Capello’s errors but the world continues without England!!
Roy Keane has spoken and said the problem with England isn’t the manager at all it’s that the players. A fair point I agree with but the point has to be made that FabCap has made some big errors. There was that daft Capello index that would have made public his innermost thoughts on his players. A foolish inflammatory notion that was only ever going to divide the camp. In a rare moment of positive intelligent action The FA instructed him to scrap the silly idea. Another mistake was taking four forwards as usual. Surely, he could have taken note of his friend and compatriot Marcello Lippi’s decision to take six forwards in 2006. Instead of doing something different to create different attacking options it was same old same old. The most visible error was the whole approach to the players. It is widely alleged he used to the same unstinting sergeant major approach he uses at clubs and in normal England camps. This is usually his method but a tournament like this throws up a situation a rarely encountered by any manager of any profession. You can’t put the same rigid discipline programme in place for six weeks you usually have in place for five days. Grouped up together for weeks on end the players are bound to get bored and fractious with each other. Apparently, towards the end, FabCap wavered a bit in his dogmatic approach but to get to that point much damage had already been done. He says he wants to stay on as manager, but if there is discussions taking place in the dusty FA rooms his position could be more precarious than first thought. I hope he does stay, but these mistakes mustn’t be repeated if we qualify for Poland and Ukraine in 2012. But, the point has to be made, the majority of the 2010 bucks lies with the players.
Somehow the World Cup is bravely limping and stumbling on without England. And after the slow start it’s become a cracking competition. The six knockout games so far have had an average of over 3 goals a game with no penalty shootouts required. Brazil’s third against Chile was very special. They now face The Netherlands in what could prove to be an intense war of attrition. Argentina v Mexico saw the evil genius Maradona patrolling the touchline with his usual excitable unhinged demeanour. They were fortunate to get the offside goal but when Tevez scored the third he could be forgiven for wanting to tell a certain Shrekky scouser THAT’S how to write the future!
Portugal v Spain later. The first knockout match between two sides with genuine aspirations to win the trophy. Every side in a tournament like this will cause problems but they will both know that with the winner facing Paraguay or Japan there could be much harder ways to get to a World Cup semi final.