World Cup: England – an inquest

Why is it always such torture watching England at the World Cup?

So here we are once more. This was an England performance from the darkest days of brolly wallyness and turnip faced coaches.

England were insipid, awful, incoherent, uninspired, unenthusiastic. It was a performance to match anything that France could offer.

They now need to beat Slovenia to qualify for the last 16, unlikely on current form. They certainly don’t deserve it.

After the final whistle, England were roundly booed by their fans and the cameras picked up this comment from Wayne Rooney:

Nice to see your own fans booing you. That’s what loyal support is all about.

I’ll leave it to you to make your own judgement on that and begin the inquest.

What is going wrong?

In this tournament England resemble a mortally wounded animal. You want to put them out of their misery but can’t quite bring yourself to do the deed.

The media will be quick to criticise Fabio Capello and his choice of tactics and selection. Yet those pundits who scream for a change of formation that would see Gerrard support lone-striker Rooney are the same ones who praised England’s tactics during the qualifying campaign. Nothing much has changed tactically since then yet it is no longer working.

Gerrard played that position for Liverpool last season, and Reds fans will tell you that it was less than successful. If we also accept that Rooney is jaded and struggling then asking him to play a lone role is not a smart move.

There will be claims that the disciplinarian ways of Capello are inhibiting and dividing the squad. There could be truth in this, but it’s not as if England’s Premier League stars have never experienced this before (Sir Alex anyone?) and even if they haven’t they ought to be proffessional enough to handle it.

Has something happened to fracture the togetherness of the squad? The John Terry scandal fits the bill nicely, but surely the importance of a World Cup should overcome personal differences.

Are the players burnt out after the combined terrors of domestic and European season? Could be, but this hasn’t been a problem for other nations. Conversely, England don’t have the advantage of a winter break to refresh their bodies and souls.

Has the media criticism after the USA match affected the morale of the squad? Again it’s possible, but equally possible would be the fostering of a “we’ll show ‘em” siege mentality.

These are questions to which there can be no answers until the presses start whirring on those oh-so informative World Cup diaries.

But the problems go beyond the here and now. The performance against Algeria was so bad that the blame cannot lie entirely with Capello. Raymond Domenech should accept the blame for France’s troubles, but he has had six years to achieve that level of ineptitude. Things do not go wrong as quickly as they have for England without other underlying problems being at play.

The bigger picture

If we look back at the England team over the last two decades, there are two moments that stand out. Italia ‘90 and Euro ‘96.

In both of these tournaments the team clicked to produce a run to the semi-finals. In 1990 England were able to capitalize on media criticism by creating a siege mentality, and benefited from a change of tactics midway through. In 1996, home advantage counted for a lot and England had a settled team riding a wave of national optimism. Both times Paul Gascoigne played a major role.

Much of the rest of the time England have flattered to deceive, putting in the odd good performance amid many indifferent and a number of poor ones.

What was the difference? There is no single answer to this, rather a combination of factors and circumstances that bring a team together.

When things are going badly for England, they are very often quick to forget the basics – passing, ball control, intelligent movement. They suddenly become sloppy, and are an easy target for criticism because the problems are so easy to pinpoint. Other teams often appear at a glance to be doing the same things they normally do but just lack a certain something extra – see Spain v Switzerland for an example.

Defensively they are less affected, and very rarely get thrashed. Instead it is always going forward that causes them to struggle, as they become pedestrian and predictable. Think of the matches against Sweden in 1992, Germany in 2000 and Croatia in 2007.

This is a trend that highlights a fundamental flaw in English football. Our game has always, from the very beginning, been about hustle and bustle, the Victorian ideals of robust manliness. It imbues our players, our coaching and our fans.

This doesn’t mean that technique and intelligent movement are not important within English football, but they are not the core values that are instilled in the formative years.

The Premier League is a shining example of this. Yes there are great players from all four corners of the globe who bring great skill, but the defining attribute is tempo.

Some matches are played in such a fury of pressing and intensive chasing that certain skills become almost impossible. The media trumpet it as proof of the best league in the world and it is how the average fan prefers it.

So much so that patient buildup play is often derided. When Wayne Rooney publicly complains about booing, it is because he remembers all the occasions when England have been booed by their own brainless fans for trying to build from the back. They would prefer to see England repeatedly try and “hit Les” in a way that for years has been the preserve of small nations with limited resources.

Capello has tried to instil continental values into the team, and has been successful in many ways. But the core values do not get overwritten as easily with the result that, when things are going badly, all of the old instincts take over and the bad habits re-emerge.

Suddenly the players are charging about like headless chickens trying to change their fortunes through sheer physicality rather than relying on superior technique to carry them through.

When players are at their best they can perform almost on autopilot, as the effects of inborn ability and training combine to produce “the zone”. The same can happen when players are at their worst, except that it’s the bad habits to the fore rather than the good.

This is less obvious in the Premier League where the effect is masked by the presence of so many foreign players, but it is there nonetheless. West Ham’s 0-3 defeat against Wolves at the end of last season springs to mind.

Players from other countries can turn to the basics of technique when all else is lost because those are the core values that they have been imbued with at a young age. They still have matches where they play badly but they are not prone to the sort of disintegration that England experienced against Algeria, and they are able to recover more quickly as a result.

For this to change English football would require a root and branch reform, from the Premier League to youth coaching in schools and junior clubs. Fans and media would have to be painstakingly re-educated. Football vernacular would need to evolve. Tactical analysis would have to improve, new styles developed.

I can’t see it happening, can you? In which case we should expect plenty more nights of torture supporting England at major tournaments, and plenty more dismal performances interspersing the passable ones.

Perhaps we need the Hungarians to come and beat us 6-3 again.