By Myles Palmer
I wonder who England will get in the play-offs?
Swedish smoothie Sven-Goran Eriksson proved last night that his team selections can be just as dim-witted as Graham Taylor’s or Kevin Keegan’s.
You DON’T play Owen Hargreaves on the left wing. You DON’T play Jamie Carragher in left central midfield. You DON’T play Paul Scholes in right central midfield.
Some of it was not Sven’s fault, of course. You don’t agree to play Germany in Munich in September, forcing you to warm-up against Holland in August, before the season has even started. Clubs should play pre-season friendlies – England should not.
A colossal bungle by everyone concerned, really.
Holland outclassed and outpassed England in the first half and seemed determined to avenge the 4-1 stuffing of Euro 96.
It was interesting to see Arsenal providing both left backs, Ashley Cole and Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
Cocu was the best player on the field – shrewd, skilful, steely, imaginative, an ideal captain.No wonder Petit could not get a game for Barcelona.
Kluivert was a revelation in the Sheringham role just behind Van Nistelrooy : strong, canny, consistent, inventive, using his huge experience, spraying well-timed passes out to the flanks.
Ref Anders Fisk would have given a penalty against Ashley Cole if he could have seen the replay of him clattering Cocu in the box after 26 minutes.
I hope Ashley does not do that in Munich because it will be a penalty- and a goal.
And yet I do feel sympathy for Ashley : it was an emergency situation, he didn’t realise Keown had Cocu covered, and he went for the ball honestly. Unfortunately, Cocu got there first and Cole kicked him, not the ball.
After half an hour it was obvious that England lacked power.They missed the power of Rio Ferdinand, Gerrard, Heskey and Owen. They didn’t press Holland, didn’t pass, didn’t stretch them, hardly got a kick until Andy Cole had a shot blocked by Van der Sar’s foot and Gary Neville had a good shot tipped over.
Robbie Fowler showed some finesse, some alert moments, but he did not click with Cole and was starved of the sort of support Barmby should have been giving him.But Barmby was still on the bench.
Dutch new boy Kevin Hofland, the PSV centreback who is said to be lined up for Man United next year, hit Zenden with a glorious 60-yarder right out of the Frank De Boer textbook of long-passng.
When Carragher backed off Mark van Bommel the midfielder let fly from 36 yards and the ball swerved, hit the post and went in.
Dietmar Hamann beat Seaman from 25 yards at Wembley and now Van Bommel had beaten Nigel Martyn from 36 yards with a rocket shot reminiscent of the great Arie Haan.
Even the Seaman of 1994-95 could not have saved that shot – nobody could. But Van Bommel should have been closed down by Scholes or Hargreaves, who should have been playing in central midfield together.
Stunned, Martyn slapped down a Zenden shot 56 seconds later and Van Nistelrooy pounced to make it 2-0, a neat left foot finish on a slighly awkward rebound. Martyn should have parried the ball to one side.
Zenden is fast, brave, strong and has a good shot, but he lacks the class of Overmars and I have seen him have plenty of stinkers. But England made him look good, as they made all the Dutch players look good.
The kick-off had been delayed 15 minutes, and I’m sure that affected England more than the laidback Dutch. But we will never know that for sure. With the starting eleven Sven picked, we would have lost anyway, but the delay was a factor.
In the Charity Shield I saw enough from van Nistelrooy to convince me that he would be scoring outrageous, flashy goals in three weeks time.
He almost scored an outrageous, flashy goal here after 42 minutes,beating Wes Brown on the right and clipping a cute early shot which left Martyn stranded but came back off the bar.
Pure quality.RVN is looking more like Shevchenko with every game.
Carragher, a notorious roughneck,chopped down Zenden in midfield and deserved his yellow card.
Sven made eight changes at half-time, leaving Andy Cole on (!) and moving Carragher to right back.Danny Mills replaced Beckham, Chris Powell replaced Ashley Cole.
David James made a good save from Hasselbaink but his knee collided with Keown’s knee and both had to go off after 47 minutes. Richard Wright and Ehiogu came on.
England’s best passer in the second half was West Ham’s Michael Carrick.But by then the Dutch were not bothered.
Claudio Ranieri must have watched his £11 million capture Frank Lampard and thought : I bought the wrong one!
England needed some consolation from the night but Michael Owen missed a sitter in the 93rd minute.
He accepted a very careless Edgar Davids backpass, swerved past Hofland and went for glory. But he blazed his left foot shot two feet over the bar when he should have drilled it low into the corner.
Owen said on Sky, “We could hardly have played worse.”
Sven said, “Today we lost. Then you have to think even more.”
The manager learned a lot last night.He learned a helluva lot.He made mistakes in his five winning games, but this time he did not get away with them.
He learned a lot about what NOT to do.And we might still draw in Germany.
So there you have it.
Sven-Goran Eriksson is still a great guy, still the best manager England could have, but he made some mistakes, as we all do.
We will not beat Germany in Munich, but they do not have any players as good as Cocu, Kluivert and van Nistelrooy, so we should not fear them.
Only one German player would get into the Dutch team : keeper Oliver Kahn.
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STARTING ELEVENS
ENGLAND: Martyn, G Neville, Ashley Cole, Carragher, Brown,
Keown, Beckham, Scholes, Andy Cole, Fowler, Hargreaves.
HOLLAND: Van der Sar, Reiziger, Stam, Hofland, van
Bronckhorst, Zenden, Cocu, van Bommel, Overmars, van
Nistelrooy, Kluivert.
16th August 2001.