Engerland Don’t Have The Love

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

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I Agree With Hanson

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

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