By Myles Palmer
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SVEN will stay for 2006?
Most people, you can give them a reality check.
Not Sven Goran-Eriksson.
Sven is so far out into cloud cuckoo land that he believed he could walk out on England and manage Chelski !!!!!!
SVEN IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY !
What will it take to give Sven a reality check?
Tell me, somebody, please !
The media would never have allowed Sven to desert England and be successful at Chelsea.
The press would have slaughtered him till he quit.
Now Sven firmly tells the press, last night, more emphatically than ever before, “I’m staying for 2006.”
For Sven to think he can stay on now is an even more ghastly error of judgement than to think he could manage Chelsea.
I will bet my house on England not winning the World Cup with him as manager. I’ll phone Ladbrokes right now.
Sven should resign and say, “Sorry, I bungled my midfield.I gave you Lampard because the press insisted, but I refused to drop Scholes. I’m sorry my substitutions were useless.
“My sincere thanks to Wayne Rooney, who saved my job and got me to Portugal.
“Special thanks to my wonderful captain David Beckham. We’ve decided to dump Nancy and Posh and get married.
“And I’m gonna have a tattoo on my neck just like him. I want to be naff and vulgar and dim like the English.I’m reallly glad I experienced your dumbed-down culture.”
Beckham should own up too.
He should say,”I’m finished,I’m completely gone, I’m hanging up my boots.Sven should have dropped me after the first game.I gave away the free-kick for the Croatia goal.
“I was totally out of order to say I couldn’t have hit the France penalty any better.
“If I had hit it better I would have scored. I was wrong to carry on taking penalties, just to be in the spotlight.
” I’d muffed it in Istanbul and we knew this penalty spot was soft and squishy, so I should have placed the ball on the leftside of the spot and put my left foot on firm ground sidefooted it to my right.
“Instead I placed the ball on the right side of the spot and put my left foot into the marsh and slipped and blasted it over the bar.
“That’s how thick I am. I’m truly sorry for doing something as unbelievably thick as that at such an important moment in our sporting history.
“I’ve now realised there is more to life than being in the spotlight all the time and saying things like, I’d love to be famous in America.
“As an England player, I’m now worse than Steve Stone, who broke his leg three times.
“Against Portugal I was worse than Steve Stone in his worst game, and I’m far, far worse than Darren Anderton ever was in his worst game.
“I’ve gone. I’m finished. My energy levels ain’t there any more.
“I don’t wanna get hurt. I turned my back on Ronaldo’s free kick because I don’t wanna get hurt.I can’t get round the pitch.
“I’m a hollow man and a hollow icon. You have been worshipping a false idol.
“Sven and I have decided to stop phoning each other every day. I’ve thrown away my three mobile phones.
“We will get married and live in Tuscany and we ask the media to leave us alone in our blissful retirement.”
ARE THE PAPERS gonna admit Beckham is finished?
Of course not !
A slick damage limitation operation will swing into place.
This spin machine is used every two years and it always works.
Who knows what garbage they will be feeding us by Sunday?
Still, I don’t care.
I had fun.
I loved the match.
I REALLY ENJOYED IT !!!!
It was hilarious.
Before kick-off I was ambivalent, but as soon as it started I wanted Portugal to win.
When Owen scored inside 3 minutes, I still thought Portugal would win.
They were fitter than us, more skilful, more fluid, much more resourceful.
They murdered us down our left flank where Scholes, a fair-skinned asthmatic, was a passenger.
A square peg in a round hole, as we all knew he would be.
Sven had a one-man attack and when Rooney went off after 27 minutes the whole house of cards fell down. It was like four Englishmen going off. Suddenly, we had seven men.
Hargreaves might have stemmed the tide, with Scholes pushed into Rooney’s position.
But Scholes is no Rooney, that’s for sure. Scholes is a reflex player, not a ball-holder.
We scored early, a gift, then sat back, Italian style.
Sven reacted too late to what was happening out there. He can’t react. He can’t think on his feet or on his seat.
HIS SYSTEM CRIPPLED OUR FOUR MIDFIELDERS, as I’ve said all along.
That is why we failed.That is why we got beat in two of our four games.
With Rooney, we can beat bad teams with an unbalanced midfield.
But you need more than a one-man attack against good teams.
We hired a Swede to give us the worst of Italy. But we don’t have the technique or tactical awareness or concentration to defend like Italians.
IT’S NOT WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT !
Why are people surprised every time England’s house of cards falls down? Because they buy into the whole Sky hype and think that the England squad is full of world class players.
It’s not. We ain’t very good.
Terry always makes a mistake and last night he got under the ball for Postiga’s header.We should have been defending 15 yards out or 12 yards out, not in the six yard box .That is insane!
And we don’t have an FA capable of hiring a manager who can make the team better than the sum of its limited parts.
Thank you, Adam Crozier, for hiring a Swede to make us like the Italy of 30 years ago.
ARSENE WENGER is proud of Ashley and Sol, who were England’s best players last night.
Sol has played 5 tournaments now but he does not talk or organise the back four.
And nobody organised the midfield, nobody ran around telling people : Close him down! Go there!
Portugal may be too fragile to go all the way.
Without a Baros, a Van Nistelrooy, they lack firepower.
THIS MORNING MY FRIENDS Rob Hughes and Hugh Southon called from Lisbon and Devon respectively.
Rob said the whole stadium went silent when Phil took Figo off.
English fans realised what a huge decision that was. Portuguese fans were stunned.
When Figo walked past the dug-out, Big Phil turned his back !
In the dressing room, Figo was OK. By then he had realised that Phil might not start him in the semi.
IF SVEN STAYS for 2006, and we qualify, Hugh and I will go travelling somewhere far away during the World Cup.
We will take our Sixties/Seventies record collections and work as a DJ double act.
Hugh is wasted as a football journalist. He should be on radio as a shock-jock talking hard common sense to the masses. We’ll buy a car for AD3000 in Perth and have our roadie drive us everywhere for two months, Alice Springs, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, flog the car for AD2500, fly to Christchurch, rent a van, work up to Wellington and Auckland and then stop off in San Francisco to load up on classic vinyl. It will be a fabulous giggle for two of the youngest old farts in British journalism.
It will be great. We will talk about the Who and The Stones and festivals and Ready Steady Go and football as it was before players wore earrings and went to Chelsea on 140K a week. We will be a million light years away from super-rich prats telling us, “We really believe we can win this tournament.”
25th June 2004.