England played atrociously bad in the last world cup - if you take “atrocious” as being a relative term (in this case relative to the performances that we all know the players on that team are capable of).
Now a lot of excuses/explanations were put forward for this.
Firstly, the media questioned the team that Sven Goran Eriksson (the manager) took to the tournament in the first place (the selection of Arsenal youngster Theo Walcott who, at that point, hadn’t even made an Arsenal appearance, for example). They also criticised him for lacking sufficient back-bone to drop big-name players who were performing below standard (Beckham being the obvious example).
The irony, of course, that they (the media) were now having a go at Eriksson for being too influenced by the media was completely lost on them. That aside, however, there was validity in those claims.
Secondly, questions were (rightly) raised about the performances the England players themselves put in. Whatever emotive terms you want to attach to it (“Passion”, “Heart”, “Va-va-voom”) they certainly lacked something as their performances on the pitch were disgracefully substandard.
A lot of debate and effort has therefore, as you can expect, gone into looking at how the FA can turn England back into the side they should be. So far, however, their attempts to do something about it haven’t exactly filled people with confidence.
Firstly, after Eriksson’s departure, they completely botched the quest for his replacement. Now the thing to remember is that managing a NATIONAL team is very different to managing a regular team. Your “team” is composed of players who don’t regularly play together and indeed often play against each other (think of it as being like Pro-Bowl games) with all the inherent difficulties that produces and you can obviously only select players of a particular nationality - if there isn’t a world-class left midfielder of English nationality then tough. This means that some incredibly good managers have, well, sucked as national coaches because they lack the skills it puts particular emphasis on - Man Management, Scouting and basically getting the best out of what you’ve got.
So as you can imagine, its damn important to get it right.
It should have been Scolari (the then Portugal coach) and they even went so far as to announce him as “their man” only to see him turn the job down, commenting that the job of England Manager is a poisoned chalice - too much pressure from the FA, too much press attention, too much fan expectations.
The FA then tried to pretend that it didn’t matter as they hadn’t really wanted him - honest - and started making noises about how the next manager should be English because that’s what “the fans” (or rather the people who read the Sun Newspaper ;)) wanted.
Great idea in theory, but its execution left a lot to be desired. Firstly, whether for reasons of nationality (he’s Irish) or just plain incompetence, they didn’t approach Martin O’Neil - someone who was (and still is) phenomenally well suited to the role with a proven track record at that style of management. He was (at the time) unemployed, a very popular choice amongst fans, and had even been dropping veiled hints that he was rather interested. They then seemed to ignore pretty much every other manager whose name popped up in connection with the post (such as Alan Curbishley) before settling on Steve McClaren.
Now Steve McClaren is not a bad manager. He’s a pretty good manager, in fact, and no one really doubts that. The issue most people have, however, is that he isn’t the best manager for the job and wasn’t the best available at the time. Most people aren’t pissed off at McClaren (although they’d like to see him replaced with someone better) because its not his fault - they’re pissed off at the FA for putting him in the job in the first place.
Now to my mind England’s biggest problem is not that we don’t have the quality and talent - despite what some people say about foreign players ruining the English game etc. - but that those players need a thorough kick up the arse from whoever is in charge, some good tactics, and more time to actually train and practice some goddamn tactics together rather than just playing pointless friendlies all the time. I don’t think we’ll see that this side of the European Championships in 2008 where we will almost certainly muddle our way through to the Quarter finals or Semis before going out to France or Portugal, but to my mind McClaren simply doesn’t have the skills necessary in sufficient quantities to get more than that out of us.
So until O’Neil (or someone like him) in that job and the FA actually gives them the support and time they need to do whats needed then England are going to consistently underperform
So who knows, by 2010 we might, might actually stand a chance of winning something, but at the moment i’m not hopeful.
Brian’s a class act; it’s great to hear he’s doing well.