Germany has a pretty good national football team. Sad, but true. Sadder still because England doesn’t have anything approaching a decent national football team. Even sadder still when one considers how good the English Premier League is…
And sad to degrees that inspire inconsolable wailing when one also considers that the Bundesliga (spelling, anyone?) is one of the most depressingly stagnant and dull football leagues in the developed world…
More of that another day, but for now I feel it is time to put a little something to rest and hopefully make watching the world cup a damned site more enjoyable for English fans come 2014… (Or even 2012 and the European Championships.)
So, yes, England has gone out of the World Cup to Germany – again. I think it is probably a good thing, not least because Germany looks good and England looks like Munich 1860.
Hopefully now we can stop all of this ‘two world wars and one world cup’ nonsense. We have played Germany in tournament finals six times now. Drawn one, lost four, won one… When did we win one? Well, waddaya know? 1966.
Other than that one game, we have lost to Germany when it matters – every time (the draw, obviously, was in the group stages of a European Championship and is not worth mentioning. It was a very, very drab affair). And, no, I do not accept that we drew against them in 1990 or in 1996. For those with poor memories – or a poor understanding of the rules of tournament football – those games went down to penalties and England lost… Yes, lost… L-O-S-T: Lost! We didn’t go through to the final of those two tournaments. No, we lost in the semi-finals and went out. Four to one, Germany to England… Sound familiar?
The thing is, now, with the ruthless, clinical and exceedingly talented Germans having dispatched the talented (but in no way ruthless or clinical) Argetines by four goals to nil, I see a lot of England fans saying: ‘Oh, that’s all right then – we did better than Argentina!’
No we didn’t. We lost to Germany in the last 16, Argentina lost in the quarter finals. Argentina did better than England. The fact that Germany is (quite sensibly) upping its game from game to game as the 2010 World Cup tournament progresses shows how good Germany is. Germany has not now become a yard stick by which we measure the ability of the England team.
We were dreadful. Shocking. Appalling. Drab. Uninspired. Lethargic. Pedestrian. Fragmented. Disjointed. Dull. A team without skill, drive, verve, determination, spirit or desire. It was a team that didn’t really care – probably, I suspect, because they all had earned good money throughout the year, earned good money from the tournament and were looking forward to a couple of weeks in the Bahamas, before heading home to their mansions and the continuation of high-energy domestic football, where than can be made to look good by the efforts of the French, Spanish, Brazilian, Argentine, German, Dutch, Italian, Czeck, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbia, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Ivory Coastian (?) and Togan players that combine to make the English league the scintillating spectacle it is.
The dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees furthest of all. Sure! But what happens when 23 of those dwarves are taken down from the shoulders of giants and put into a football team? Well, just look back over England’s attempts at the 2010 World Cup and you will see. Apart from Wayne Rooney, I don’t think anyone in the squad played any worse than they do in the domestic season. They simply look better in the domestic season because they are playing with some of the best players in the world.
There is a cure for this… No, not for the inadequacies of English footballers – that, I’m afraid is the remit of far more specialised brains than mine. There is a cure for us – the fans. We can get over this and need never suffer the misery of watching England at a World Cup again for as long as we live – or until we get a group of players again that can do us proud…
But there’s no room here. You’ll have to click here and move on to Part II…
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