International break
Most fans I speak to are concerned and irritated that the momentum of a new season is twice interrupted by international breaks. Time was that for England these were competitive fixtures, one recalls a heroic 0-0 draw in Rome to achieve automatic qualification to the 1998 World Cup, but these days the quality of opposition for England are pretty second rate. England are the perennial qualifiers these days but rarely get beyond the quarter final at the business end. Various theories for our lack of competitiveness are proffered by the press but their contribution to it rarely questioned. We now no longer go into tourneys gung-ho with pictures of Stuart Pearce in tinned helmets.
There is normally one scapegoat, though, hung drawn and quartered, last time in the Euros it was Raheem Sterling. The answer in my view is simple: we do not have the players. None of our midfielders would make the German or Spanish bench. We lose possession too easily. Our defenders are rarely two-footed or as technically competent as the Italians. Joachim Loew has been in charge at Germany since 2006, in that time we have had Steve Maclaren, Fabio Capello, Stuart Pearce, Roy Hodgson, Sam Allardyce and Gareth Southgate … but no success. With Portugal and Holland unlikely to qualify automatically and Argentina by no means certain we should be no more than grateful for another safe passage to the tournament albeit accomplished in the dullest of ways.
I have long given up watching England’s qualifying games on the tv. I cannot stick the over-talkative Clive Tyldesey, the senior commentator of ITV. I can get on with stuff by following the always excellent radio 5 commetary. I no longer anguish that England will go out in the quarters on penalties. We have to go back to 1990 to when we reached a semi-final in the World Cup and another 26 years previously when we won our only tourney.
The wiseacres refer to lack of competitive spirit. England’s World Cup-winning manager Alf Ramsey had little time nor truck for the Press so eventually they got him in 1974. His words to the team after 90 minutes in the final against West Germany were roughly
“Stand up. The Germans are knackered. Let them see you are not. You’ve beaten them once. Now go out and beat them again.“
Germany went on to win trophy after trophy but we never found a manager since then that could instill such a competitiveness nor create a team with such esprit de corps.
