen as you can' or Moscow Chelski FC's scouring of the African continent for young talent has brought both clubs much success. But where's the next generation of the England team going to come from? Crewe? Hartlepool? It's not just a problem that affects England either. Look at Italy - Inter Milan are the current European Champions and featured a side in the final against Bayern Munich which included a grand total of zero Italians (one, Materazzi, came on a substitute twenty seconds before the final whistle).The sad fact is, right now, right at this moment, the twenty three players currently packing to come home from South Africa probably are the best twenty three English players in England. Certainly, twenty three of the best, say thirty five. This 'drop the lot and play the kids' idea works well in theory but I don't imagine for a second that Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, Jack Rodwell, Fabrice Muamba, Jack Wilshere, Andy Carroll or Tom Cleverley would've done any better than Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney et al, and if you do, I believe you're mistaken. They're young and full of piss and vineger, they might've run about a bit more, but the gulf in class would've been the same, if not greater.
So, next year, I confidently expect The Scum and Moscow Chelski FC will be the top two in the Premier League and will probably both end up in the last four of the Champions League again. One of them might even win it this time. And that Rooney and Lampard will be scoring for fun again Stoke, Fulham, Newcastle, Blackpool and West Brom. Although I doubt Emile Heskey will do the same. I fully expect that when England start their Euro 2012 campaign against Bulgaria in September, the squad will be largely the same as the World Cup squad no matter whom the coach is. Maybe Hart will be in goal. Maybe Dawson might be tried at centre-half, but there won't be massive changes because there simply aren't the players to make massive changes with. And, I fully expect that England will probably sail through their qualification group, winning a lot of very boring matches 2-0 and that in two years time we'll all be sitting here talking about, largely, the same set of players and can they do it 'this time.' And they won't. Because nothing has changed. And nothing will change. And in 2016, Baddiel and Skinner will be rerecording 'Three Lions' again and this time they'll be changing the lyrics to 'fifty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming.'
For better or worse, Sky's injection of loadsmoney into the English game, the Bosman ruling and the Premier League's fast developing greed have combined to give us the most exciting, entertaining and rich football league in the world. And, a national side that, probably unconsciously, thinks a Wednesday night Champions League tie between Chelsea and Real Madrid is a far greater reflection of a World Cup final than the actual World Cup final. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the realities of English football in the Twenty First Century. We have become the victims of a trap of our own making. And football, generally, is the loser.
