As the FA sit down to a hastily arranged meeting in Soho Square, following England’s exit from next year’s Euro 2008 finals, to sack Steve McClaren for his failure, who is going to be sacking those responsible at the FA?
In June 1991, a year after England’s best performance in the World Cup since 1966, with their best manager, Bobby Robson since Sir Alf Ramsey, the FA in their wisdom attempted to write a blueprint to bring overdue success to the England national team. That blueprint was for the FA Premier League.
Since its existence only four managers have won the Premier League, none of them English. As I write this, Arsenal are at the top of the Premier League where they belong. They play stylish, attractive, mesmerising football and are coached by a Frenchman who rarely picks an Englishman in his starting eleven. The Premier League top scorers are currently not English.
Furthermore, I want to watch the most skillful attacking players in the world wherever they were born. Messi (Argentina), Kaka (Brazilian), Ronaldho (Portugal), Henry (France), Rooney (England) and therefore would prefer to have all the best foreign players in the world playing in the Premier League.
The FA Premier League has not helped the England national team at all. It has simply been a monetary success for the FA itself.
Last night England fielded several players that do not even play regular football for thier clubs. When in the history of English football has that ever been the case before?
Forwards Peter Crouch, Jermaine Defoe and Darren Bent may or may not be good enough for England, yet are not deemed good enough to play regularly for their clubs by their respective managers - Juande Ramos (Tottenham) and Rafael Benitez (Liverpool), both are Spanish. And Scott Carson only plays regularly because he is currently on loan from Liverpool, though Benitez has now said Aston Villa can keep Carson!
FA Chief executive Brian Barwick publicly courted Phillip Scolari allegedly offering him the England vacany before appointing McClaren and then attempted to deny it. Yes McClaren should go now, and shouldn’t even have been given the job in the first place. But to address an underlying problem of why we have an under achieving England national team, responsibility must also lie with those who appointed him in the first place; as well as the overpaid, over-rated, under achieving, prima donnas that are so misrepresented by the the media when they call them “the golden generation!”
When he was appointed England manager, Steve McClaren said ‘judge me over 12 games’ - and he has been. But what has the FA asked to be judged on?
3 comments so far
1 MJ Ray // Nov 22, 2007 at 10:06 am
Some of the current Premier League top scorers table are English - Agbonlahor and Bowyer - but they’re not in the England team!
Agbonlahor also qualified to play for Nigeria and Scotland through his parents, but chose England, his country of birth. Demonstrated commitment, there!
Even so, picking Wright-Phillips over Agbonlahor was arguable. Wright-Phillips was of the few England players to have a good game last night, but was withdrawn to make way for Beckham without getting a chance to play in the 4-4-2. Would Agbonlahor have done better? Scored one of the chances falling to the right flank? Got forward a bit more to collect Crouch’s knock-downs? Hard to tell.
But why oh why did McLaren persist with a lukewarm midfield of Barry, Lampard and Gerrard when all of them - Lampard in particular, penalty notwithstanding - seemed a bit out-of-form against Austria? Lampard has been preferred to the similar-position Bowyer since Sven’s Euro 2004 squad, even during poor form. Are the FA still scared by Bowyer’s Hull court case?
And another thing… why blood Luke Young on the left against Austria and then persist with Joe Cole for the whole match here? Cole is brilliant, a match-winner, but Croatia seemed to be knocking lumps out of him, stopping him playing and leaving his strip mud-brown more than white. Young might have been a sterner test for them.
There’s an argument for keeping a settled team, but I feel you should take form into account somewhere. McClaren didn’t and now England’s out and so’s he. The now-sacked McClaren said in an interview “I wonder where it all went wrong” - sadly, the answer may be “nearly everywhere”.
Who can make it all go right? The special one?
2 Iain W // Nov 22, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Listening to TalkSport today, the concensus was that Barwick wanted O’Neil but was over ruled by the ‘Board’. So a sacrifice of Barwick on top of McClarens demise would not even go anywhere near stopping the rot. It needs to be ripped out, not pecked away at. Anyway it’s only a game, and we’ve the home internationals to look forward to now, well minus England who’ll not be able to arrange it.
3 matt sellers // Nov 23, 2007 at 4:47 pm
The day after the worst night night in English football since Rotterdam in October 1993, and Steve McClaren has gone. That, it has to be said, is a good thing. In the last 15 months under him, England has gone backwards. With Sven Goran Erikkson, they became serial qualiflers. Now we pin our hopes on Israel or Andorra getting a result against Russia. It is a sad, sorry state of affairs. Just go to http://www.catflapmag.com and look at the faces and listen to the word of the fans we interviewed after the game at Wembley. People are angry. They’re hurting