Tepid England but Stokies to swarm over Bolton!
In the build up to the England v Montenegro game a disproportionate amount of media attention was given to the manager’s decision to reinstate Rio Ferdinand as captain. Fabio Capello must be more baffled than anyone, in most countries the captain is just the most famous player or the oldest. That’s understandable too. In cricket major decisions are required from the captain throughout the match but, as in football, stepping forward for a coin toss and with the correct guess choosing kick off or choice of ends does not merit hours of debate or hundreds of column inches. The false controversy over selecting a captain was no bearing at all on the result. Montenegro are decent team. I’m disappointed but not shocked by our failure to win. They haven’t conceded a goal in this campaign. We know that England are an half decent up and downer sort of side so why the massive shock when when we fail to break sides down? Some of the criticism Capello has faced in recent months has been harsh but after this game he deserves some. Why not put Wilshire on to inject freshness? We didn’t play with any pace and lacked the imagination to break down a stubborn well organised defence. There was a reluctance to change things when the planA was clearly not working. The lack of creativity was partly borne of forwards unable to make diagonalruns to stretch the opponents defence. In fact, our opponents came closest to winning when they hit the bar. An axiom of football is that if you can’t outplay them you must make sure you outnumber them and Montenegro did that well by packing their midfield and forcing our wide players into boxes. Like Algeria in South Africa, the visitors deserved their celebrations. Like the World Cup the majority of blame lies with the players and their inability to vary their game and their seeming refusal to learn to do so. In short, they did a good job on us and we lacked the craft to dig a win out. Wales look doomed but beating England would salvage some pride, we have to be wary in March. We still have a good chance of reaching Poland and Ukraine but Spain and Germany have little to worry about.
Against Russia Ireland were outplayed for long spells. The visitors played with fluidity and passed through Ireland who looked flat footed. The amazing thing is that the final minutes could be so dramatic when the game had actually been so one sided! In Slovakia the Irish started well and took the deserved lead but allowed the hosts a way back. Keane’s penalty miss proved fatal and despite a crash bang wallop second half they have to be pleased with a draw. 1 point is a disappointing return for Trappatoni’s men. Scotland displayed admirable fortitude to stage a stirring rip roaring comeback and battle back to 2-2. However from that point Spain’s winner was sort of inevitable. It was still Scotland after all!
On Saturday Australia beat Paraguay in Sydney in what tabloid hacks would describe as an ‘ill tempered clash’. One of the most unfriendly friendlies in the history of, er, unfriendly friendlies! Arsene wenger would have swooned at the sight of those lunges!
It was disturbing to read of a rise in football violence amongst teenagers. Even here in Australia some youngsters have a sickening infatuation with the whole culture of football related violence. I overheard some talking excitedly about trouble at an Arsenal game and asked them why they were so fascinated by people bashing each other peoples heads in…. they didn’t know. As a teenager, many of my contemporaries seemed to see becoming involved in fighting almost as a natural progression. As if it was a rite of passage. I’ve always felt isolated from that. I specifically remember, even as a nine year old, standing in Glebe Street watching Millwall and Stoke’s hooligans fighting and being confused that so many people felt the need to smash people’s faces in over what was, essentially, wanting a different team to win a game of football. Violence at football has resulted in lives damaged, people even killed. It has given police the excuse ( but not justification I hasten to add) to treat supporters as second class citizens. There is nothing positive about football violence.
It’s exciting to see the news that Stoke City are taking a huge following to Bolton on Saturday. We are enjoying a special time for Stoke City. It used to be quirk that whenever we took a huge away following we’d get beaten, this hopefully won’t re-emerge at the Reebok. My friends here call Stokies ‘Phil Spector’. This is because other games are quite normal and up and down but when Stokies are on TV there’s a constant wall of sound!! I look forward to an incessant din but in this part of the world we can’t enjoy the noise until Sunday morning…. the game will be shown on a delay here!