ENGLAND and the FOOTBALL WORLD CUP
Latest: Dec 2nd 2010
JUNE 19th 2010
It is hard to understand why England should expect its team to be in
the top 3 or even the top 8 of the world's best teams.The game is now
fully internationalised and while we have to pull a team together from
the best from a number of home teams, many of the countries we play
against make a point of having a national team that practises together
regularly with the foremost aim of doing well in the global competition.
Why we should expect this Italian expert manager and coach, Fabio
Capello to be the man to inspire this collection of individual talents
who, as I understand it (probably not at all), rarely get the chance to
get together to work up patterns and systems to use against
professional teams drawn from a pool of exceptional athletes impelled
by motivational forces toward the extreme end of the spectrum?
We pay our footballers a lot of money, but I can't see why what they
are paid should enhance their athletic ability unless we have the best
to choose from, other nations are in the bidding, and only money will
buy them for the England team. That is not the case. But when it comes
to the world cup, athletic ability and team cohesion are almost
certainly the decisive elements in winning.
I watched the match against Algeria. Three things struck me. Algerians
can run faster and appear to think quicker. England do not appear to
have any plan how to make use of the many corner kicks they managed to
gain - the ball was kicked every time to the defenders in front of the
goal while England watched from a distance. The speed of the Algerians
made England more concerned with defence than attack. They seemed to
expect Algeria to tire. Fat chance.
While it was perfectly logical for Capello not to choose the goal
keeper till the last minute, as both must be ready to play, using the
same technique with the team as a whole indicates that there are no
particular patterns that use the special high-points of a particular
team unless, (what do I know?) these combinations are all in the head
of the coach and the players. How very confusing, not knowing till the
last minute what the team will be. From what I saw, it just looked like
a bunch of players who at best were just used to certain positions and
a few routines.
Some of the England team played well. Johnson for one, and there were
some others. But on the whole there seemed to be a lack of coherent
plans and movements to surprise the opposition. Above all, those corner
kicks were utterly wasted. I blame the management.
Finally, it seems to me that the expectation and the pressure put on
the team is absurd. If we really wanted to win the World Cup against
all these teams, to whom it matters far more, we would have to go about
it in a completely different way. I would not be in favour of that.
It's only a game.
JUNE 23 2010
The pressure on England is now even more absurd. According to the
fanatics, it is unacceptable that they could lose the match against
Slovenia. In that case, what is the point of playing at all? It is a
given that any team taking the field in a sporting fixture, where they
intend to play by the rules, accepts the possibility that they may
lose. That is what the occasion is about and that is why winning is a
matter for congratulation. Seeing that pressure of the same sort is one
of the causes of the failure to score more goals against Algeria, the
match today could give rise to intimidation as an alternative tactic if
subtelty fails. I shall not be watching as I have other pressing things
to do.
5:00pm BST
I hear England played well in the first half but in the second half,
far from getting another goal to steady the nerves, Slovenia were
striking back. Another draw would have made it doubtful we could go on
and if the USA won its match, certainly not. England were defending
desperately. America scored at the very moment the final whistle came
at Port Elizabeth, proving God is an English football fan so what
chance does a referee have?
At Kellogg's factory in Manchester we are told a big screen meant they
could all watch and work at the same time. Interesting work, that must
be, that you can do at the same time as watching a TV screen nowhere
near you. I wonder what it pays. Perhaps that's why we can't compete
with the Chinese at making things and putting them in boxes. In my day,
Carruthers, we watched this stuff at the cinema, later, and when TV
came most people hear it on the radio during the day and saw it in the
evening.
Only joking, time off at work for some to watch the match at work when
this is possible is a very good idea and I am sure they all deserved
it. Not recommended for those with serious jobs though like pilots and
train drivers, soldiers under fire, police on duty and any security
personnel. I suppose surgeons can delay operations that are not
critical for 90 minutes. But there is definitely something a bit screwy
here when the first flight of the Space Shuttle, or the Ariane rocket,
which are historic events involving the world in their consequences and
millions of people in their construction (yep, millions) and decades of
work do not get the same allowance by employers. Real time watching of
anything could bring some regional, national and global systems to
breaking point if this becomes a habit. It's very important we are all
doing different things most of the time and never exactly the same
thing ever.
JUNE 27th 2010
Comprehensively thrashed today by Germany who were faster, better in
every way and had a very good idea exactly how to win against England.
If we had for some reason (which I can't imagine) beaten Germany there
was still not the slightest chance of winning the cup. If these are the
best players we have to make a team, then we must realise they would
have to play a lot more as a team, with a much better manager, to gave
the slightest chance of winning a world championship. Even then, since
they can be outrun by most of ther opposition, they would have to me a
lot smarter then any opposition. I doubt they are likel to be. Since it
was obvious to me, someone who does not play football and knows diddly
squat about it, that we were going down, how is it that most of the
nation and many experts are so deluded?
Finally, I have to say I know nothing about Fabio Capello, but he comes
over as bumbling mumbler I wouldn't trust to put the cat out. He can't
understand English, or speak it, so how can he possible manage a team
not fluent in Italian. He thinks that today England played a good game.
Communication is key for a manager and he can't communicate and
does not appear to understand how football is played.
I am glad we just won the One-Day series with Australia. As somebody
who finds the use of the word 'humiliating' as used by the media quite
ridiculous, I have to say the defeat today at the World Cup was
humiliating because of the absurd hype the world has had to put up with
from the British media, fans and many footballers and commentators.
Humiliation is bloody well deserved, though not for the players. They
do not pick themselves, nor manage the team or the sport. Canon fodder
in my view even if some of them have remarkable talents not unrelated
to football.
AUGUST 9th 2010
It has taken over a month but now the manager has spoken. He says the
reason for England's poor performance was exhaustion and fear. I think
he is very likely correct. The exhaustion has been dealt with by many
commentators. The fear, on the other hand, is largely the fault of the
commentators and the fans and outlandish expectations of both, not for
a good performance but for a 'win or else you are rubbish' barrage, day
by day as the matches approached. I refer readers to my opening
paragraph and you will now understand why I wrote it, and why I write
everything I do on this web site - to explain the bleeding obvious and
how we cause all the problems that come our way, although sitting on
this planet waiting to be hit by an asteroid will be the first time we
have not had a chance to get out of the way of trouble and so must be
collectively proactive. The rest is just practice.
Incidentally, Mr Capello, having analysed the problem with England's
football team said he didn't have any idea what to do about it. This
should give us pause for thought. Perhaps what he is saying is that no
team or manager can be expected to handle the situation created by the
British media and British football fans and the current system and
enviroment in which the teams operate. Or, alternatively, that somebody
could but he can't.
DECEMBER 2nd 2010
We didn't get a lot of votes at the voting for the next world cup
because we haven't a clue how to handle these things. We look at this
as a
presentation competition. Nobody else does. We don't like joining
international organisations like the EU or anything else. FIFA has a
bunch of guys who have got themselves onto the election committee and
they decided who to vote for, NOT on the basis of the presentation but
on where they thought it might be a good idea, never mind the reasons
or the quid-pro-quos of which there may have beem few or many. They
want to send football round the world. Of course it
would help if that
was stated clearly in advance.
Instead, various criteria were set out
as merits to be judged when voting. They were clearly ignored. In the
run-up to the vote the UK did a lot of lobbying. Votes were promised
no doubt in the end just to get us to shut up. I think it's a good
thing it has gone to Russia, but Qatar, that needs explaining - it
looks as if our press created a bad smell in the FIFA corridors and
nobody felt particularly interested in voting for Britain. The whole
idea of members of the committee 'promising' to vote for others is to
my mind utterly absurd. The vote is secret. It is highly likely that if
any member started hearing votes had been 'promised' to any country
they would tend to dismiss that country as needing their own vote. The
very practice of 'promising votes' sounds to me like a stitch up. If Cameron
and others had any sense they would not have got involved. The best way
to make an impression with FIFA would be to win the world cup.
DECEMBER 5th 2010
Now we learn that Boris Johnson, London Mayor, has cancelled the
'freebie' accomodation for FIFA delegates at the 2012 Olympics. Oh, so
they were offered a freebie because they promised to vote for us - and
now we call them corrupt.
nnnn