The Biggie
It's big but will it be clever? By the time you read this it will most likely all be over - Eriksson v Scolari round three. The first two rounds have gone with Big Phil, but can it be that Sven will have the last laugh? Or even the last understated smirk?
England expects: another gut-wrenching rollercoaster where our honest endeavour will most likely be undermined by an untimely lapse of concentration and no doubt a hideous call from the Argentinian ref who will secretly want England to lose as badly as I wanted Argentina to lose last night. Cheering for Germany, honestly - whatever next?
Despite their lack of form so far, England will be glad that at the absence through ill-discipline of "Antan" Deco and
Costinha "a place in the semis". 
How badly Portugal will miss the creative spark offered by Barcelona's John Cusack lookalike remains to be seen. By rights they should also be without the services of Figo, or F***o as I have now dubbed him after his performance against Holland. But FIFA of course decided against further discipline for his headbutt on Van Bommel (who in turn fell to the ground after careful consideration) as that would make the match referee (4 red cards, 16 yellow) look incompetent. Pause for derision.A final word for the residents of Gelsenkirchen should Portugal be awarded a dodgy penalty in the dying seconds of the game a la Australia. Sorry for the mess...
posted by Charlie @ 7:57 pm
4 Comments:
Cristiano Ronaldo, willy of the most willy-like variety. Prat. Hope France trounce them and he scores an own goal followed by a red card for being a cheat.
Sven - prat. Making Rooney play on his own and being surprised when he then stamps on Carvalho's (what he ever had of them) balls.
Referee - Prat. Lennon chopped down in Portugal area + Valente chopping him down = Penalty.
Penalty takers - all prats, especially Ronaldo.
Poo.
*Rant over*
Chris :)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I've just found an amusing photo, taken by someone who clearly wants Ronaldo lynched!
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i37/stephiebum/S6000549.jpg
P.S. Never thought I'd say it, but come on Germany.
It's a few days now since that dreaded game, and now my fury has subsided I feel I am in better shape to rant coherently and with considerably less venom. So here goes...
The blame for this England debacle lies clearly at Sven's door. England had as good a squad of players as almost all the other teams and yet they hardly played anywhere near as good as a lot them throughout the whole tournament. Why? . . .
1st reason: Sven hadn't a clue what England's best formation was. Most English players know 4-4-2 inside out. Most premiership sides play this system. Most of Sven's teams have played this system, but amazingly Sven decided to chop and change from this in the midst of a major tournament to the detriment of the team's performances. What was his rationale behind this obvious stupidity:
A. Was he trying to get the most out of Gerard and Lampard playing together as they are both attack minded midfielders and could play their normal game knowing there was a covering midfielder behind them? If so it clearly didn't work as both players often seemed to be tripping over each other to occupy the same space on the pitch. Most people know that G and L don't play well together. Why did we all have to have that reality proved to us again when no extra proof was needed!? Sven should have made a tough decision by sticking to 4-4-2,dropping Lampard and using a holding midfielder to cover Gerard. Besides Lampard seemed to be forcing himself ahead of Gerard (as Gerard is the more versatile of the two) into the better shooting positions only to see 25-odd shots fall woefully short of International standards. It would be easy to lampoon Lampard for his dreadful finishing, indeed even my wife was aghast when he strode up to strike the first penalty against Portugal ('Why's he taking the first penalty?' she exclaimed, 'He'll miss it!'), but that would be missing the point that Sven didn't have the Scorlaric balls to drop him. Besides who would you rather have taking those 25 shots - Lampard or Gerard?
B. How did Sven think that he could get the best out of Rooney by playing him up front on his own? I could be wrong but I have never seen him play up front alone. This severely curtailed Rooney's abilities. He had to play with his back to goal most of the time. Rooney is far better running at opponents, releasing others with deft passes or working his magic to get space to shot. He could never perform his normal game with his back to goal so much - besides if you play up front alone you often have two defenders for company which makes your life even harder. Plus it's about 2 years since he scored for England - any system that makes it even more difficult for England's supposed most important player to score shouldn't even be considered. Rooney had no chance to really make a difference and his suspect temper finally got the better of him when he should never have been put in that pressure role. Surely you free up your best players so they can perform to the best of their abilities, not shackle them with their back to goal fending off two defenders unable to play their normal game?
C. Playing 1 up front instead of 2 detracts from a team's ability to score or even have a scoring threat. You need someone special in your team like Henry to be able to pull off having only one up front. And even then you need to get your midfield runners to go past the striker frequently. It may help from a defensive point of view but not from an attacking angle. Surely it would have been better to have Crouch and Rooney up front. I know Crouch is not that great but he can be a handful, and at least he would have relieved Rooney's workload and pressure, while keeping the opposition defence on their toes.
Reason 2. The lack of pace in England's play. Now I know that posession of the ball is important in International football, but England have never been a team that holds the ball more than the better teams that she faces. What we have been good at is a direct, high tempo game. By direct I don't mean playing long balls all the time but attacking with purpose and pace. Most of the time England looked lethargic. I understand the heat was a problem in one or two matches but what about the other games? Sven didn't get England playing at a premiership pace. Too often the opposition had a chance to regroup because England were so slow on the counter-attack. That really stiffled the amount of quality chances we could have had to score.
Reason 3. Our strikers didn't score enough. 1 goal from all the strikers combined in 5 matches will not win you a tournament. Of course you need your midfielders to chip in but the strikers need to be scoring. Probably the reasons above contributed to this and also the well publisised lack of a fifth striker in Sven's squad. Most people knew that it was lunacy to only bring 4 strikers to Germany when one was only just coming back from injury, one was hoping to get fit sometime during the tournament itself, and one hadn't even played a premiership match! That's not just a gamble, that's professional suicide! And then to make matters worse he didn't even give Theo Walcott a run out. Your strikers aren't scoring you have to try them all. We will never know if Walcott would have done a Michael Owen circa France '98 because the Swede suddenly got cold feet on his striking gamble. A complete waste.
Reason 4. Sven's motivational tips. Well I have no idea what Sven says to his teams at half time but most of the time in this tournament England didn't seem to be bothered much in their 2nd halves. At least England scored in the second halves in this WC unlike in the previous one! Maybe Sven tells the players the one about how you only have to be seen speaking to another team's director to get a huge pay-rise, or maybe he has some great anecdotes about his love-life. Whatever he said, it mostly didn't work. And despite his optimism in press conferences, he failed to convince most of us that he knew what he was doing when most of what he said flew in the face of the facts.
There are other talking points too, like did Beckham deserve his place in the team (despite 3 of England's 6 goals coming through him), and my personal favourite 'Was Joe Cole really that good?' (because all he seemed to do was a couple of step-overs and then cut inside on his right foot. He never took the defenders on down the left and he certainly wasn't going to pass to the overlapping Ashley when there was a congested middle to get bogged down in).
But these and other topics would detract from the main arguement, namely that Eriksson never got his players playing well enough to come close to winning this World Cup.
The FA have wasted £25 million quid on a man who lost the plot at the end of his tenure. And with the quality players at England's disposal....what a waste!
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