This might be a controversial thing to say, but I am going to throw caution to the wind and say it anyway: the reason England keep on losing is because they’re just not very good.
The fact is, the team is just not good enough to win, and if the press didn’t constantly make out like they were and raise everybody’s expectations beyond any kind of realism, then we would all be saved the disappointment when they lose.
I mean, I know nothing about football, but even an amateur can see that the England players run around the field like a team of lazy under-14 C graders who are only there because the alternative is rugby and they don’t like the idea of a ruck.
They don’t look like they want to be there. They don’t look like they’re having fun. When they have the ball, they never look like they’re going to keep it (and most of the time they don’t) and when they don’t have the ball, they never look a chance of getting it back. They certainly do not look like a team that’s bothered about winning.
And now the media is blaming Fabio Capello! My Welsh friend said it all when he said today: “Only England could take a champion like Fabio Capello and turn him into a loser.” (Said Welsh man was going for England, by the way.)
The thing is, I have been living in England for seven years and it’s been the same sad story that whole time. I never remember England winning anything of note since I’ve been here and I never remember watching them play and actually enjoying the match. It’s always been through a heady steam of gut-wrenching angst and bile. And I’m not even English! I just feel the whole experience is so cringeworthy, I walk away from every match feeling sorry for my English friends that they’re English.
Anyway, I digress, I have a point about why England aren’t good at football. In these seven years, England has had three different coaches, if my memory serves me correctly. Every time England has lost at a major tournament, the coach gets sacked. This seems like basic science to me. The only variable that hasn’t changed is the players. Apart from David Beckham. At least when Beckham was on the field you felt like it was a team that had some respect for something other than themselves and their bank managers and you had something nice to look at apart from the football. Now, they just look like a bunch of petulant wannabes. (And can someone please explain why that cretin John Terry is still in the team? What a waste of space! What did he do for England today? Where was he when that same bloke on the right kept scoring all those goals? He was probably eyeing off the German WAGS on the sideline. Honestly, what a twat. If I was Fabio Capello, I would have given him a slap across the face after his little outburst and sent him home and England would have been better off for it. )
For those (like me, who just had to look this up) not au fait with Capello’s record, let me tell you a bit about him. He has won a title for every single club he’s ever managed, and when he was with AC Milan, they won the Champions League. He was also a footballer himself, and played for Italy 32 times. He even scored the winning goal against England at Wembley in 1973. He is widely considered one of the world’s most brilliant managers of all time. Not bad, eh?
Not good enough for the British press, who are now starting to blame his lack of English (he speaks about a zillion other languages) for England being so shit, as if forgetting that when he was hired just over two years ago he did not speak English at all. Now, you can’t hire someone who doesn’t speak English, and then blame the fact he hasn’t mastered the language for the fact his team play like a bunch of losers.
To be fair, apart from John Terry, the players haven’t actually blamed him (yet). No, they blamed the fact they were bored. Bored? Bored! These men are chosen to represent their country in arguably the biggest sporting tournament in the world, which happens to be hosted in a beautiful, temperate country ablaze with the excitement of it all, and they are BORED? Oh, poor darlings. Life is just not fair. Why didn’t Fabio arrange little excursions for them? He could have at least packed some lego and cut the crusts off their sandwiches. No, instead, they had to sit around their five-star hotel reading, swimming and relaxing. Some of us might call that a holiday.
And that to me seems to sum up the problem. They’re bored, they complain about it, and then the press takes it up as a legitimate excuse for playing poorly. I mean, hello! Is there anyone with half a brain working as a sports reporter in this country?
I must admit, I have aired my view about England just being a bit crap once or twice before. People always tell me the team is full of the best players in the world. I watch Ghana against the USA and that is an enjoyable match to watch, but the way Ghana kick the ball around and run up and down the field and hug each other and do little clever tricks with their feet, well, England just never look like that to me. Oh, the individual players do look like that, though; they look like that when they play for their clubs, I hear.
Which brings us back to Fabio Capello.
If indeed, England is home to some of the world’s best players and its pre-eminent league, why isn’t there a single man or woman in England good enough to coach England? If there is a team of individual men who are really good when they’re playing for money, as opposed to for their country, then isn’t it just the pride and patriotism that’s lacking and not just the skill?
What England seems not to be aware of, is that the reason that teams made up of lesser (or less well-paid) players – such as the USA and Ghana, for example – play better than the sum of their parts is because of their overwhelming desire to win for their country, to do their country proud. Do you think the Ghanaians got on the telly on Saturday night and said they were a bit bored in South Africa so they would probably play a bit shit in their quarter final?
These players have to want to represent England; have to want to win for their country. They can’t just go out there and say, “I’m paid £100 million a day, that’s how good I am” and expect to win. They need somebody to remind them that there are some things more important than money. That there are people who would give their right arm to represent their country. That their country is proud of them and that they should want to make them proud.
The cricketers can do it, as can the rugby team. (We won’t even get started on how little they are paid in comparison to the so-called great football players.) As far as I am aware, during the 20 years in the Ashes wilderness the English Cricket Board never hired an Australian coach.
You can’t hire an Italian who played against England for his country and expect him to put a fire in the collective bellies of his team about doing their country proud. He has to want it too.
No matter how good his record, that’s something a foreign coach can never achieve, and that’s not his fault.
Who runs this FA anyway?
(I disclose here that I quite love Fabio Capello, and I quite dislike pretty much the whole England football team apart from David James, who, apart from being quite hot, also seems quite smart and like he might have an interest other than bathing in £50 notes and shagging his teammates’ girlfriends. I think Frank Lampard is OK too.)
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