England and the World Cup

Even though I've written a couple of blogs about the subject and talked about it quite a lot on twitter, I'm actually not that bothered about international football or England. When the World Cup is on I change between calling them "us" or "we" and calling England "them". Sometimes I feel a connection with them, sometimes I don't. Well, most of the time I don't. It's hard to support a team with players you hate for the rest of the season. However, the current England squad is made up of a lot more players that I actually like than previous ones. With one exception... Rooney.

Gobshite

I don't just dislike Rooney because he's a Manchester United player though, it's because Rooney sums up everything that's wrong with the national team. It would be a lot easier to support England if it felt like they were doing things properly to give themselves the best chance of succeeding, but they just don't.

I've pointed out on many occasions that I don't think that Wayne Rooney is a good player. He definitely isn't the English Messi or Ronaldo that the people of this country make him out to be. One of the biggest problems with England is that they always push the wrong players and turn them into heroes. It's the reason why Paul Gascoigne is an English hero when a far better player than him like John Barnes isn't. Gazza was great, but John Barnes is world renowned. It's the same with Rooney now, he's been elevated to a level in this country but if you ask the rest of the world they just don't think he's that good, he hasn't had an impact on that stage. It's like that scene in Mike Bassett where they're interviewing Pele about who will win the World Cup and no matter how much they hint at it he won't say England. The rest of the world is Pele and England is asking them who they think the world's best players are, and they're going down the list naming Messi, Ronaldo, Ibrahimovic and after about thirty players England is like "what about Rooney?" and the rest of the world is like "Rooney? Well he's okay I suppose."

"Rooney?"

I've already mentioned John Barnes and I'm criticising Rooney, so this may seem like a little bit of Liverpool bias, and that may be the case, but... For the past decade or so the best English player has been by far Steven Gerrard. Unlike Rooney, Gerrard is a player renowned across Europe. At one time even Zinedine Zidane said every top club in Europe would have signed him. Has anyone ever heard of a major European team wanting to sign Rooney by the way? With Gerrard, England should have built the team around him a long time ago. After the 2002 World Cup in fact, I think it became quite clear that Gerrard was the best English player. Yes, Rooney was fantastic at Euro 2004, it was his best tournament in an England shirt, but he wasn't the type of player you could build a team around. 

I can't understand why England didn't spot the potential with Gerrard though. It's like one day the FA were having a meeting about the future of England and they were all in agreement that the team should be built around Gerrard, but then one person was like "but what about Frank Lampard?" And the rest of them said "what about him?" And that one person was like "well he plays in exactly the same position as Gerrard, and he's not as good as him, but why don't we play both of them?" And somehow they were all persuaded, and what followed was a decade of attempting to play two players together in the same team who clearly didn't work and basically cutting the English nose off to spite it's face.

A decade together. Still shite

Rooney and Lampard are like the ugly sisters of football and the rest of the world is Prince Charming. England are trying to sell it's ugly sisters to Prince Charming, but Prince Charming has seen Cinderella Steven Gerrard in the corner and is like "I don't give a shit about them, there's a worldy over there." I've just compared the English football to Cinderella, fuck me right? 

The problem with international football is you don't have enough games to experiment like you do with club football. I'm going to have to do another Liverpool related comparison here, so I'm sorry to any none Liverpool fans but it's just what I know best. When Liverpool signed Robbie Keane, they tried to play him in the team with Fernando Torres. They tried playing the two together up until Christmas but it just didn't work. Robbie Keane was a big name, he cost a lot of money, but he wasn't as good as Fernando Torres, so he was the one who had to go. With England, Lampard is the Robbie Keane to Gerrard's Fernando Torres. However, with international football you don't have the time to keep trying to make it work. Liverpool gave Keane and Torres up until Christmas. If you say that's 19 league games, plus some cup games it's about 25 games to try and make it work. In international football 25 games could be 4 years, you just can't wait that long. They should have cut Lampard from the team a lot earlier.

The reason I make this point is because the World Cup only comes around once every four years. Once it's gone, it's gone. England were making the mistake of playing Gerrard and Lampard together, along with trying to accommodate other players, going out of the World Cup, then waiting four years only to make the same mistakes again! With this World Cup now, there is a lot of talk about whether to play Rooney and other so called experienced players. My first argument is what are they experienced in? They've never won an international tournament and they've failed to qualify for one in 2008. Secondly, once the World Cup is over it's gone for four years. This isn't the time to be thinking "let's play it safe", this is the time to be thinking let's mix it up and see how far we can go.

All of them except Rooney please

Personally, at this World Cup I think England should play Wilshere, should play Barkley, should play Henderson, should play Sterling, should play Lallana and so on. Give these players a chance. One of the most common things you hear at the moment is "the back four picks itself" and that's an absolute blessing. Players like Cahill, Jagielka and Baines fucking deserve their chance after England stuck for years with the three tossers at the back who never won anything. It's just a shame they haven't been forced into the rest of the team picking itself. The only senior player I want to see is Gerrard, and again you may say it's Liverpool bias but I also think he deserves it after the way he's been treated by England. Even at the last World Cup he was playing left midfield to accommodate Lampard, and he should have been captain in 2006 he shouldn't have had to wait as long as he did.

Anyway, that's just a few thoughts about England and the World Cup, and I'll finish by saying I'd be happy to see "us" lift the World Cup if "we" do the right thing at the tournament. But if "they" continue with the same crap "they've" been pulling for the last 15 years I won't have to worry about "them" lifting it anyway.

@adamheath