Well that didn’t last long. England absolutely collapsed against Germany with a catalogue of textbook errors (or a textbook of catalogue errors). I don’t want to exaggerate, but that was the worst display I have ever seen any team play ever. They should just take the next World Cup off and think about what they’ve done. Ok, maybe a little exaggeration.
Much is being said about England’s ‘golden generation’ of stars failing to live up to their hype, ‘not as good as they think they are’, ‘over-paid’, ‘overconfident’. I can’t agree with too much of it, but some things were apparent. Rooney was non-existant and clearly unfit, Johnson was sluggish, Terry looked as though he’d never played the game before, Gerrard and Lampard looked like they were playing for two different teams (that’d be Liverpool and Chelsea, not England), and Fabio Capello appeared to be stuck on tactics that worked for him when he played Championship Manager Italia 95, but don’t work against those who play Football Manager 2010. The oft-criticized ‘long Premier League Season’, which is at least two whole games longer than in other countries, is always touted as a reason our players are so tired, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the Premier League’s foreign players such as Carlos Tevez or Tim Howard, who appear sprightly and well up for the big stage. That ‘goal that wasn’t’ was almost irrelevant after they were played off the park so completely. I’m not just gutted, I’m thoroughly disappointed. I am even annoyed about the red shorts.
That said, I am not ready to join the army of smirking and sarcastic told-you-sos who couldn’t wait to gleefully tweet and facebook-update about how England are disillusioned and deserve it because they are overpaid and overhyped (none of the other countries have those types of player, of course), and how England just fundamentally cannot win a World Cup so you chavs on your council estates waving your flags should get real, stop pretending they can. But what do they expect? Really? We’re cynical enough, don’t then tell us we can’t allow ourselves a few weeks of wild almost ritualistic hope. As Rooney would say, for fuck’s sake.
To cheer us all up, here are some facts you might like. England have won the World Cup more times than Germany (West Germany have won it three times, fair enough). Sunday’s win was only the second time the Germans have beaten England in the World Cup finals, the last being in 1970 (if you count the penalty shoot-outs as draws, which they technically are), finally matching England’s two wins over them. the last time they met in a finals, England won 1-0, in 2000. The last competitive match between the two nations, in the World Cup qualifier in 2001 in Munich , in your actual Germany, where England won 5-1 (Germany could only manage a paltry four on Sunday!). To all those who say the rivalry is one-sided and England simply can’t ever beat Germany, it’s not true. It’s just they are usually better than we are against all the other teams.
Truth is, of course England are capable of winning it – they have won it before, albeit a long time ago. Spain have never won it (in fact England have consistently done better at World Cups than Spain), but we don’t say the Spanish are fundamentally incapable . Same goes for the Dutch, even the Portuguese. No matter what Alexei Lalas says, it is fair enough for the English to believe it’s possible – they have what many other countries consider the best league in the world, and on paper we all know those players have the ability (ok, maybe not Heskey). I do question whether the players on the pitch really believed it. Italy won it four years ago without having the best team in the tournament. Greece and Denmark both won the Euros as the surprise package. If teams stop believing it can be done, we may as well just engrave Brazil’s name on the trophy and give it to them every four years.
