By Myles Palmer
I saw Sven on Saturday morning.
He was dangling over my head at Sainsbury’s. He had a piece of sausage on his fork and a plate of scrambled eggs, baked beans and grilled tomatoes.
A good lorry-driver’s breakfast. Sven’s dad in Torsby, a tiny forest village in Sweden, was a lorry driver.
Emile Heskey was there too, dangling above a canyon of cornflakes,Honeyloops, Frostieloops, Chocaloops and Papadiouploops.
I was pushing the trolley, not choosing the groceries, so I was still daydreaming about Brazil and what might have been.
In Euro 2000 Kevin Keegan didn’t know what to do when it went pear-shaped against Portugal. We were 2-0 up and then 3-2 down and he didn’t know what to do.
When Didi Hamann scored from 35 yards at Wembley, Keegan did not know what to do either, as he admitted: I didn’t know how to change it.
He said, “I’ve taken this team as far as I can.”
If Mighty Mouse didn’t know what to do and two years down the line the £2m-a-year Mr Cool of world football didn’t know, how far have we progressed?
Sven knew that Owen and Beckham were 60% fit and that Scholes was struggling with his asthma.
Unfortunately, right now, he is an absolute beginner, a tournament tyro.
Brazil went 2-1 up in 50 minutes and Ronaldinho was sent off after 55 minutes and he brought Teddy Sheringham on for Ashley Cole in 79 minutes.
So England had four marking one for 24 minutes!
We had Mills,Ferdinand, Campbell and Cole marking Ronaldo, which put us three men down rather than a man up!We were playing eight agianst their ten!
Ronaldo was up on his own, Rivaldo some way behind, and both of them were knackered. Rivaldo has been carrying a knee injury for months.
It was depressing to see England with four defenders marking one weary striker. Big Phil Scolari took Ronaldo off nine minutes before Sven took Owen off.
One headline said ICE MAN FREEZES IN THE HEAT OF BATTLE.
And that’s how it looked :as if Sven just gave up, accepted defeat meekly.
Why bring on Kieron Dyer for Sinclair?
SHERINGHAM for Sinclair was the obvious call.
Dyer’s touch was poor and he was playing out of position, so that was a monumental error.
When the England players were given fitness tests in Dubai before the World Cup the fittest was Owen Hargreaves.
He was fit again after injury.Why not employ his energy when England were flagging, but still had a chance of getting back into the game?
Overall, it was Sven’s first tournament. He is new to the job. He has only been there 18 months.
He had five games at the World Cup Finals and did OK.
He won two and drew two and lost to ten Brazilians. He wasn’t great and he wasn’t terrible.
He was OK. So far Sven has given us a back four and a 1-0 win over Argentina.
Since I never believed England would win the World Cup, even when the dynamic Steven Gerrard was fit, I’ll settle for that.
I’m disappointed mainly because Ireland knocked the ball about and played some exciting football and scored good goals from open play against Cameroon, Germany and Saudi Arabia. England did not do that.
I was not distraught or surprised when we lost.
But last Friday night,going to bed,I was a bit fed up.
I thought : Sven doesn’t play football,he plays Heskey. He has the Arsenal-Leeds defence and the Man United
midfield and the Liverpool strikers and we don’t play football because the Liverpool strikers are too far in front of the United midfielders.
The strikers have no support and mostly long balls to chase.
Only one in 50 long balls works at this level. If it bounces off Lucio and goes to Owen, he can score. The other 49 long balls are lost. They give possession to the other team. No wonder England players are tired!
The Republic of Ireland are a bunch of guys from Fulham, Ipswich,Blackburn, Charlton, Coventry and Aston Villa.
England, with superstars from Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool, did not pass the ball.
Apparently, Sven has said privately that he bases his tactics on Liverpool.
That must change. He will either change that or find a new job.
As you know, the first three principles of play are possession, support and penetration.
But Sven-Goran Houllier’s Engerland only defend and penetrate.
They don’t support the ball enough because they lack, like many previous England teams, a pattern of play which finds a balance between running towards the ball and running away from the ball.
Mostly, managers find that blend DURING a tournament, as Alf Ramsey did in 1966, as Bobby Robson did in 1986.
Deprived of Ray Wilkins and Bryan Robson, Bobby found a balance with Steve Hodge and Gary Lineker, who ran into space, Beardlsey and Peter Reid who played short passes, Glenn Hoddle who played long passes, and Trevor Steven, who was steady and accurate on the right flank.
That Four/Two balance, between four players who do the right things on the ball, and two who do the right things OFF the ball, has usually eluded England.
They found it again in 1990 with Lineker and David Platt.
As people often say, it’s not rocket science. But I have a horrible suspicion that as long as Emile Heskey is in the team England will not pass the ball.
In the meantime,Sven is back home in Regents Park.
I might even see him at Sainsbury’s on Saturday.
PS
CANNOT BELIEVE how mean-spirited people are being about Ronaldinho’s perfect free-kick.
Three days after the match Danny Mills said in Monday’s Guardian:
“From the position Ronaldinho took up and the movement of
their forwards in the box, we were all expecting a deep cross.What followed will haunt us for a very long time; I looked on in disbelief as the ball looped over poor David but I will never accept that it was intentional.”
Mills hasn’t seen the replay. He can’t have done.
I’ve watched it 30 times and it WAS deliberate.
RONALDINHO took aim and chipped into the top corner after he saw Seaman three yards off his line.
Look at the position of his left foot! Look at the angle of his body! Look at his reaction, running immediately to the bench!
We lost the quarter-final after two fantastic pieces of skill from Ronaldinho.
Why can’t people own up and accept it? It’s so mean, so unsporting, to keep saying it was a fluke when it was one of the greatest free-kicks in World Cup history.
Having said that,TURKEY can beat Brazil in the semi.
In the first game they were better than Brazil in midfield AND in defence and they only lost 2-1 to a penalty. The tug on Luizao was OUTSIDE the box.
24th June 2004.