By Myles Palmer
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England 1 Italy 2
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Fowler 63, Montella 67, 90(pen)
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The first half was rubbish.
The thing that stuck out was how unskilful the England players were, Wayne Bridge apart.
Italy, playing 4-4-1-1, look like the only side who can beat France.
Butt-Lampard was the most pedestrian pairing in central midfield since Sammy Lee and Gary Mabbutt guaranteed England a 0-0 against Greece in March 1983.
Joe Cole was one of nine half-time subs and he showed us his best and worst in a five-minute spell.
Cole dispossessed Nesta to poke Fowler in for a neat, cool goal. Then he foolishly dribbled in his own half against Zambrotta and Albertini, lost the ball, and Montella equalised with a sublime curler into the top corner.
Owen Hargreaves is a tenacious, tidy midfielder who has more class than Lampard or Butt.
But he lost concentration late on,gave the ball away, and Montella found Under-21 striker Maccarone, who was brought down by the rashly advancing David James.
Sven should persevere with Joe Cole because he could be our Pablo Aimar.
A year ago I was saying that Aimar, a kid just over from Argentina, was too young and too small to be a real threat to Arsenal in their quarter-final against Valencia.
Nowadays Aimar would be a threat to Arsenal – or England.
Same with Joe Cole.
Joe is 20 and must learn to play one and two-touch in his own half of the field.He can do that in a settled team quite comfortably.
Trouble is, England base their team on Gerrard-Owen-Heskey and they play power football because that is their strength.
Joe Cole and Robbie Fowler are Plan B.Fowler needs Joe Cole, who can play the short-passing game which will be needed if England’s long-passing power game does not work.
In other words, Joe MUST be on that plane.
In an ideal world , England would field a Joe Scholes. A 27-year old who could tackle, pass, dribble and finish.
But life isn’t like that and football isn’t like that.Most players can do some things well. Few do everything well.
If Joe Cole could do everything that Paul Scholes can do he would be Totti and playing for Real Madrid.
Joe needs to be nurtured. Then he will become an effective attacker,doing what Aimar was doing in the 2-2 draw against Cameroon, playing give-and-gos, running around busily, mixing little dribbles with short passes.
Sven knows that Heskey and Owen lack the skill to play one-twos with Joe Cole.That’s why he plays the way he does. But he knows he needs a Plan B.
I was reminded of my brief conversation with Tord Grip at the Arsenal-Middlesbrough game, when we were talking about Joe, Tord said, “We might need somebody like that.”
I took Tord’s comment to mean : We lack a bit of improvisation, and we reckon Sweden can read the way England play. If we need a goal in the second half, we will need to bring Joe Cole on to give us a bit of flair.
SENSATIONAL goal by Thierry Henry in the 5-0 rout of Scotland in Paris.
Wiltord’s cut-back centre was going into the D and Henry had to move backwards like a greyhound to reach the ball before smashing a right foot shot into the top corner.An electrifying finish.
Hard to think of another player who could have got onto that ball so quickly and hit the shot so accurately and so hard. Shevchenko, maybe.
THANKS for your charming and interesting e-mails.
Nice to see that some of you are as opinionated as I am.And as well-read !
28th March 2002.