Three and in – not just another football blog

No, I’m not talking about him refer, more than once, to David Silva as David Villa until Gary Lineker corrected him. I mean his opinion of the Steven Gerrard elbow on Danny Welbeck.

GIF here – (3mb)

Shearer was critical of the referee’s decision to book the Liverpool captain saying “It’s a red card or it’s it’s nothing”.

Wrong. It’s just a red card. Gerrard led with the elbow, knew fine well what he was doing, and should have gone. Then again, I don’t suppose we can expect Alan Shearer to come straight out and condemn players who are a bit wild with their elbows …

Following Germany’s 4-1 thrashing of England Bayern Munich midfielder Thomas Mueller made an observation. He said:

England have so many top stars in their squad that they will always be part and parcel of the international football scene, but there are so many ‘alpha males’. It is difficult to have so many ‘alpha males’ and have them row in the same direction.

You don’t only need only chiefs, you also need a few Indians.

Which on first glance looks like it makes a lot of sense. When you examine it, however, it doesn’t stand up at all. England’s problem was not that they had too many Alpha males, it was that they didn’t have any.

The Alpha Male is the undisputed leader of any pack, the one who the others follow without question. He is a natural leader, one who commands respect. Tell me which member of the England squad fulfills those criteria. You can’t because he doesn’t exist.

People might talk about John Terry as a leader of men and a natural captain but he’s flawed and is certainly no Alpha male. The Chelsea dressing room was divided when he stepped out of line over Wayne Bridge, similarly the England dressing room was fractured during the World Cup.

Steven Gerrard, captain by accident rather than design, was said to be furious with Terry after his press conference. Terry, believing his own hype, moved to assert his power at the head of the pack, challenging the authority of both Gerrard, as captain, and Fabio Capello, the manager. Terry was put firmly in his place by Capello, reminded of his place in the pack and it was a long way from leader.

Capello himself should have been a candidate for Alpha but while there was fear there was a lack of respect. That players felt they could openly challenge the manager on the basis of his team selections, tactics and more showed he was just another beta, albeit in a position of power.

So who were the other Alpahs that Mueller was referring to? Lampard? Not a chance. Rooney? No. Carragher? Upson? Ashley Cole? Gareth Barry? No, no, no and no.

The fact is England were a team without a real leader. A pack without direction, a collection of beta males squabbling and snapping at each other, curs and egomaniacs who put their own agendas before what was good for the collective. It’s no wonder they failed as spectacularly as they did.

Where was the Tony Adams? The Roy Keane? The Paolo Maldini? The Franco Baresi? Undisputed Alphas for whom leadership came naturally. They didn’t have to act, they weren’t desperate for the power, they just had it as players and captains. They commanded respect and the pack responded accordingly, they were a united group and success was borne from that.

Mueller is absolutey right when he says ‘You don’t only need only chiefs, you also need a few Indians’, but England’s problem was too many Indians, no chiefs whatsoever.

As you might expect, one nation dominates today. But let’s get the rest out of the way first.

WINNERS

Celebrations
After a muted start, yesterday’s goalscorers delighted Coca-Cola executives everywhere by embracing the spirit of Roger Milla and getting entertainingly over-excited. First Liverpool-bound Milan Jovanovic dove over a hoarding and in to a moat, then Slovenia produced a strange collective pan-pipe mime. More weirdness please.

The Bradley family
Manager Bob masterminded a comeback from two goals down in which his son Michael scored the vital equaliser. Mrs Bradley must have been dead proud.

LOSERS

Alberto Undiano Mallenco
The Spanish referee looked like a man who’d just discovered post-its as he handed out nine yellow cards, two of which saw Miroslav Klose unjustly sent off.

Lukasz Podolski
Recovered his FC Köln form with a string of misses, including a penalty. I knew he wasn’t really German.

Samir Handanovič
As an international goalkeeper, it is an advantage to not be afraid of the ball.

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And now, it’s what you’ve all been waiting for:

Wayne Rooney
As Rooney lambasted the fans for booing a dreadful English display, his fleet of PR-people must have been banging their heads against the wall.  You can’t question the commitment of ordinary folk who save up to journey halfway round the world to cheer on their country’s team.  Especially when, in spite of being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to be there, you’re turning in such poor performances.  To be clear: I have never and would never boo my own team, club or country, but Rooney’s reaction was unprofessional and ill-judged.

Steven Gerrard
Called this “Algeria’s World Cup Final”.  Patronising in the extreme, and symptomatic of the attitude problems that dog this England side.  Algeria, as things stand, have about as good a chance of England as reaching the actual World Cup Final.  Chew on that, Stevie.

Jamie Carragher
135 minutes played, two yellow cards accumulated.  He’s now out of the game with Slovenia, and with any luck won’t be back.  If an opposition attacker breaks in to a light jog, Carragher struggles.  Full-on sprints leave him heaving.  Experience doesn’t count for much when you’re just not very good anymore.

Joe Cole
Being behind Shaun Wright-Phillips in the pecking order would be devastating for Cole, had he not spent much of the season rehearsing by playing back-up to Salomon Kalou.

Clive Tyldesley & Andy Townsend
In the ocean of awfulness that was England’s display, these two were great icebergs of idiocy, perilously unavoidable to all stuck with ITV’s coverage.  Their obsession with Gerrard being played out of position overrode any deeper analysis of the other ten players on the pitch.  It took until the 91st minute for Townsend to point out that Rooney ‘wasn’t having his best game’.  Perhaps the most painful part of Tyldesley’s repertoire is his attempt at cod psychoanalysis of the England players, reading childhood trauma in to every misplaced pass or furrowed brow.  Infuriating.

However poor Australia were (and they were), it was hard not to be impressed by the free-flowing football Germany produced yesterday.  They started the game at unusually long odds, and ended it being lauded as the best side on show so far.

I texted a friend to say how impressed I’d been with the teutonic team.  He agreed – but said he felt that our national team, England, were just as capable of producing a similar performance if lined up in the same shape.  The shape in question, as expertly analysed by ZonalMarking here, is a 4-2-3-1 formation which can shift to a 4-2-1-3 in attack.  It’s a formation England used consistently in qualifying, with Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard replacing Schweinsteigher and Khedira as the holding midfielders, and Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and one of Aaron Lennon or Theo Walcott operating behind the bludgeon-like Heskey.

With Barry returning to fitness, England have the option of reverting to this system against Algeria on Friday.  But even if they do, they won’t recreate Germany’s smooth passing game.  There is one vital ingredient missing: a playmaker.  Whoever England deploy behind the striker, be that Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard, they will lack the canny craft of Germany’s Mesut Ozil, undoubtedly the star of Monday evening’s 4-0 victory.

I’m not disputing that either Rooney or Gerrard are great footballers.  But in my opinion, they’re impact players.  They’re more “WHAM!BAM!” than “pass+move”.  Ozil reminds me of an Arsene Wenger quote about Robert Pires, whom he called “the oil in our engine”.  Gerrard and Rooney are more like pistons.

It’s a cultural problem in English football.  We obsessed for years about the peroquial ideals of ‘box-to-box midfielders’ and ‘old-fashioned number 9s’.  In the meantime, the rest of the world was developing ‘playmakers’ and these things called ‘holding midfielders’.  The closest thing we have to the former is Joe Cole, and at the moment he sits behind James Milner and Shaun Wright-Phillips in the pecking order.

England may rack up their own four-goal victory in this tournament.  They may even progress further than the Germans.  But without a playmaker of Ozil’s calibre – without any oil in the engine – they’ll never match the flowing football of Joachin Low’s side.

Fabio Capello will today give his biggest indication yet as to what his line-up will be in England’s first group game against the USA.  England take on the South African side with a name like a bad boyband, Platinum Stars, and the Italian has confirmed:

“I have to play all the players that will play against the USA for 45 or 60 minutes.”

Presumably, at the same time.  Presumably, from kick-off.  There seem to be to be four particular selection conundrums for Capello to tackle:

DAVID JAMES VS. ROBERT GREEN
Fabio’s unwillingness to play Joe Hart means he’s landed himself between a James-shaped rock and a Greenish hard place.  James is lauded as a “great shot-stopper”, which translates as “liable to make a mistake when doing anything else”, whilst Green is celebrated for being “reliable”, which is a media by-word for “average”.   Perhaps Capello could get Emily Heskey to tackle one of them with the same grace as he did Rio Ferdinand, and hand out a last-ditch call-up to Jamie Theakston.

LEDLEY KINGS VS. HIMSELF
Ledley King says he’s confident he can fill the hole in England’s defence.  I’d be more confident if we could fill the hole in King’s knee first.  Apparently, there are times when even a kickabout with his son Coby in the back garden is beyond him.  I think someone better tell him that the World Cup might just be a step up from that.

STEVEN GERRARD VS. FRANK LAMPARD
A battle that has raged boringly for years has reared it’s monstrous head on the eve of the World Cup.  With Gareth Barry out of the USA game, Capello is faced with the possibility of having to put Gerrard and Lampard in midfield together.  In the past, the combination has been akin to my youthful experiments with a banana and marmite sandwich.  Cappello’s other options include an out-of-form Michael Carrick and supposed £30m man James Milner.  Gerrard and Lampard it is, then.

EMILE HESKEY VS. PETER CROUCH
Now that’s a fight I’d like to see: Emile “Bruno” Heskey against the Mantis-like Crouch.  With Wayne Rooney a certainty to figure, there’s only room for one more upfront.  Will it be Crouch, the man with famously good feet for a big man, or Heskey, the good man with big feet and decidedly little else to offer?

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Those of you in Britain can catch the game at 3PM UK-time on the BBC Website.  Those of you who aren’t can just get on with your lives, probably with no detrimental effect whatsoever.

“44 years of hurt” might not be as catchy, but it’s just as painful. This Summer, however, England expects. Lord knows why. Half a century of near misses suggests we should know better. At least England were spared the pain of an inevitable quarter-final exit at Euro 2008 – they have Steve ‘Schteve’ McClaren to thank for that.

The once-heralded ‘Golden Generation’ are losing their sheen: Rio Ferdinand is no longer jovially merking his team-mates, but nursing an ageing spine; John Terry burned his Bridge and saw his form go up in smoke too; and as for David Beckham, he won’t even be there, unless he’s called in for emergency cheer-leading duties.

Hope, it seems, lies in the hands (or, in one case, at the feet) of two men: Fabio Capello and Wayne Rooney. The latter, recently crowned PFA Player of the Year, has been in such irrepressible form as to drag an otherwise below-par Manchester United side to within clutching distance of the Premier League title. A groin injury has ruled him out of the best part of the run-in – a curse for United fans, but a blessing for England supporters, who can but hope he is now resting up in specially padded metatarsal-protecting slippers.

And then Capello, a man so commanding that no-one dares question the wisdom of selecting Aston Villa’s third-choice striker at centre-forward. English hopes have not rested so heavily on an Italian since Paul Gascoigne rang Pizza Express during Euro 96 in the hope of a midnight snack. Can he and Rooney secure the trophy before riding off in to a South African Sunset?

I’ll be in South Africa myself, and whilst I’m going principally to enjoy a festival of football, it’s clear my allegiances are nailed to my own nation.  We’ll need a bit of luck, but I can’t help but feel a tingle of belief that those who travel to South Africa this summer will, whether they’re on safari or not, hear the roar of three lions.

Today Fabio Capello names his 30 man provisional squad.  I predict he’ll go for:

Goalkeepers: Green, James, Hart
Defenders: Johnson, Carragher, Brown, Cole, Baines, Ferdinand, Terry, King, Upson, Dawson
Midfielders: Walcott, Lennon, Gerrard, Milner, Barry, Lampard, Carrick, Huddlestone, Downing, Joe Cole, Wright-Phillips
Strikers: Rooney, Heskey, Crouch, Defoe, Zamora, Bent

My own squad would make room for Phil Jagielka and City’s Adam Johnson, though I’m not sure they’ll feature as prominently in Capello’s thoughts.

The next task is knocking that down to 23.  If Capello is able to make those choices himself, rather than have injuries decide for him, he’ll be delighted.