By Myles Palmer
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ENGLAND beat Poland 2-1 with an own goal last night.
Sven is right to say the media over-reacted after the 2-2 in Austria.
The media is too judgemental, too powerful, too full of itself.
The press should analyse, rather than talk about personalities.
We are a nation of bluffers and amateurs.
Modern English culture is about personalities and big names, not about intelligent comment by qualified thinkers.
Thatcher, Murdoch and Blair are populists who dumbed everything down and the BBC, alas, followed to maintain market share.
BUT I DIGRESS.
Two main points :
SVEN was wrong to play without an anchorman in Portugal and he was wrong to play without an anchorman in Vienna and Katowice.
We need a Deschamps-Dunga-Galasek-Hamann type to protect a vulnerable back four, especially when Ashley Cole is raiding down the left wing.
ALSO, the England players need a kick up the arse at times. If Sven won’t do it, the press has to.
Sven is good at babysitting millionaires, reading them a fairy story, kissing them goodnight, and changing their nappies in the morning.
Sven is in awe of Veron, Beckham, Owen and all stars.And he always will be, so it will always be harder to get out of his team than into it.
That means that from now on, the press will occasionally have to drop one of his stars.
A GOOD ROW HELPS TO CLEAR THE AIR.
This one has been beneficial to all sides.
We just have to remember that Sven is a pleaser, a political animal who sniffs the wind so well that, incredibly, he has never been sacked in his career.
HE made fundamental errors in not taking Defoe and Shaun Wright-Phillips to Euro 2004.
Why did he do that?
Because they would put pressure on his icons.
Defoe would put pressure on Owen. Heskey wouldn’t.
And SWP would put pressure on Goldenbollocks.
Two cardinal errors.
No anchorman – three cardinal errors.
For a coach who is useless with subs, that meant we had no chance of winning the tournament.
IN KATOWICE LAST NIGHT, Sven brought in keeper Paul Robinson for David James and striker Jermain Defoe for Alan Smith.
Defoe is an elastic sharpshooter who is more skilful than Owen and should have been in the team a year ago.
Defoe missed one chance but buried the second in 37 to put us 1-0 up at half-time.
It was a chaotic first half, with England giving the ball away far too much in midfield, and the Poles having six shots from inside the box, most of which were charged down.
THE LACK of a holding midfield player was the big problem, as it has been all year.
When Sven brought back Butt against Ukraine, we won 3-0.
But in the last two games he has had a midfield of cowboys, gunslingers, three players who want to hit 50- yard balls, and sometimes modify it and hit 30-yard balls.
So our midfield is untidy.
No rhythm, can’t contain opponents, can’t protect the back four, can’t support each other properly, smoothly, by making angles for passes.
At half-time it looked like a game where anything could happen.
There was no balance and, what’s worse, no coaching.
Nobody to work out who is marking who, who is supporting who, who is picking up runners, all that basic stuff.
At half-time it looked like a game that could be 3-1 either way – or maybe 3-3
On 46 John Terry charged out at Kosowski, who slipped Zurawski through into the box and he fired into the top corner before Ledley King could reach him.
Perfect pass, perfect finish.
Terry was right to challenge, but the scorer was left unmarked. The other defenders did not react to Terry’s reaction.
In 58, Ashley Cole crossed a decent ball low to the near post, Owen and two defenders went for it and the ball hit Glowacki and went past Dudek for the winner.
Jammy, Sven !
But England were never sure, never in control, and Dudek had little to do in the last half hour
Shocked to see Dyer come on as a sub. I thought he was in a nightclub in Newcastle.
Then the players, led by Beckham, refused to talk to TV or press.
YESTERDAY’S GUARDIAN had a statbox on Michael Owen’s
England record which proved what I’ve always said : that he is more of a bullet than a footballer.
A bullet can only fire himself, he can’t fire other bullets.
Owen can’t play people in because he is one-dimensional.
In 62 appearances he had only 5 assists !
That is an INCREDIBLE feat of tunnel-vision.
And were those assists rebounds, where he did not pass but shot?
27 goals, but only 5 assists.
I REST MY CASE !
In his first five seasons playing for England, Owen had only TWO assists.
It’s hard to play football with Owen in the team, which is why Sven played Heskey for so long.
To play both was a clear admission that England were a long-ball team.
After the 2002 World Cup I said that Sven had to choose between playing Heskey and playing football.
Rooney had not emerged then, so he played Heskey and long-ball.
Sven did not trust his team to pass the ball through midfield. Sven doesn’t think we can play.
Rooney, by replacing Heskey, turned England into a team that COULD play football.
But Sven sabotaged that by not using a holding midfielder in Portugal.
The future is Defoe- Rooney.
Owen should be a sub.
WATCHED BRAZIL draw a fiery friendly 1-1 with Germany on Bravo, who now have all Brazil’s games.
Edu started, but not Gilberto.
Ronaldinho’s early free-kick over the wall was equalised by a Kuranyi chest-down-and-stab-into-the-corner goal, an Ian Rush strike.
Under Klinsmann, the Germans are playing with a lot more snap and sparkle.
Since his new marriage, Ronaldo has lost about 10 kilos.
The fat boy is slim now and made an amazing 30-yard sprint in the 92nd minute ! Amazing what a new wife can do.
Marco’s Holland beat the Czechs 2-0.
They never did that under Advocaat.
But Nedved,Poborsky and Galasek were missing.
Another fabulous sunny day in London.
If you are here, enjoy !
September 9th 2004.