England’s Exit – My opinion.
Well its probably been one of the worst England performance in a World Cup for quite some time. Maybe the worst. With so many quality players in our squad, to go out in the last 16, and in the manner we did, is nothing short of disgraceful. I hate to be one of the “i told you so” brigade, actually, no, i love it really! I think the writing was already on the wall a bit, and that was before the finals even started.
I think what is essential now is for a complete overhaul of the national team, on and off the pitch.
I don’t blame Capello fully. Look at his credentials, he hasn’t become a bad manager overnight. It’s about time the players started taking the blame. However the manager needs to realise that this current team is now over the hill. They may have wanted to win, but they didn’t want it enough. What I would like to see is Capello (providing he’s still here in the future) selecting young players who will run around and actually look half interested when they play for their country. After the last couple of weeks I don’t think the “experience” argument is valid anymore. This was meant to be our most experienced team we’ve taken to a cup in a while, and was on average more experienced than many of the “big guns” in the competition. What did it achieve though? F*ck all. Most of those players were not good enough in their prime and still not good enough now so why stick with them?
I believe that the main problems come from this current crop of senior players. It’s not down to the youth set-up, we reached the final of the European U21′s last time round and the U-17′s won their version. How many of our players actually finished the season in form? Rooney, and that was it. Rooney had a poor tournament, but can you blame him? He didn’t exactly have people around him who were giving him the ball and creating space.
One gripe I have about the set-up off the pitch though is this. Whose idea was it to offer Capello a new contract days before the finals began? Where is the sense in that? Say Capello had a poor tournament full of mistakes, tactical errors etc, they wouldn’t even be able to sack him without paying him off millions. Part of me thinks that’s why he did it, to give himself a little insurance. Mark Lawrensen made a very good point during the Germany game on Sunday. Why not give the manager a tournament by tournament contract based on performance? Or better still put them on a rolling contract?
Of course such things would require big changes at the top and for the FA bosses to actually use some common sense and make brave decisions. I won’t be holding my breath though!
Thanks for reading,
Adam.
