Well its the end of June and once again England are out; hands up if you're surprised! From the moment Robert Green allowed that shot to roll under his body, we just knew the dream had died and we were never really the same again. Many question come to mind and I am not totally convinced that we are not good enough.
I have watched the tournament with interest from many angles and it has been very revealing. Firstly, it is widely accepted world-wide that any sports festival with the Brits taking part is always richer for our presence. We may be hurting from elimination but I bet some of those South African souvenir sellers and bar owners are hurting more. I know from my extensive world travel that the British tourists are more keenly welcomed, than any other nation; when it comes to dipping in our pockets, we spend the cash and have a bloody good time! Forget that English reserve, forget that nonsense that we are bad tippers, forget the fact that we moan a lot, we always spend lots more dough and drink more largers than anyone else including the Americans! The shop-keepers of South Africa are really going to miss us now.
I mentioned in a previous blog that Fabio Capello was learning about the English psyche during the John Terry soap opera earlier this year. The same player again clearly riled him, because at a time when he and his players should have been relaxing and composing themselves for the next game, far too much energy was wasted on public relations interviews to all major media agencies. In my real time existence as a performing Pianist, every gig matters, but occasionally you have one where you truly have to be totally focused, as a result your preparations are more intensive in a few small but significant areas and you deliver. England's players should have had NO distractions, their base was carefully selected and the staff wanted for nothing but instead of getting into the zone, our players failed again in a tournament situation. Sven, to his credit, clearly felt that the presence of the families would help his players in 2006, but that too did not work. Maybe they needed to stay in a city centre hotel where they could walk within reason walk to a pub, have a bar snack, play pool, sink some pints and arrive back at the hotel via a Casino where they could have spent their considerable wages playing roulette, poker and blackjack or even chilled out at a lap-dancing bar; go to any such establishment within spitting distance of a football ground and the owners will proudly reveal that the footballers are their best regulars!
I am enjoying the ethnic diversity of the pundits on the Television coverage provided by BBC and ITV. Whilst their views are not making great TV, I am enjoying the insights they provide into the mentality of winners. For example, Jurgen Klinsmann, a prolific German striker, when asked about how his team won the World Cup in 1990 replied: "We were a great team and we knew we would win it...in those situations you've got to be mean as hell to achieve it!" He went on to explain that he and all Germans knew how good our England team was at that tournament, but THEY won the cup not us, and today, as dumped us out 4-1, they still conceded privately that player for player we should have strolled to victory, but once again as Klinsmann said, they were meaner than us. Surely there is a lesson to be learned; after all who put Manchester United out of the Champions League on a night when they were cruising so comfortably...Bayern Munich!
So, the festival of football continues without us. Its not the same when you're team are not in it but that's life. I hope that Fabio Capello continues as manager, because he has instilled a discipline into the team that has not been there for a while. Additionally, he is a winner, and winners hurt harder when they lose, so he will learn from this experience, go back to his study with a bottle of Italian claret and plot again for victory because that is all he knows, he is a real football man. If he does walk away from the job following this campaign, then English football will have to do a very uncomfortable internal inquiry, because this problem is clearly very deep-seated
So for the present, take down the flags, put the England shirts on E-Bay get ready for work tomorrow...and take an umbrella too. Its back to reality until the Olympics starts in two years...
