England Football: Less Than the Sum of its Parts

When I moved to London almost 10 years ago I was stumped by the football coverage in the sports section of the newspapers. Routinely about eighty percent of space was given to football, not leaving a lot of room for other British passions like cricket, rugby, horse racing, tennis and darts! I was a little disappointed as a follower of American sports such as basketball and American Football, as well as other "minor" sports like cricket and golf. But over time, as I got to know the country better, the pub culture, the fanatic club support, the fathers taking their sons to weekend football academies, I started to understand the obsession better. Soon, as I followed the travails of my favorite Arsenal Football Club, I even became a part of it (when my son gets upset with me, his greatest threat: "then I will not cheer for Arsenal").

In the time I've been in this country England have won the rugby world cup, the cricket ashes, and finished an unexpectedly high of fourth in the Olympic medal count, but nothing has come close to the footballing glory of 1966. In fact, there was further ignominy when under the uninspiring leadership of the "wally with a brolly", the country managed to not qualify for the 2008 European Championships.

So out they went and hired the best in Italian coach Fabio Capello for £6m a year. Capello has won silverware with Real Madrid, AC Milan, Roma and Juventus so it is fair to say that his coaching skills are proven. But even under Capello so far the England performances have been fairly tepid in the shape of a desperate 2-2 draw with Hungary and a 2-0 win over minnows Andora. To put it in perspective, if the entire population of Andorra was let into Wembley stadium, there would still be 18,178 empty seats!

There have been various explanations for these stuttering performances. The most accepted go something like this: In England physical fitness, power and stamina are viewed as more important than technique and tactical astuteness. Players are taught from very early on to chase every ball, to win every tackle and to never stop running. In Europe the emphasis is on passing, first touch and off the ball awareness. While we love the English style of play, it is not the winning style of play. Hogwash! The premiership plays in the English style and the recent success of English teams discards that theory. And most of these English teams have English cores.... Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Ferdinand, Rooney, Cole.

There is another less obvious reason for these performances. In Capello's Italy, the national team comes first where as in England the Clubs come first. The clubs own you, they pay you and that is what the players focus on. Liverpool's Jamie Carragher recently wrote in his biography that when he lost with England he justified it by saying "at least it wasn't at Liverpool". His England and Liverpool compatriot Steven Gerrard chose the international break to have surgery so he would lose the minimum amount of playing time for his club. They practice with the clubs and show up for a few days of national service and train half heartedly, most of them assured of their spots.

It is time the English press stopped piling the pressure on the coach. If the same players who produce for clubs don't produce for the national team, drop them. No one should be untouchable. Gerrard, Lampard, Ferdiand, Terry, Rooney, Owen or Cole. Unfortunately, there isn't much time to experiment. England play Croatia in a world cup qualifier on Wednesday. In Slaven Bilic Croatia has an excellent coach and even without their Arsenal ace Eduardo DaSilva, they have a tight knit team with the dangerous midfield combination of Luka Modric and Niko Kranjcar to coordinate an attack through Ivica Olic. Every follower of the English team remembers the 3-2 defeat to Croatia earlier this year at Wembley that kept England from Euro '08s. In case English fans were not paying attention since then, Croatia is now number 5 in the world according to FIFA rankings. If England end up losing, it should not be a total surprise.