England will never win the World Cup 1

Having established that England has never won the World Cup (and in doing so, I hope, saved the long-suffering fans from the inevitable despair at the next tournament and also the players from the excessive pressure that has come with every England team since… well, 1950, I suppose… That was the first time we ever entered into proper competition – and look how that ended), I want to find a few good reasons to show why England will never win the World Cup. Hopefully the result of the latter will also add to the relief of expectation and pressure of both players and fans.

At present there is much talk of the underperforming players, while the manager has surprisingly escaped any particular lambasting and – it seemed for a while, anyway – the FA once again walked away unscathed (not unlike the kid who broke the window, but was strolling away so calmly that even eye witnesses assumed it couldn’t have been him and blamed the other kids around).

Thankfully – at least as far as Radio Five Live is concerned – the spotlight has been rightly rounded upon that despicable collective of camel designers.

I want to point something out here – and I will defend this to the ends of the earth and until the end of the world – the last thing the FA did right was appoint Alf Ramsey as manager of England on 25th October 1962 (effective from 1st May 1963). The very last thing…

There is an argument that it was also the very first thing the FA did right, but that’s a topic for some research and another day.

For younger footie fans, it is probably now long buried in the archives, but Ramset was a remarkable fella – and how we wish we had his modern-day equivalent.

Earning the nickname ‘The General’ with Spurs because of his ability to position himself so well in central defence (making up for a total lack of speed), an aptitude for a killer pass, and as a ruthless penalty taker, he was part of the Tottenham team that won promotion in 1950 and the league title in 1951.

He then went to manage Ipswich, taking them from the third division (south) in his second season there, winning promotion to the top flight in 1959 and wining the league title in 1960. There was little the FA could do than pick him as manager for England when Walter Winterbottom stood down.

Ramsey went on to win the Jules Rimet trophy as manager of England and England came third in the European Championship in 1968. In 1970, a largely ageing team crashed out of the Jules Rimet competition to Germany 3-2 in the quarter finals – after being 2-0 up.

This was the first error of the FA. Okay, so Ramsey was a national treasure, but they should have got rid of him then, rather than watch the team struggle and stumble into hopelessness in 1973, failing to reach the first real World Cup.

Since then, the England national team manager selection has been one catastrophe after another. Don Revie, Ron Greenwood, Graham Taylor, Howard Wilkinson, Kevin Keegan, Steve McClaren all stand out as significant by their failure.

When the selection committee did occasionally get it right (Terry Venables and Glenn Hoddle) outside nonsenses forced the committee to sack them, rather than give them the chance to fulfil their obvious potential.\

The Ron Greenwood appointment stands out particularly, because they also had the choice of Brian Clough – a man whose record of taking backwater teams to unbelievable success is there for all to see and who has left a legacy of fine players and managers in his wake. All the FA had to do was make the right decision. But oif course, they didn’t. In fact it turns out that the interview with Clough was simply a nod in his direction and the selection of Greenwood was already set in stone.

We had the bland Eriksson, who maintained a stable position, but pushed nothing forward and now we have Capello, who seems to be going backwards – but the FA is now in such a hole, they can’t physically, financially afford to get rid of him.

Okay, the FA does a lot more than just pick the England manager, but as a central, public facing obligation, you’d think they might get that right.

There is, of course, a much deeper malaise… more of which soon…