On the BBCsport site today, Steve McClaren has said that he “fully expects” his England team to qualify for the Euro 2008 finals next summer.
While the chances of qualification may seem extremely slim,there does remain a glimmer of hope. A win for Russia on Saturday however and England’s chances will be all but over.
As team manager it is only right that McClaren should believe in the impossible, but we should never have got into this position in the first place.
Interestingly David Beckham has been chosen to play in the friendly against Austria, with Frank Lampard chosen ahead of Gareth Barry. If the England team has made the progress that McClaren believes they have, when saying :
“Look at the last six months - the squad and the team have come together playing in a good style.”
Then why make unnecessary changes to the team. OK its a friendly game, but going backwards is not going to help anyone, surely an ideal opportunity to try out some new players/tactics will once again be missed.
2 comments so far
1 Andrew Foreman // Nov 16, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Everyone else expected England to qualify as well McClaren!!…. Arguably one of the easiest groups… Top ten team… do the very small math calculation.. But what else did we really expect from a second rate manager?? Whose only previous experience of a “big” game in the hot seat, was a thrashing by Sevillia in the UEFA cup final!!……
2 MJ Ray // Nov 16, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Someone on Radio Five the other morning suggested that England’s motto could be “still mathematically possible to qualify” - oh, how true. Ignore the press and pick a team as a team, including a couple of those who lead, organise and inspire the team instead of plodding around, and leaving out some second-best stars instead of trying to play two players who really want to do the same job.
Anyway, let’s see how this game goes…