The England Problem
With England’s capitulation finalised with a bore draw against Costa Rica the inquest into England’s failure has begun. Knives are being sharpened and fingers pointed. England hold a united front, from the players and staff to the FA chairman. It can be in no doubt however that whilst the public face is positive, many in the England camp must be looking over the shoulder, waiting for whoever makes the first move.
The public and media though now look for someone to blame, unable to simply place this aberration on bad luck and misfortune. There have been a lot of places where blame has been placed, the players, the staff, youth level or just general quality. The answer is not any one thing, but an amalgamation of many small things that accumulate to a large problem.
Firstly we must make an obvious statement; England are not a successful international team, nor have they ever been. One win in an international competition 48 years ago places us on similar pars to Denmark and Greece. There has been a common misconception that, as the creators of the game with the most supreme league, we should be one of the best teams in the world. Week in week out in the Premier League we see top class English players strut their stuff and impress the world, but when placed on an international stage they almost always flatter to deceive. This mis-evaluation of our quality has led to a great many international disappointments and as much as we like to tell ourselves that we had realistic expectations for this tournament the reaction to our exit, which was on par with most people expectations, illustrates that ultimately we had more unrealistic expectations then we had said.
Secondly we must address the quality level; England at present have no players on par with the world beaters, the likes of Suarez, Hazard, Messi and Ronaldo. What we do have is a general high quality, excelling in no particular area but neither having any obvious weakness.
England is a jack of all trades, master of none team. To this end we are a similar team to the likes of Italy, France and Germany, though arguably on a slightly lower level. Arguments that we ‘simply are not good enough’ are not valid; we have the players to perform well at an individual and collective level, something else is preventing us performing.
There is not something in the water or the blood that prevents Englishmen from being good at football, these problems lie elsewhere
There is also a coaching level issue. Whilst Roy Hodgson is a fine manager, he is not a winner. He is not a Carlo Ancelotti or a Jose Mourinho. He made errors but not so considerable that they cost us the tournament single handedly. The issue is also obvious that, barring Roy Hodgson, what English managers are at a higher calibre than Roy Hodgson and available. I believe a few managers have potential to be long term England manager; Stuart Pearce, Tim Sherwood and Eddie Howe. But still there are no winners in that list, nor any English managers who have honours in England or in other major tournaments. But in terms of coaching this is not the most immediate issue.