Time for some football ramblings...
I said before the World Championship that the English should be lucky if they get past the group stage, and they were. Playing games so badly that they may have been the worst team to watch in the tournament they didn’t deserve to go through to get outplayed by Germany.
The English team is by far the most overrated national team on home soil I can think off. They have one decent attacker, a half winger, a poorly put together midfield and a stubby defense. Why do English people think they can win anything?
Is it the coach fault? To some degree yes, but no-one can do magical spells to transform mediocre overpaid players into a killing machine that wins tournaments.
As a Swede maybe someone thinks I should elevate Sven-Göran Eriksson, but I won’t. I give him an okay period and on a couple of occasions the English team can blame bad luck for not going further in previous tournaments under my countryman’s leadership. He did squeeze the best out the team on a couple of occasions and should be remembered as doing an okay job, but as said, no-one can transform a bad team into champions.
If you were to put together a football team and had unlimited resources – how many English players would make it? I wouldn’t choose a single one. Maybe Rooney would make it to the bench, maybe, but otherwise? And this is the problem, not the coach. I can find players in pretty much every national team on the planet that, depending on how you put together the team, would be considered. But not one from the English team.
Owen Hargreaves is the only decent defensive midfielder, but I can easily count 30-40 players that surpass him. John Terry at his peak might break into a top ten list of defenders, but certainly won’t today. Gerrard and Lampard are good midfielders but both rely heavily on teammates and need support, what English player can provide that? The goalkeepers are competent but I can find competent goalies in Estonia without even trying. Worse still is the right and left midfield. When did a English side have a really good player on either of those positions? Beckham is the only one that comes to mind over a 20y period - he was an excellent complement always doing his job, always running and doing what he does best, but he was never someone to build a team on.
The big teams of the world can muster two, maybe three whole teams that wouldn’t disappoint. England cannot produce one. So why the hell does the English people think so highly of their national side? Because of the Premiership? Who are the best players and coaches there again...? The average English side knows how to kick, run and fight through a game and they do it very well. Passing? Technique? Not so much. England has 50 teams that do perform pretty well, but could never surmount to anything else but “pretty well”. The three, four or five top teams are excellent but mainly so because of foreign imports, foreign coaches and foreign tactics. And how many really good goal scorers are English in the entire English league system? 2? 3? Even my country Sweden has better attackers.
To change this three things need to be done.
Firstly get a National Team coach that can build for the future. Capello is a great coach, but not someone to rely on to build a team 5-6y into the future. This is the reason he should leave, not because the national side is horrible at the moment. Arsene Wenger would be perfect. Maybe Ferguson despite his age. And both the people and the press need to see this and get behind it. Maybe the national team will lose half of the games in the beginning. So what? Build for the future and let them do it. See it for what it is and fuck the upcoming European championship 2012. If you get there, fine, but if not it’s not the whole world. You’re not good enough to win it anyway, start with the crying when you actually have a chance.
Secondly English players need to get out in the world. Premier league may be one of the best leagues in the world, but English players need to gain experience, get new influences and see new things. I cannot mention a single English player outside the British Isles. This must change! Send a couple of youngsters to Ajax, Barcelona, Werder Bremen or Bocca Juniors, they know how to build good players. Send coaches and entire teams out in the world every summer to learn and experience new things. Take what is good and bring it home and adopt it to the English mentality. And stop paying ridiculous sums for mediocre players. An English player whose equals you can find on the continent for a third of the price isn’t worth it just because he’s English. Too much national pride, too much elevation for the English players. They are not good enough. Face it and change it.
And third, find the heart again. Even when British teams are not so good they have, historically, still managed to fight, run and bring a huge heart to the game which can rock any team. Attitude, fighting spirit and heart can take you very far. English players will never be better than Brazilians comes to technique or better then Italians comes to defense. You also lack some organization which is why Nordic and German teams still beat you again and again. But with new influences, new training tactics, more players out in the world and with a team built for the future that extra beating heart can make you win trophies.
Lastly I need to really point out that many people laugh at you every time it comes to world championship and both the English players and press thinks you can win the tournament. It’s ridiculous and has so been for decades. You’re not good enough. Most of the world’s pundits outside Britain know this - get real. Even the best teams take a game at the time. Some players may mention holding the trophy, but mentally they prepare for their next opponent, not a distant final. Probably the best thing Sven-Göran actually said and did and probably also why he wasn’t so liked in the end. He’s a realist and takes things step by step. The English seem to think the team should prepare for the final even before the tournament starts. Idiots.
