England 2 Czech Republic 2
Baros 22, Wes Brown 45, Jankulovski 48, Joe Cole 90
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He played David Beckham !
Fabio Capello played Beckham when he could have played Ashley Young. And he played Defoe when he could have played Agbonlahor .
Beckham has no legs.
Beckham jogs around at the Home Depot Centre in Los Angeles.
He’s an ageing MLS celebrity who cannot run.
He’s an actor who cheerfully promotes brands.
England is his favourite brand but he cost England the first goal with his impetuous schoolboy ball-chasing.
He set the worst possible example by being 50 yards out of position and leaving Wes Brown wholly exposed. Brown was beaten easily, Milan Baros rolled John Terry, and David James got unlucky when Baros’s shot deflected off the toe of Ashley Cole into the net.
Is Beckham still there because of the sponsors? Is he there because David Bentley is all mouth? Is he there because Capello doesn’t think England are good enough to score in open play?
A World Cup qualifying campaign is about to start and we know, above all, that football is a team game. But we don’t have teamwork. We never demonstrate good teamwork. Playing for manager after manager, our big stars usually look like one-dimensional “B” internationals.
Year after year, I wonder : Will England ever click? Will they ever play well, defend well, shoot well, score goals, and have some luck? It happened once in Euro 96 and I was there at Wembley to see us thrash Holland 4-1.That was the best England had played for 30 years, since we beat Portugal in the semi-final in 1966.
In Munich in 2001, big striker Carsten Jancker scored early, one of the Germans missed a great chance to make it 2-0 and then we smashed Germany 5-1 and it was exciting and made us all happy. We soon found out that Sven’s England never delivered in tournaments. Sven is a groupie and a pleaser and anybody could have got England to three quarter-finals.
Steve McClaren found one new player, right back Micah Richards, who improved the England team.
Capello has not found a new player. His team included 8 of Sven’s starters in Euro 2004. The changes: Brown for Gary Neville, Barry for Scholes, Defoe for Owen.
Eight England players were the same as four years ago and that tells you that either (1) the cupboard is bare or (2) Capello is an ultra-conservative coach who has never worked with kids.
Micah Richards is a powerhouse right back who can cause havoc on attacking set-pieces. Richards is very raw and positionally he is hopeless. He’ll never be the footballer that Corluka is. But he’s better than Wes Brown because Wes is not a right back.
The last three England coaches have refused to choose between Lampard and Gerrard. All three played both and all three failed to find a format that worked with both. The whole world knows that Lampard and Gerrard can’t play together. Its so boring. Talking about it is so boring. If a £6m-a-year coach can’t drop one of them, where are we?
A long time ago, I was excited when Fabio Capello got the job. I was actually excited when he was appointed. After five games, Capello hasn’t shown me nothing. But he’s shown me very little.
He inherited a team of super-famous millionaires who cannot pass the ball to each other. So he has to teach them the alphabet. He wants them to pass the ball to each other. England have started to do that. It’s not much. But it’s something.
He has no striker, a big problem. He has no goalkeeper. The best keeper in England is Ben Foster, Manchester United’s reserve, so that’s a problem too.
After Wednesday’s fiasco, Fabio answered a question about Gerrard playing on the left by saying, “He wasn’t on the left, it was 4-3-2-1.”
WHAT ?
After scrambling a 2-2 draw, Joe Cole and Beckham pleaded : Don’t write us off yet.
Don’t worry lads, I haven’t written you off yet. And I’m haven’t written Capello off yet either. I’m waiting to see what happens in Zagreb on September 10.
THE FA are leaving Soho Square and moving to Wembley.
The ghastly Adam Crozier moved them from Lancaster Gate to the old CBS Records building and made it a flashy media company with loads more employees. Then Crozier went, Palios came and went, and now bureaucrat Barwick has gone. Typical corporate politics: CEO hires a chairman and six months later the chairman fires the chief executive. Happens all the time. Invariably, the chief exec doesn’t see it coming. Everyone else does.