Well, that was embarrassing.\u00a0 The highlight of England’s world cup is therefore a 1-0 win over Slovenia, whose population is less than 2m and most people confuse it with Slovakia.<\/p>\n
It was a good game to watch without a doubt, especially with England coming right back into the game after Germany inexplicably fell asleep immediately after the second goal.\u00a0 They will need to learn to stay awake for 90 minutes if they want to win this thing for the fourth time (unless we cruelly suggest that West Germany, which no longer exists, was an altogether different country).\u00a0\u00a0 I was glad that the game ended 4-1 rather than 2-1, because had Lampard’s disallowed goal been the only thing dividing the two sides, we’d have four years of deluded English fans saying “We woz robbed!” and assuming they’d have won the inevitable penalty shoot out to go on and win the tournament, completely forgetting the generally woeful football that England have played in South Africa.<\/p>\n
And woeful it was.\u00a0 Despite some good attacking play, a few good chances, and the two goals (allowed or nay), England were outplayed for most of the match, and the word doesn’t even do justice to how the Gemans took apart the English defence.\u00a0 Who was supposed to be marking Muller when he scored their third goal?\u00a0 “World class” Ashley Cole that’s who: Muller was standing all on his own and had time to tie his bootlaces before belting in the shot that put the game completly beyond England.\u00a0 So where was he? Standing about with the central defenders, watching on helplessly.\u00a0 England’s defence never held its position properly and were embarrassingly outpaced on the break.\u00a0 And as for their positioning before the first goal – which would have pleased anyone who had the German keeper in their fantasy league team and picked up unlikely points for a goal assist – the less said the better.\u00a0 What I will say is credit to Klose for staying on his feet under Upson’s challenge.\u00a0 He could have gone to ground and won the free kick; he didn’t, and scored the opening goal instead.<\/p>\n
No doubt there will be dozens of calls for lessons to be learned from this beating, but alas I fear the wrong ones will be learned for the umpteenth time.\u00a0 Take this piece of commentary<\/a> from the BBC’s live feed:<\/p>\n You know, man for man, no-one will never, ever convince me that this Germany team has this much more ability in it than the England one. But the likes of Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Gareth Barry just haven’t turned up. It’s hard to fathom why.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, yeah.\u00a0 That’s the biggest problem the whole country has.\u00a0 Nobody will ever be convinced that the players are not all Peles, Beckenbauers and Zidanes who mysteriously fail to play like them on every occasion.\u00a0 Until the scales fall from your eyes and you realise that the players are really very ordinary then it’s always going to be “hard to fathom why” they got run off the park by a team of not-so-ordinary Germans.<\/p>\n Mark Lawrenson wasn’t any better in his analysis:<\/p>\n When they come away with England, something happens to these very good players. They play as a collection of individuals, not a team.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If only they did!\u00a0 At least then we might have seen some good individual performances in a disjointed team.\u00a0 Instead we had rubbish individual performances in a disjointed team, hence the 4-1 thrashing.\u00a0 The players are not very good, and the results prove it time and again.<\/p>\n Garth Crooks is another who doesn’t get it and is fervently searching for some other explanation:<\/p>\n I’m in shock. I can’t believe we’ve seen some of the best players in the world, performing on the biggest stage of the world, not performing at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Not so shocking if you understand they are not and never were some of the best players in the world.<\/p>\n Chris Waddle gets it:<\/p>\n Why don’t the FA look at other countries and say ‘how do they keep producing this talent?’ Where is our Plan B? We haven’t got one. The back four can’t control the ball, can’t pass, we lack so many ideas it’s frustrating.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yup.\u00a0 It’s back to the drawing board.\u00a0 Burgle a German sperm bank and start building for FIFA 2034.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, that was embarrassing.\u00a0 The highlight of England’s world cup is therefore a 1-0 win over Slovenia, whose population is less than 2m and most people confuse it with Slovakia. It was a good game to watch without a doubt, … Continue reading