By Myles Palmer
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England 2 Greece 2
Old Trafford
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It’s a grand old game when you see 94 minutes of entertainment as compelling as this.
Having had a week off worrying, I settled down for a mere 90 minutes of worrying.
No argument with the starting line-up : Martyn, Neville, Keowwn, Ferdinand and Cole at the back.
A midfield four who could do a bit of everything – Becks, Stevie G,Scholesey and Nicky B.
Fowler and Heskey up front.
The eleven we all expected to play.
Alan Hansen said, “Gerrard is like Souness with pace.”
He also said, “I think England will nick it about 6-0.”
But England were so useless that I was able to cram five days of worrying into 94 minutes.
I’ve often thought, writing about Arsenal here, that one day I will just type out my match notes, exactly what I was thinking moment to moment, incident to incident, during the game.Comments which are as much feelings as thoughts.
Here is what I scribbled down during that dire first half :
8 minutes : Scholes, stupid tackle.Yellow card ! And so typical of him!
England giving the ball away far too much.
10. Karagounis great shot, Martyn diving save.
When 4-4-2 looks crap it always looks as if you need a dribbler and a half-striker.
It’s Michael Owen who makes 4-4-2 power football work. If Venables is watching this he is thinking : This is England playing pre-Tel football.
15. SLOW IT DOWN!. Scholes overhitting. Greece have three centrebacks so we are playing down the middle. England still a low-IQ team.
17. Great pass, great shot over Martytn’s crossbar.
We could lose if go on playing like this. We need Carrick, somebody who can pass.
19. No 9 has a rocket LF shot just over the bar!
20 Keown loses the ball in his own half.
Man after man after man is doing the wrong thing. We are dire!
Can we win it 1-0? Yes, if Teddy comes on.
But Greece are the better side. 4-4-2 is a fragile , precarious system and this is 4-4-2 without pressing, a lazy Italian 4-4-2.
I’m watching on Sky now as Andy Gray says “The Greeks are a good side at 0-0.”
Andy adds that they will fold after we score. A minute later, Greece go 1-0 up through Charisteas. Good move, good improvisation, good finish, left foot low into the corner.
Or passing is rubbish, our movement to support the ball is rubbish.
The game is crying out for Teddy. When did England last win coming from behind in a qualifying game?
Greece have superior shape, movement, rhythm and improvisation.
Scholes’s passing is just so bad – I want the stats !
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Those were my first half notes.What follows are more conventional ANR -type observations
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At half-time, England are booed off.It’s not severe booing. But any booing is informative. It tells you nothing, really, about the match. But it tells you a lot about the fans who booed.
The fans look just like the fans I noticed at Wembley from 1995 to 2000.
When I go to a gig or a match or a film I always look at the crowd very carefully and 80% of these fans at Old Trafford are twentysomething Sky Sports subscribers who believe the hype.
They boo because the gap between their expectations and what they are watching is just too huge. They can’t handle it.Real football fans do not boo their team when it is 1-0 down at hlaf-time
Second half, Sven shows how stubborn he is.
He goes 4-3-3, not 4-4-1-1. He has shown a penchant for this in the past, playing Heskey wide left, bringing on Andy Cole at half-time for Barmby, who has been invisible.
Martyn saves well from Karagounis. Sheringham comes on for Fowler and scores ten seconds later with a backheader from his mate Beckham’s free-kick.
But Ferdinand boobs, getting wrong side of Nikolaidis, who scores efficiently. England are 2-1 down.
England playing with more urgency now but it may be too late. We are a high tempo team.
Ashley Cole is a young tempo player. Heskey, against Argentina, showed he is tempo player. Scholes is a reflex player, a tempo player.Gerrard is a power player, a tempo player.
Yet England played without tempo in the first half. Why? Because they froze? No,I don’t think so.
BECAUSE SVEN TOLD THEM TO BE PATIENT?
The time to be patient is after you haven’t scored in the first half hour.
England, playing at home, should always try to seize the initiative, to attack,dominate, lift the crowd and scare their opponents, rather than sitting off them and letting them knock the ball about.
Nigel Martyn should been pushing Rio Ferdinand further out and Ferdinand should have been pushing Gerrard further forward, to make England more compact.
4-4-2 as practiced by Everton, Arsenal and AC Milan was always compact.(But the offside rule has changed.)
I sat there thinking that Otto Rehhagel has Greece playing like a decent Bundesliga club : solid defence, good habits, a few incisive attacks, clinical finishing.
The game became a siege but England did not look like scoring.
Then, after 93 minutes, Sheringham conned a free-kick outside the D, going up early, falling over when he was barely touched.
Beckham, at last, took a good free-kick and the ball swerved into the top corner for a 2-2 draw.It was his 8th direct free-lkick in the game.
Beckham had grafted all afternoon, pushing himself to the limit.
But Nigel Martyn, now 35, was England’s best player. Martyn saved them from a 3-1 defeat. With a few more games he can become a fine international keeper, at least till the end of the World Cup.
Seaman, at 38, is too injury-prone.
Sven and Tord have a lot to talk about.This video will be painful viewing : How NOT to play football.
The day has been scary for Sven, but highly educational.
His interview is pretty hip. He owns up. He says we played badly. He does not whinge about the ref or anything like that. He is decent, just glad to qualify.
Germany v Finland finished 0-0, so England had won the group on goal difference, avoiding a play-off against Ukraine.
I hope Ukraine beat the Germans.
Shevchenko missed Euro 2000 and that was a great shame, since he is the best striker in Europe. I hope he does not miss the World Cup as well.
England are building towards Portugal in 2004.If things go well in the next three years they might be semi-finalists in 2004.
But right now they are light years away from being able to beat Italy, France or Argentina. We saw that at Old Trafford. Too many players were found out. Simple as that.
6th October 2001.