Mon 3 Jul 06
The Party’s Over Now…
Like many of you, I needed some time for recovery and reflection after Saturday’s match. Many will say that we need not care so much about a game. But this game and our team, for all of their faults, bring together so intimately a disparate range of people to share joy, despair and consolation. It is our Distributed England and we will continue to stand by her.
Some of my initial observations:
- Kudos to Becks for doing vastly more than his departing gaffer, taking some responsibility by resigning as team captain. While there is surely a consensus that this came about two years too late, it was an unexpected act of civility.
- Sven: classless and unrepentant to the bitter end. Good riddance at last.
- Sage advice to Cristian Ronaldo: make that rumour come true and decamp to the Bernabeu. The only good thing about earning a lifelong grudge from Wayne Rooney is that you likely won’t live long to fret about it.
- Pity poor Theo Walcott. His first big trip to the Continent and he couldn’t even have a proper large lager lout evening. Oh yes, and marking the start of his professional footballing career by acting as the team’s boat anchor.
Where do we go from here?
- Steve McClaren needs to take care in his choice of assistants. His experience in the UEFA Cup with Boro cannot compensate for a lack of understanding competitors’ footballing styles. The FA has its Englishman: let’s get some foreign counsel for real value for money.
- The new captain? I say John Terry or possibly Stevie Gerrard. The lads need someone with the fortitude to stand up to the gaffer when necessary but as well to lay smack down on his colleagues when justified. And that means a hard man, not a clotheshorse.
- It had to be shown in brutal terms why Wayne Rooney needs support up front. I would not even put down money that Michael Owen will be coming back soon. So Andy Johnson, step right up. He’s got the skill and the personality to complement Rooney, with Defoe as the prime backup choice. Time to release Lurch back into the wild, though.
Paul Canniff
All good comments and questions, but we shall have to wait and see what The Brain Trust does with all the problems with which they are now confronted. What was with putting Lampard in for penalty kicks? Did they hope he would finally get a goal? Speaking of which, all England’s penalty kicks looked pretty weak to me; no force, no crispness, no show of confidence unlike Hargreave’s goal. As for Crouch, the length of his socks alone made him easy to identify from a distance, but nothing else did.
Good comments. I am not a hardcore football fan, but I do follow a bit, especially the big international competitions, the World and Euro cups. Rooney was courageous, but all alone up front, he was a marked man and I have no doubt the Portuguese had in mind to pester him until a red card could be handed out. Fair enough, I suppose. Really, though, what was Fifa thinking by assigning an Argentinian ref to an England game? I seem to recall something about a little war, not so long ago. Not that it should matter, of course … And Blatter announcing in the press, days before the Portugal game, that he thought England didn’t have the class to be a champion? It all smells rather bad. But, in the end, all they had to do was score 3 or four penalty kicks and they would have won. So, in the end, the responsibility lies with the England side. It all reminded me so much of the match with Argentina a few years back when Beckham was sent off, at about the same time that Rooney was sent off in this game. I’m just sayin’.
England did have her chances and with 10 men played valiently and well. Like Wayne Rooney I was dismayed to see him sent off. There is a routine to taking penalty kicks and every coach knows the routine. Stand tall and have the confidence to stare down the keeper. Take a run up of no more than three paces. Pick your spot and don’t change your mind. Put pace and direction on the ball. The English shooters broke all of these rules and gave Ricardo some wonderful gifts. It was almost as bad as Swiss incompetence at penalty shots.