FRANCE versus Brazil was like watching another sport.
I needed a boost after another inadequate England display, where, once again, we didn’t have the mental strength to score from 12 yards. Our best player was Owen Hargreaves.
After Saturday afternoon’s England fiasco, France-Brazil was uplifting. Compelling entertainment, an intense and technical battle between two big sides featuring major talents, some electrifying moves, eventually won 1-0 by a very proud, combative French team. As a contest, it was good enough to be the final.
Makelele and Gallas want to win the World Cup and say : Roman Abramovich didn’t buy this one.
If I’d had to crash out after watching England-Portugal, and not seen France-Brazil, I would have gone to bed with a headache and woken up with a headache..
But I was not surprised or disappointed. I was just glad we were out. I was really glad we were out.
And I have never said that about an England team before. In my entire life I’ve never felt that before.
We all saw that Portugal without Deco and Costinha were a poor outfit. Right back Miguel had more of the ball than anybody but dithered when he should have put it into the box, Tiago and Petit were anonymous, Pauleta pathetic, Cristiano Ronaldo ridiculously selfish in the first half, shooting when he should have passed.
As always, Figo showed his class, but there was no goal threat. There rarely is with powderpuff Portugal. But we were clueless as an attacking force and they beat us on penalties.
Sven had no strikers, so he had to play 4-5-1, and Wayne Rooney in a 4-5-1 was an accident waiting to happen.
In a 4-4-2, Rooney is usually pretty cool, does his thing and stays out of trouble.
Clearly, Sven was culpable in Rooney’s red card, as Rob Hughes and others have pointed out. A 20 year-old lone striker did not let down his coach – the coach let down the striker. That red card was caused by the idiotic and risky squad Sven selected, and by the dopey, defensive system he deployed against a bantamweight Portugal team who should have been thumped.
In my view, the red card and penalties are barely relevant.
Look at the five games. Why have we played so poorly in the five games? Because Sven is a groupie who builds his team round big stars and allows them all to play selfishly.
A weedy little fullback himself, Sven was in awe of the power, speed and courage of his gladiators, so he was too timid to discipline them. He saw himself as the chief babysitter to the royal family.
Basically, he worships his icons. Back in 2002-2003 his icons were Scholes, Beckham and Owen, three self-motivated winners. After that his icons were Rooney, Owen, Beckham, Gerrard and Lampard, and Jose Mourinho improved Joe Cole so much that Joe became Sven’s sixth icon. With six match-winners, the Swede apparently thought we could win this World Cup.
Personally, I doubt if Sven really believed we could win it. What evidence did he have for that fantasy? We are not a team and very rarely look like a team. So Sven just acted out his script in an increasingly frivolous, flaky manner.
His squad of 23 included seven midfielders but only four strikers and one of the four was a baby, even though Rooney was injured and Owen had only played four hours of football since January.
So his squad was imbecilic and kamikaze. The composition of his squad, in itself, amounted to gross misconduct.
Placing all his faith in those icons allowed Sven to ignore form and ignore the machinery of his team. His formula was : Pick all my icons, then tell the media that we will win. If we don’t play well, same again next time, or a bit of tinkering. Switch players around but never touch my icons. Instead, watch me scale new heights of absurdity by going 4-1-4-1, just so I can start all my icons.
In his five and a half years as England coach Sven has demonstrated little interest in how one part of team helps another part. He never talks about how his team plays, how moves will work, how chances will be created, or how our teamwork can become compact and efficient.
He went 4-5-1 in two games and then in Game 5 he isolated Rooney. One striker cannot beat five defenders and a keeper. That was true in 1888 when football started and it’s true now. Rooney never got a good pass, so after 62 minutes he got frustrated and came back to the halfway line and was fouled by Carvalho and as they tangled he stamped his left foot into Carvalho’s groin, deliberately.And got a red card.
THEN THERE is the question of form, which is a big thing in sport.
Form is a big part of football. Players can be on form, or a bit off form, or completely out of form, or coming back to form. Sven had huge injury/form question marks against Sol Campbell, Ashley Cole, Owen, Rooney and Frank Lampard.
Lampard had gone off the boil, missed a penalty in a friendly, and had 21 shots without scoring in four games before Portugal, but Sven ignored that. He ignored form. He preferred to be “loyal” to his icons and his lazy philosophy of football. His attitude was : I know best.
THESE FIVE WORLD CUP GAMES proved that Sven and Steve McClaren know nothing.
They are timid men who put out a confused side that stumbled through a weak Group B. Year after year since 2002 we have seen that Sven & Steve do not know how to build a balanced midfield that can link their defence to their forwards. They picked five different teams in five games and we stuttered throughout, apart from the first half against Sweden.
Their FA bosses must take the blame too.
The FA once worked out of a house in Lancaster Gate but then Adam Crozier moved them into a huge media building which was once occupied by CBS Records. Today England Ltd is a big company in London, the world capital of advertising, spin, PR, presentation and news management.
From London, our one-dimensional players can be made to look like world-beaters by the foreigners who play club football with them, and by the clever editing of the Sky/BBC technicians. In sum, England is a popular brand created by an advertising agency in Soho Square.
We’ve qualified for the World Cup? Right, find the most luxurious hotel in the Black Forest, put the wives and girlfriends down the road in Baden-Baden, make sure the training pitches have the world’s best turf brought in from Holland, employ lots of minders, masseurs and chefs to attend to every whim of our golden boys. Sven will daily talk of “winning the World Cup” and we’ll all sing from the same hymn sheet.
The pampered stars of the popular England brand, existing in a parallel universe, are cut off from reality. They watch themselves on TV every day and believe their own hype, so when they lose a game they are baffled and tearful.
We saw half of them sobbing….over a football match. Nobody died ! Grow up ! Get real !
We were never anywhere near winning the World Cup. We didn’t have enough rhythm, enough shape, enough sharpness, enough class, or enough strikers.We were never English enough because we were infected by the inhibitions of a timid Swede.
Sven made us more sensible, aided by his likeable boy-next-door captain, but he never tapped into the ebullient essence of English football.We became too careful, like him
It was sad to see poor, bewildered Joe Cole on TV on Sunday morning. He said. “Obviously, disappointed, devastated. What can you say? It wasn’t meant to be today. Didn’t have the rub of the green and…..just go home.”
DAVID BECKHAM could not even quit in style. Instead, he resigned the captaincy on Sunday but will remain as a player. The King has abdicated but is still a prince.
Almost every one of the 32 teams had something to phone home about. Australia were brilliant in recovering to beat Japan 3-1, the Czechs were exciting when they whacked the USA 3-0, Argentina were superb until Pekerman lost the plot, France revived themselves with monster performances against Spain and Brazil, and Ukraine went further than Spain after losing 4-0 to them. The Italians soldier on despite the Juventus traumas.
But England didn’t do anything memorable because the coaches were clowns. We beat Paraguay with an own-goal, we got two late goals against T&T in 83 and 91 minutes, we drew 2-2 with a mediocre Sweden, and then we beat Ecuador, the worst team in the last 16, with a free-kick that went in off the post.
What has Sven shown us? What has he contributed to English football? OK, we beat Germany 5-1 in Munich and we beat Argentina 1-0 in 2002. But any muppet could have guided England through a qualifying campaign and into a tournament, and Barry Fry or Steve Coppell could lose three quarter-finals.
My conclusion? The same as it was after Euro 2004 : Sven-Goran Eriksson is a smooth politician who knows where the power is and where the money is and he always knows which way the wind is blowing. He is a clever mercenary who is absolutely useless as a coach. But quite good as a brand manager.
Consider this : while we have stumbled from game to game in the last six weeks, Klinsmann’s Germany have improved by 300%
Still, Sven has earned about £25 million since he became England coach, so he can afford to buy his waxwork from Madam Tussaud’s and give it to a Swedish museum.
Let’s hope that neither waxwork is ever seen in London again.