Rooney. England. Stuff...
England and the World Cup
I'll just start out by pointing out three teams who are excelling at this World Cup; France, Argentina and Colombia. The reason I mention these teams is because they are all performing well despite missing their top players. France left Samir Nasri out of the squad, Argentina left Carlos Tevez out the squad, and Radamal Falcao was forced to miss the tournament through injury. The English could not understand before the tournament the cases with France and Argentina, because as I mentioned in my last blog the English always think it's necessary to play the biggest names rather than the best teams. Samir Nasri didn't fit the team, so he was left out the squad. Carlos Tevez didn't fit the team, so he was left out the squad. Wayne Rooney didn't do anything playing on the left, so England moved their best player out to the right so Rooney could play in the middle. And still be ineffective.
"Left out of the squad friend"
It takes four years to make up for World Cup mistakes, and unfortunately England are now facing that four year wait. For me there is no argument with England to stick with tried and tested players, because these players have never won anything. In the case of Colombia, without Falcao, James Rodriguez has stepped up to the plate and been a revelation at this tournament. Okay, he wasn't exactly unknown, but if Falcao was fit no one would be talking about him. If England would have done what was necessary, and dropped Rooney from the team, Ross Barkley or Raheem Sterling could have been their James Rodriguez. I said it in my last blog, the World Cup is not the time to play it safe, it's the time to take risks. It lasts one month, and then it's gone for four years.
James Rodriguez scoring the goal of the tournament
After giving three examples of teams who have done well at the World Cup without star names, I'll give you an example of three clubs who went out in the group stages: Spain, England and Portugal. And all three of them have the same issue, not knowing when it's time to move on. You can let Spain off, because their players are proven winners, but England had no excuse. The fact the English are even blaming not taking Ashley Cole and not taking John Terry for their failure just shows that things are unlikely to ever change as well, hence the title of this blog.
The other issue I have with that is that I feel England did not under perform at the World Cup because of their defence, they lost games because of their attack. Like Spain and Portugal, England stuck religiously to a 4-2-3-1 formation. This formation is just a defensive managers way of disguising a defensive system as an attacking one. Roy Hodgson is a defensive manager, and he only plays one attacker. Even in the must win game against Uruguay, Hodgson didn't bring on a second striker until the 87th minute. Every substitution Hodgson made at the World Cup was a like for like, in the sense it was one player off and his replacement played in exactly the same position. He can't change a game as he only has one way of playing, but he can always use the reasoning that he played four attackers because of that formation. But 4-2-3-1 just doesn't work like that, the majority of the time Daniel Sturridge was isolated up front. The only game England looked remotely dangerous in was against Italy when Sterling was playing in the middle of the attacking three, and that's just because he's that good, and also his pace meant England could counter attack, which is one of the very few weapons a defensive team has. England were at their very best in the tournament when Sterling and Ross Barkley were both on the pitch against Italy. And that was as brave as Hodgson got, he went back to his defensive ways against Uruguay.
The future
And somehow Roy Hodgson has managed to keep his job. He's lucky, because he's pretty much guaranteed to qualify for Euro 2016 because the amount of teams in the tournament has been extended, so that will buy him some time. But I still think England will only qualify in third place after a play-off. Will England win Euro 2016 though? Not a chance, I imagine they will struggle to get out the group again. And what will the future hold then? Well in four years time I'll probably be writing a new blog about England, writing about how they failed so miserably at Russia 2018, with Rooney as captain.
@adamheath
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