Andy Carroll hurrumphs his way past two of the French, sadly to no avail

Impressively for a match where Engerland were out-thought, outplayed, out-passed, outclassed and generally outed as a pile of out of date clodhoofers, there were actually positive things we can take from the game. It was, for instance, good that Engerland played a largely young and experimental side in a friendly that fundamentally wasn’t about the result but about the way we got there. It was exactly the right place to try out the likes of Carroll, Henderson, Young and Gibbs to see if they could step up from the Under 21 squad; it was exactly the right place to see whether certain semi-established players like Barry, Milner, Adam Johnson, Lescott, Jagielka, Walcott, and Foster were capable of raising their game and dominating their position; and it was exactly the right place to test whether the big players, Ferdinand and Gerrard still had it in them to be genuinely world class. It was the right place to test out Crapello’s tactics and gameplan against a side that, while also rebuilding, brought a level of skill and ability that Engerland can only aspire to.

Shame Shit Different Day

Sadly, Engerland flunked pretty much all the tests. As a whole, the team performed with a tactical naivety and incompetence that will see them swiftly eliminated from any serious championship, assuming always that the flaws are not so great that we actually make it that far. It was the same sorry story we saw recently against Montenegro and so many other matches before then.

“An inability to accurately pass the ball to a colleague, an inability to effectively control balls lumped up from the back, an inability to work the ball through midfield, failure of movement off the ball, failure of ambition. In fact a general level of failure that was utterly depressing.“

There. I’ve said it before and so it was again. To all that can be added a total lack of pressure off the ball when the opposition has possession. France were given this game by an Engerland side seemingly content to hoof-n-hope it to them every time it had possession, and happy to let the French midfield advance to the edge of the area before beginning to put them under any kind of pressure. It was almost as if they’d been told there was a 3 metre exclusion zone around the French players. You don’t win games by only beginning to impose yourself in your own penalty area.

Tactically, We Don’t Have A Clue

Tactics are the manager’s responsibility. He sets the shape of the team and dictates how it plays. Crapello seems to set his sides up as 4-3-3 or possibly 4-4-1-1, but it’s abundantly clear that this isn’t how Engerland play. When we have the ball we play a mysterious 4-0-1 formation whereby the entire midfield goes missing and balls are artlessly hoofed to the ‘big man’ at the front who is magically supposed to do something with it (and inevitably fails), while when we’re defending we crumple to a 9-0-1 formation lining up like compliant little mice on the edge of our area ceding possession and initiative to the opposing team.

Now, unless he is clinically insane, stupid or diabolical enough to actually want Engerland to lose, there’s no way Crapello actually sets up the team to play this way. He’s intelligent enough to realise that you can’t play playground hoofstyle and expect to win anything more elevated than the Johnson’s Paint Trophy (and that’s probably an insult to the Johnson’s Paint Trophy). You win international matches by retaining possession and passing the ball to feet. Sure the occasional long pass works, but the percentages are against you. That’s why when they do work they look impressive. But, fundamentally, they’re best played against slower sides who maintain a high defensive line. Not against the French.

Somewhere between Crapello’s mouth and the players’ brains something goes horribly, horribly wrong. At some point in the first five minutes of the match everything they’ve discussed gets lost. You can almost see it happening. During the first two or possibly five minutes of an international Engerland play genuinely international class football. We pass the ball to feet when we have possession (admittedly not that well and usually just around the back four) and we press the opposition when we don’t to try and recover the ball. Then, suddenly, it’s gone. The first judders of fear appear, confidence evaporates and we start hoofing it all over the shop. From then on we are merely reacting to events rather than instigating them.

On the showing of the first half Engerland were lucky to emerge with naught. We created nothing, barely got the ball beyond the halfway line and, if we did, it quickly cannoned back to the French. They displayed neat, intelligent interplay, primarily orchestrated by Nasri and Malouda, who don’t seem to have become incompetent simply because they play in the Premiership. The goal, a sweet piece of defence splitting interplay between Malouda and Benzema (who can’t buy an appearance never mind a goal against Spanish defences), simply illustrated the gulf in class between the sides.

The second half was marginally better, if only because the French sat back and relaxed, had some lunch, admired the beauty that is Wemberley Stadium, did some shopping and only vaguely bothered to attend to the pestilence that was the Engerland team. Sure they were still bothered enough to ‘get a spare’ when Sagna, who also doesn’t seem to have become useless by playing in England, trotted down the right and crossed the ball into the box. It helped that there were two attacking midfielders there to turn the ball in (more than Engerland accomplished in total on the night) and that Lescott was painfully out of position.

Did Anyone Emerge With Credit?

Well, the new boys will have learnt a lot.

Carroll will have learnt that, like Crouch, his very height and size count against him at this level, playing in to the worst tendencies of the English mindset. Because he’s tall let’s just lob balls aimlessly at him because he’s bound to be able to keep possession in that physical English way that never works internationally. Let’s not give him beautiful passes to run on to, or support him in any way. Hell let’s try not even having anyone else in the same half as him when we fling balls at him as hard as we possibly can, then blame him when he can’t create any chances. He will have learnt that the England no 9 is a lonely space where you don’t even have the luxury of harrying about trying to win possession. You are the point of a spear whose staff has gone missing.

Gibbs will have learnt that he’s not quite in Ashley Cole’s class just yet. However, he was left with no defensive cover from either Milner or Lescott when Sagna overlapped him and ran in to cross for the second. To be honest he had no defensive support all evening. As he showed on his previous Engerland outing he’s an accomplished left back and great cover for Cole, but he’s not genuinely international class.

Henderson, however, will be ruing his call up. He had a miserable evening in total contrast to his performance against Chelsea only 4 days previously. As a defensive midfielder he was playing in the celebrated Makelélé position, or in the English vocabulary the Hargreaves role, and he struggled. The French, being sneaky, simply played sightly ahead of him or between him and the back four. Meanwhile Engerland proceeded to sabotage his evening by not passing to him and on the rare occasions when he did have the ball by not giving him any passing options (about the only thing they did effectively all evening). He will go back to the Under 21s where he’s genuinely appreciated for their European Championships next year but could return to Engerland for 2012. Given he’s probably going to go to Man United sometime soon he’s definitely one for the future.

Ashley Young, who’s been on the periphery of the squad won’t have done his chances any harm by coming on in the second half. In contrast to Walcott, who still seems impotent at this level as a wide man and was starved of service, Young harried more and did more with the ball when he had possession. With some help from midfield and support up front he might actually have caused the French a problem.

The middleweights pretty much all flunked out. None of Walcott, Milner, Jagielka, Lescott or Barry did anything to enhance their reputations. Barry in particular is looking like a total waste of space. It’s unclear what role he performs and he doesn’t seem to be making any kind of contribution to the side. Walcott and Milner were both starved of service from defence and support in midfield. And when they did get forward to support Carroll there seemed to be no connection or understanding between them, Walcott would be looking for the Arsenal pass, while Milner would be trying to Man City it. Lescott provided no support to his flanks and was ineffective. Jagielka was much better when played as a central defender (his normal position) rather than as a right back.

Stevie G had what for him is becoming a normal Engerland performance. He was rubbish. He didn’t stabilise midfield, didn’t support going forward and was most notable for his continued tendency to attempt the 40 yard ‘hail mary’ pass at every opportunity, gifting possession back to the French on pretty much each occasion. No style, quality or leadership.

Franz Ferdinand was possibly the only player to have come out of this without a damaged reputation. He was merely adequate, doing what he was supposed to with the minimum of skill. However, he was also responsible for the hoof-n-hope tendency, far too often playing long balls out of defence rather than trying to play down the middle.

Adam Johnson showed a disturbing tendency to believe his own hype by trying to win the game singlehanded when a pass to a teammate might have been preferable. Richards added more attack when he was played, correctly, at right back. His work with Johnson on the right showing what Man City might achieve there if only they were both being played regularly.

And Crouch showed what everyone has suspected for a while, he’s got a great touch for a big guy. Which only goes to reiterate pretty much everything that’s wrong about the Engerland mentality. In that strange world they call home and we call ‘Abroad’, they’d simply say he’s got a great touch.

It Was A Great Game For

Jack Wilshere. Missing through injury he might almost have played himself into the heart of the Engerland midfield.

And Let’s Not Forget

Spain, the World Champions, played a friendly as well. They lost 4-0 to Portugal.

Oh my how South Africa will rue a moment of defensive madness. Not the moment when they allowed Ribery to get goal side of his defensive marker and set up Malouda for the goal that totally deflated Bfana Bfana, but the moment in that first match when they played not one, not two, not three, but four Mexicans onside for the tap-in that allowed Mexico back into the game and dropped two vital points for South Africa. How different things would have been had South Africa won that as they really should. They might have gone into the Uruguay match on a high with a bit of momentum and got some kind of result. As it is they are down and out having just beaten the losing finalists from 2006 and in some style until the last 20 minutes when they began to tire and the French scored. It’s sad, they could have had an easier Group (with say North Korea, Nigeria, and Honduras for instance), but the truth is that they were a poor side who survived on enthusiasm and optimism rather than skill and whose top man, Pienaar, never found the form that made him so effective for Everton. Only the supercool Tshabalala really impressed and he missed a number of opportunities to increase South Africa’s lead.

France, meanwhile, go out on something of a high, they have done marginally better than they did in 2002. Sure they finished bottom of their group, which included Uruguay, they played three, lost two and drew one, and they had a goal difference of -2, but this time at least they scored a goal. And quite a nice one it was and Malouda will want to keep that in his scrapbook. They also outdid themselves in the uniquely Gallic sulking stakes. Whereas in Japan in 2002 they were merely grumpy, stroppy, miserable tossers, this time they’ve added a whole new contemptuous angle to their behaviour. The players it seems prefer their bling and sloppy-mouthed gangsta verbidge to actually training or playing or anything. They seem to have no shame. Henry performed another blatant handball takedown, hoping maybe for that to become his signature move in the luscious advertising filled world he will now inhabit now he has renounced football for socca. Dominatrix, meanwhile, showed that he genuinely has no class whatsoever by refusing to shake the South African manager’s hand after the match. So, winners in their own special way, the French have elevated being sporting c**ts to something of an art form. They cheated to get to South Africa and were miserable, unpleasant tossers the entire time they were there. Thank f**k they’re leaving on a jet plane this evening.

Uruguay 1 – 0 Mexico

Who’d a-thunk it? Two teams who only required a draw for both to go through produce a result with honest to goodness shots and goals and the like. Having spent the time watching the South Africa vs France match, I’ve no idea who started it but it seems like one of those playground arguments that got seriously out of hand – “Miss, Miss, he’s tooken my ruler”, “No I didunt”, “Cheater”, “Liar” etc – before the nuclear option of “Your Mum” is played by one of the little brats and things go massively downhill. Given that Uruguay would have topped the group if things stayed at 0 – 0 and thus avoided Argentina in the next round (which has to be the reason for this no draw score),  you have to think that it was Mexico who first employed the playground tactic of actually having a shot on target, after which the Uruguayans must have immediately dished out the “Your Mum” response and gone for goal. I can particularly see Diego Forlorn as the messy-haired belligerent toddler ever anxious to take offence an given his performance so far he’s a dangerous man to upset.

So Bye-Bye South Africa And France

Two teams who fundamentally weren’t good enough to get out of what was a eminently winnable Group. South Africa just weren’t given the breaks they needed by FIFA, France were just shocking.

34 Down 30 To Go 27 Teams Remaining

Yes, the Second Round of Group matches were certainly better than the First Round. Most teams understood that they couldn’t simply defend all the time and play for a draw, even the Swiss, whose adoption of an almost ‘Neutral Country’ option has seen them regularly top both the Haven’t Conceded and the Haven’t Scored tables, realised that at some point they’d have to come out and have a shot, although to be fair they did have something that vaguely resembled a shot in the First Round and it paid off handsomely. The games got faster and more meaningful as we saw Matches That Mattered and teams realised that there was a very real danger of their World Cup ending later this week.

The Goals Are Coming

As teams threw off the shackles of defensive cowardice and started attacking we began to see more goals. Few teams were content to sit on a one goal lead and continued to press their opponents. Some goals were even good, although few of them were up to the Tshabalala standard. However, I distinctly remember exclaiming, “What a goal” more than once during Round 2.

The Cheating Has Started

Grab and Dive, with or without pirouette, is the order of the day. Compulsive penalty box wrestling at every set piece. Not that much deliberate diving, but plenty of subtle blocking and writhing around. All in an attempt to cheat your way to a free kick or some colour of card for the opposition, or both. Not good. I think if it continues, we will see some kind of tv replay system introduced on the fly, if only because the whole world is watching.

Lots of Empty Seats

Now that it’s getting serious I suspect we won’t be seeing too many empty stadiums, but I’d lay money that there will be empty seats at the Uruguay Mexico match, where both teams need only to draw to go through (0 – 0 anyone?). However, too many venues have been conspicuously less than capacity.

Who Has Been Naughty?

It’s goodbye to South Africa, France (very naughty), Nigeria, Greece (very bad),  Algeria,  Oztralia (awful), Serbia (painful). Cameroon, New Zealand (rubbish), Slovakia (tedious), Ivory Coast (unlucky to get Group of Death for the second World Cup in a row), North Korea, and Honduras. You are all officially too crap for the World Cup. Book your flights now.

Who Has Been Nice?

And it’s hello to Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, South Korea, Ghana, Germany, Holland, Paraguay, Italy, Brazil, Portugal, and Chile. Nicely done South America.

And Who Is Bricking It?

Group C is totally up for grabs with two of Engerland, USA and Slovenia, the permutations are excruciating, but basically all teams have to win to be sure that they will qualify. In Group E Japan and Denmark will duke it out, a draw being enough to take the Japanese through. Group H is so complicated that Spain, Chile and Switzerland could all end up with 6 points and theoretically identical goal differences and goals scored, in which case as Spain will have beaten Chile, who have beaten Switzerland, who have beaten Spain lots would have to be drawn.  Makes penalty shoot outs seem tame by comparison.

And Who Is Really Bricking It Most?

Has to be ever-optimistic no-hopers Engerland, who just seem utterly unable to cope with the pressure of having to play a few matches away from home in front of large television audiences. Basking in unwarrented media acclaim and with performances getting more inadequate by the day, Engerland are a disaster waiting to happen. And while the French are imploding with a farcical degree of hilarity, Engerland can’t even manage an effective internal coup d’etat. One thing is clear, Wednesday could be the most excruciating game of football ever played.

Now it’s palpably obvious that New Zealand are a rubbish team, whose inclusion in the World Cup is simply part of a plot by Sepp Blatter to bring in all one million of the Pacific Islands into the ‘Football Family’ thereby gaining him enough votes to be President for life. However, it is clear that as they have now scored more goals and have the same number of points as Engerland, they are a world force to be reckoned with, an obviously welcome addition to the international football fabric. How we laughed when New Zealand, who have a superior FIFA ranking to the cheeky North Koreans it must be said, scored against the haughty Italians in the first few minutes.

Same Old, Same Old

Now the limitations of New Zealand are the limitations of a classic Sam Allerdyce team, like Blackburn Rovers, whose clumpy defender Ryan Nelson stars for the All Whites (alongside former Halifax Town luminary Shane Smeltz), namely sub-Mourinho Discipline defending, two banks of four cloggers who think that physical intimidation and hard tackling are any substitute for skill or class. However, the reality is that teams who want to be great have to find ways of getting around this dour defensive mindset. Italy, like Engerland are crammed full of old favourites, the only difference being that the Italian old boys have a nice pile of medals from the tournaments they have won. However, like Engerland, they don’t seem to have any idea of how to overcome this kind of robust, nay tedious football, and found themselves utterly perplexed at the unsympathetic Kiwis and their thoroughly unsporting behaviour. Last match they managed to respond to the physical game that Paraguay brought, albeit to come from behind and secure a draw, and, yes, the same tactics (bring on Calamari-boy, get some extra zip and drive into the game) did deliver similar results (coming from behind to secure a draw), but you really have to expect more from the reigning World Champions. With Paraguay winning and Italy facing the mighty Slovakia, who will have to win to have any chance of going forward, the future for Italy looks anything but secure.

Meanwhile, The First Team To Implode Is…

We stated in our initial World Cup piece that there were two key questions we needed answers to, Would the French do worse than in 2002 and which team would be the first to implode. Now our predictions for the second was either Cameroon or France. Following the fallout from their rubbish performance against Mexico, the French have, officially, become the first team to fully implode, what with lovely Nicholas Anelka being sent home for calling his coach a bit of a ‘c**t’. It’s hard to know what is the most difficult element to bear, the squad’s refusal to train as a gesture of support, or their forcing Domenech to read their statement criticising the French Football Association to the press. In any case it’s the funniest footballing implosion since the Engerland squad threatened to go on strike following Dopey Rio’s failure to attend a dope test. France take on hosts South Africa on Tuesday and you have to wonder how bothered they are going to be.

28 Down 36 To Go 31 Teams Remaining

After the blatant tedium of the first Round, it’s clear that everyone has woken up. Hey, they say as they greet the morning, It’s the fucking World Cup and in some cases they appear actually quite interested in being there as opposed to fartarsing around on a beach (or in some alleged cases a variety of international class brothels). Not so the French. Shrugging their shoulders as only the truly French can, they take a spectacular puff on their Gitanes and mutter some gibberish about sardines and how they really need to propose to that good looking girl over there before some filthy Eenglish peeg gets to work. Given their total paucity of ambition, their spectacular lack of tactical nous and their awesome ambivalence, you kind of wonder why the French even wanted to be here and why Henry set himself up for such opprobrium by cheating his country into the World Cup. The Irish you sense would actually quite like to have been here, indeed you suspect they might actually have made an effort to, you know, attack, or score, or heaven help us actually win a match. You would have thought that the French, with the cultural memory of Japan 2002, where they played three, scored none and went home on the first available plane, might actually give a shit this time. You might have thought that on the 70th anniversary of Marshall Petan’s surrender to the Nazis, when the very existence of the French state was in doubt, Les Bleus might, you know, move themselves to play the beautiful game. But apparently not.

Apologies To The Mexicans

Now, previous posts like this and this might have led people to believe that I thought the Mexicans were a team of lightweight losers who pretty passed the ball around to no great effect and fell over a lot, who were led by a bunch of makeweight kids from Tottingham and Arsenal and who had no chance of ever getting out of the Group unless the French or the Uruguayans fucked the pooch. Thankfully for the Mexicans the French well and truly fucked the pooch, doing all the things I said prevented the Mexicans from beating South Africa. The French held a high line without the pace to defend it, allowing the lightweight Mexicans to skin them time and time again. Mexico, by contrast, kept a tight deep back line that prevented the French from running at them and then compounded this by dominating in midfield.

Who Wants Some?

Not apparently Ribery, the first of the ‘soccer stars’ to go home; not apparently Anelka, Malouda, Touloulan, or any of the other French players. And definitely not Domenech, who looks like he can’t wait to get home to the many lurid headlines that will greet him. One player who did look like he wanted some was Mexican Old Boy Cuauhtemoc Blanco, who is all of 37 million years old, came on as a sub, didn’t so much run as amble about before scoring the second goal from the penalty spot. Given his enthusiasm, as well as Mexico’s position in the ConCaf Group, which basically ensures qualification, there’s every chance that he’ll be at World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Which is more than can be said for any of this spastically useless French team. They truly lived up to the Rumsfeld description of them as Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys.

Not So Much Adios As Au Revoir

A bientot Frenchies. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

20 Down 44 To Go

In Brazil, where they play real football, they have a saying, “The first touch is to love the ball, then you can do what you like with it”. The implication is that the first touch transforms the ball from an inanimate thing into an object of desire. Now watching masters of this technique you begin to see how it all happens. Watching Messi earlier today you saw the ball seemingly attached mesmerically to his feet. Engerland, however, don’t hold to this seductive philosophy. Instead, for the Engerlish, the ball is something to be feared, hated and disposed of as soon as possible. How else do you explain our negligent approach to possession. We don’t so much cherish the ball as distain it, seeking to cede possession as swiftly as possible. Where other teams play the ball around the back, the midfield, even the attack, Engerland fall back on the ‘hoof’, lofting the ball over the halfway line to the opposition. Only in the last 20 minutes did Engerland show any willingness to want to keep the ball.

That Was Robert Green’s International Career That Was

With a display of catastrophic ineptitude, Green joined a long line of Engerland goalies. Peter Bonetti against Germany in Mexico 70, David Seamen against Brazil in Japan 2002, Paul Robinson against Croatia in the Euro 2008 qualifiers, Scott Carson against Croatia in the Euro 2008 qualifiers among them. You kind of feel that with his real experience this season being picking the ball out of the West Ham net last season, he wasn’t the best choice for Engerland’s number one. Joe Hart, who pushed Birmingham way beyond where they should have been, would have been a better choice. You also feel that the Engerland coaching staff must supply some kind of special training for this (and I don’t mean post-incident psychological trauma counselling although they would be well skilled in that by now), because you don’t see that level of consistently shit performance without some kind of prior planning. I mean I don’t see the Brazillians or the French, both of whom have had their share of nutter keepers in the past, displaying this regularity of spastic performance these days. I think both Green’s and the entire Engerland goalkeeping staff’s days are numbered.

The Rhino Is An Endangered Species

You can count on the thumbs of one hand (possibly the same outside thumb that Robert Green used to spoon the ball into the back of the net) the number of real game-changing opportunities Wayne Rhino has had in the last four Engerland matches. In contrast to his effect when playing with Man U, where he has had his most successful season, Rhino looks isolated and ineffective for Engerland. He shows none of the potency that announced his appearance at Euro 2004, little of the ambition and, ultimately, isn’t making that much of a contribution to the team. Given he is far and away Engerland’s most skillful player, and really the only Engerland player who can genuinely change an international game, it is criminal to mismanage him this way.

Too Often Engerland Chose The Safe Option

If Engerland have a style (and that’s a pretty big if), it’s that we have fast, pacey wingers and full backs who get down the line, challenge the defence and open up goal-scoring  opportunities. However, currently neither our wingers nor our full backs are punishing their opponents and Engerland don’t really look much of a threat. You need to ask, Do we want to win the World Cup, or just not lose it?

Remember Engerland vs France, Euro 2004? It’s Deja Vu All Over Again

Five minutes to go, Engerland were 1 – 0 up and coasting. They even managed to miss a penalty. Then, in the last 5 minutes, a foul by Heskey provided Zidane with the platform to level the match before a suicidal back pass from Steven Gerrard gifted the French with a penalty that they didn’t miss. Now as then Engerland are their own worst enemy.  Like all the teams we’ve seen, bar possibly the Argies, Engerland look totally beatable.

5 Down 59 To Go

As always BBC Pundit Hanson tells it like it is. “I blame the French,” he states. The cheat-eating surrender monkeys as Donald Rumsfeld might describe them did nothing to try to actually win the game. Mind you, a couple of moments from Diego Forlorn aside, neither did the Uruguayans.

Will Someone Please Attack

We can’t really make blanket judgements based on two really pretty shit matches, but it doesn’t look like anyone has the confidence in themselves to actually try and win anything rather than try desperately not to lose. A while back I was talking about actual quality football (something that has still to make an appearance here), and was comparing the ‘frolicking football’ of Arsenal, Barcelona and Spain with the ‘defend and break’ of Inter and, fundamentally, Dunga’s Brazil. None of the teams on view today displayed anything like as coherent a footballing philosophy. All dragged back 9 or 10 men behind the ball once they lost possession and none seem to have the balls to take the game to their opponents. All teams now seem to be perfectly content to sacrifice the space between their own halfway line and the space in front of their own box in favour of building a defensive wall at the 20 – 25 yard line.  As yet no one has shown the guile necessary to break through this space. In contrast to World Cup 2006, where the Group games got off to a flying start, with teams more anxious to get 3 points than worried about losing them, this time it looks like the conservatism of Euro 2004 (won by the tedious Greeks) has come to the fore.

This Group Is Shit

Any of the four can now make it. Neither Mexico nor South Africa are out of this. And none of these teams look like being anything to worry about. However, once they get out of the Group, these teams have a pretty easy draw, so there is the terrifying risk of repeating the French experience of 2006, which would be a real travesty.

2 Down 62 To Go