1. He really is thick as two short planks.

And

2. Our beloved England team have reached the end of an era.

The best suggestion I heard following the debacle we were subjected for on Sunday was that Premier League players should be banned from playing at international level. Instead, Championship players would get a chance to grace the world stage. And it makes sense. Not only would they display more passion, they’d be free of the traps bestowed upon our highest-paid stars. Traps of excessive fame and fortune which clearly give them a distorted view of their own footballing ability.

One thing has become abundantly clear over the last fortnight; not a single player in that England squad can ever be described as ‘world class’ ever again.

Take Wayne Rooney, who has unknowingly been poked at with the pointy end of my Tweets and Facebook status updates since the tournament began. He was hailed our talisman and the one player who would finally ignite the ability our team has to bring the World Cup home. An ability which has laid dormant since 1966.

In reality, he cast a lone, despondent shadow across every inch of pitch he covered. Which amounted to quite a lot, if truth be told. He simply kept running the wrong way; back into the congested midfield only to either a) foul someone, b) collide with Gerrard who was doing the exact same thing or c) give the ball away to the opposition.

The rate at which he did the latter was simply staggering.

This is a player who clearly had a big say in which of his team mates made it to South Africa. Walcott didn’t deserve to go but Rooney’s all too obvious reactions to every misplaced cross only served to help Capello make what must have been a difficult decision. I doubt it did Theo’s confidence much good, either.

By comparison, Rooney has played all four of England’s games at a tenth of Walcott’s effort during the qualifying campaign. The young lad who was unfairly taken to the last World Cup must be seething.

I don’t believe it’s the manager’s fault, regardless of some questionable substitutions and an insistence on playing a formation which didn’t lend itself to the players available. He simply seems to be saddled with the same guilt trip this country’s media lavishes on every England manager – whatever you do, don’t drop Wayne.

If we can hope for anything after this mess, its that Capello keeps the job he’s more than capable of fulfilling and becomes the one manager who shuns popular opinion and ditches the divine right. Rooney should play no more than a bit part until he proves he actually wants the caps which have come so easily to him thus far.

Crouch scores for England. Again.

So, a less than convincing win against Egypt seals yet another worrying night of international football at Wembley.

The key question on everyone’s lips is what Capello does next. It’s a question all football fans have an answer to but a question that has been made all the more intriguing – and harder to answer – after last night’s performance.

England is unfortunately full of dull talent. Cole, Milner, Upson, Lampard Baines… they may all play well at club level but are utterly uninspiring when put on the world stage. Yes, even Baines, who had a passable game in the much hyped left back position.

What worried me last night is that several other players are creeping into that list. Gerrard, Rooney, Walcott… All three did little to convince me they deserve a starting place in South Africa this summer. Particulalry Rooney who, having put in another nonedescript, goal-less performance, was described by the eternally irritating Tyldsley as ‘our talisman’.

Sorry? He had better start scoring. That’s all that matters in his position and the brief nature of any major tournamnent.

Walcott – who I rate – was just poor at times. He constantly looks out of his depth. A real shame for a player who is sorely lacking in match practice at the moment and is vying for a place in one of the most hotly contested areas of the pitch.

Gerrard skulks around the park, rarely chasing lost balls or regaining possession he’s just given away. That’s not him, is it? What’s changed?

I’m the ultimate doom-and-gloom, pessimistic England fan, I admit, but we must all surely be mindful of the fact that our chances this summer don’t look great.

While we indeed have a manager full of intent and insistent on taming our overpaid footballers, something is still sorely missing; passion. On the pitch. Sordid affairs, clubs falling into administration and tails of gambling addiction are all recent, clear indicators of a sport which has completely lost it’s purpose.

Fabio’s right. These lads get too rich far too young and aside from the side effects we’ve seen splashed across the tabloids over recent weeks, there is one that remains forgotten – they’ve lost the passion and pride which should come naturally when selected to play for your country. Wayne Bridge’s decision to declare himself unavailable does nothing but cement this sorry fact.

Still… Roll on the World Cup.

Capello: 12 minutes. Done.

So, after exactly a week of every Tom, Dick and Harry lending their press-influenced views on the most boring scandal ever to grace football, it took Fabio Capello just 12 minutes to deliver the bad news to John Terry.

The Chelsea skipper will captain the England team no more.

I’m disappointed. Not in Capello (well, not entirely – read on to hear why); he did the only thing he could after the relentless media-led pressure we’ve witnessed over the last seven days. It didn’t matter how many people – like me – failed to see the connection between a footballer’s extra marital relations and his ability to captain the national team; there was simply no way Terry could continue to be captain with such a black cloud hanging over him. Capello did the right thing.

Incidentally, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve all actually forgotten what the offence was, exactly – it seems so irrelevant now.

I’m continually impressed by an England manager who clearly doesn’t mess about. While pressure undoubtedly led him to this decision, you can be sure he made it confidently, quickly and without a second thought of what anyone else might think. He wants to win the World Cup and doesn’t give a toss who he upsets on the way. I like that.

I don’t like his decision to simply realign the captaincy, though. Ferdinand? Really? He may have been second in line but has hardly played all season. When he was playing, he was hardly at the top of his game. Yes, he’s had a chequered past, too, but this isn’t the root cause of my dismay today.

If anything, Capello should be assessing whether or not Ferdinand is fit for a place in the World Cup squad at all, let alone lead it.

He’s missed a trick here, Capello. Gerrard should have taken Terry’s place. No?

I’m willing to be proved wrong though, Fabio. Please don’t let this uncharacteristically weak decision make a mockery of my praise for you above…

John Terry: Enough Already

Yesterday, I drove roughly 350 miles. Along the majority of those congestion-strewn roads, I listened to Talksport. I usually do this while out on the road and it isn’t typically a problem. Yesterday, however, it was.

For a total of around 6 hours I was treated to one long, continuous debate about John Terry, his extra-marital relations and whether or not he should still be England captain.

Every DJ on the station (and not in the least Stan Collymore who I think may have been playing with himself whilst endlessly spurting pointless superlatives about the supposed forthcoming meeting between Terry and Capello; “Capello is a greatly morale man and will not at all be concerned with what John Terry does behind closed doors away from the big lights and spectacle of the beautiful game”) simply repeated their views again and again. As did the callers. And the guests. When all was said and done, there were only about 3 different views; they were simply regurgitated, modified and drawn out each time they were expressed. I literally had a headache as I finally turned into my street at the end of the day.

I’m not going to embellish on this massively boring subject too much further, but I will give my opinion.

What John Terry does off the pitch is his business and his business only. I find all the debate over the affair hugely uncomfortable. It’s clear us Brits have a massive problem with sex (more so than the US, I’d say) and are so easily appalled by anything relating to it that it is invariably made a big deal of when something like this happens.

He’s a great defender and a very good captain. What he does away from the pitch is totally irrelevant. End of story. The only reason this has been made front page news is because the way in which everything is sensationalised these days.

Whenever we approach a big tournament like the World Cup, the press in this country reach for their knives and start their level best to completely screw up any chance England have of doing well. Why wouldn’t they? We love wallowing in our own misery in this country; if England go out in the group stages they’ll sell lots more papers.

Finally, are footballers role models? No, of course they’re not. They swear, spit, fight, cheat and spunk their ridiculous earnings up the wall. Any notion that the are to be held on a pedestal by anyone is daft. Yes, kids admire them and want to be them, but that’s life, I’m afraid. I’m sure they want to be film stars, too, but how many parents would want their child to turn into Lindsey Lohan?

There we go. 463 words and I’m done.

Robbie Savage. Don't say anything about his mum.

Eternally annoying footballer Robbie Savage was on the radio at lunch, complaining about the abuse which gets hurled at him from the stands during every game. Aside from deserving it, this unsurprising, pointless insight into the world of Mr Savage also drew a somewhat sensible counter argument from a listener: “40K per week? You can call me what you want.”

I couldn’t agree more. The old playground adage: ‘sticks and stones will break my bones…’, whilst firmly suited to the child-like Savage, really should have been considered before Radio 1 decided to give this story a significant amount of Newsbeat air time.

Who really cares what certain fans decide to shout at Beckham et al regarding their siblings or suggested penchant for action on the other side of the sexual fence? I certainly don’t. It certainly doesn’t detract from the beautiful game; most players appear to just get on with the job in hand.

The story was centred around the idea that, one day, a fan may well go a step too far and do some physical damage to a player.

Fair enough. No one wants that (unless it’s Gary Neville), but is that really a possibility? I think not. In this age of over-nannying there is very little chance of a tattooed, topless oik making it onto the pitch and successfully landing a punch square in Ryan Giggs’ face.

Would make for a superb Match Of The Day, mind…

A somewhat disgruntled Galaxy fan

“One of the guys was saying things that wasn’t very nice. It was stepping over the line. I said, ‘You need to calm down and come shake my hand,’” Multi-club ambassador David Beckham comments after his ‘clash’ with LA Galaxy fans during his first home match. This was after a five month secondment to AC Milan, during which he confessed to having fallen in love with the city: “Milan is the ideal place to be a footballer, it’s like being in Paradise,” he said, to the sound of a thousand Big Macs across the Atlantic being spat out.

Of course, all the clash really amounted to was Beckham pointing his finger at a fat American, getting fed up with the lack of response and making a pathetic attempt to jump over the advertising board.

But a hand shake? Is that all he wanted to give this guy? I’d have given him a lot more, if I was Beckham. It perhaps says more about the player (who appears to have adopted the word ‘soccer’ for our beautiful game while over there) than the moronic Galaxy fan he targeted that nothing more came of it.

I’m on Beckham’s side here, quite firmly, but few others seem to be. I’m not sure why. He’s offered his talent to the equivalent of UK Sunday League and has done his best to promote the American game. So, he nipped off to Milan for a few months to play some real football. Who cares? He came back, didn’t he?

I doubt there’s an English football fan in the land who didn’t see his move to the States for what it was; an exercise in creative marketing. However, that shouldn’t detract from the fact that Beckham, to his credit, always gives 100% when playing football and clearly loves the game. There are very few world class players who would be happy to drop to such a level and still keep the pace up.  Not that pace has ever been Beckham’s strong point, but you catch my drift.

Say us Brits were treated to a world famous internationally-capped Ice Hockey player from the states who was quite happy to lend his services to Kettering Ice Hockey Club. Would we moan, jeer and threaten god knows what if he decided to nip off for some real Hockey elsewhere? I don’t think we would.

How the Galaxy fans can’t see the benefit of Beckham still playing top flight football elsewhere is beyond me. Were they really expecting him to make a long term commitment to Mickey Mouse ‘He’s stuffed another one in the goal bag’ soccer? If they were, they should have started booing him from the moment he unveiled his squad number.

Don’t forget it was America that tried to impose ‘kick ins’ and ‘time outs’ at the ’94 world cup. For that very reason, I find it difficult to take any criticism they level at a good English footballer very seriously at all.

N.B. Take a look at this video from Newsy.com which pulls together news coverage from different media outlets on the subject of Beckham’s relationship with the Galaxy fans.  Interesting stuff: http://www.newsy.com/videos/the_beckham_experiment

The Hillsborough Memorial at Anfield

Being just 8-years-old at the time, I have very little recollection of the terrible events that took place on 15 April 1989. Vague memories exist of my parents’ shock and dismay at the news reports, but even these are the merest of recollections that I’ve no doubt over-elaborated this week.

My parents have never been ardent football fans which I’m sure made the images they were presented with even harder to bear. Football has always been ‘just a game’ to my mum and, while I’ve taken delight in my attempts to re-educate her on this gross misconception, the 1989 FA Cup semi final between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool confirmed that, as always, she’s right.

My football stadia experience has been almost solely of seated stands and it is easy to forget how significant that seat is as you pull it down and park yourself, safely, onto it. It took 96 lost lives to highlight the potential dangers of terraces and the subsequent inquiry ensured that such an event would never happen again. The stark metal fences separating fans from pitch were torn down, the steep terrace steps replaced with plastic foldaway seats.

It is true that an element of the atmosphere that adorned those terraces in the 70s and 80s has been lost. The new super-stadiums clubs are plunging themselves into the red to develop are devoid of character and as a consequence present modern football as a rather stark white-good sport. But they are undoubtedly safe and we should always remember why they are now built in such a manner.

I’ll be taking time to reflect today and, in particular, how lucky I have been to grow up in this era of the greatest sport on earth. On that afternoon twenty years ago, 96 people excitedly pulled their beloved team’s shirt over their heads, grabbed their tickets and scarves and headed off to a hotly anticipated FA Cup semi final. Fathers with their sons, girlfriends dragged along by their fanatical boyfriends, they descended en masse to support the team and game they lived for. Later that day, they did not return home to either celebrate the joy of success or suffer the pain of losing. They never returned from a football match. These days, that is such a difficult concept to grasp but one that should never, ever be forgotten.

Rooney swearing at someone, again.

What a fantastic weekend for sport. England pounded the Scots in the Six Nations, my local team, Northampton Town FC, trounced Stockport 4-0 and Man Utd suffered yet another horrendous couple of days in their fight to retain the Premier League title.

My girlfriend always asks why I detest Man Utd so much and has always cited their success as a reason for my hatred of the club. This simply isn’t the case. What I – and no doubt countless others – dislike about them is the underlying arrogance that permeates every surface of their being. Now, that might sound a little dramatic, but take a moment to consider their many past signings who have very quickly adopted the ‘Utd arrogance’. Nani and Anderson are two prime examples. Two unknown footballers (I don’t care about their past credentials, I’d never heard of either and I follow football closely). Now that they both wear the AIG shirt, they strut around the pitch like they possess a god-given talent for the game. They don’t. Both are utterly average, as is Ronaldo (who has taken the level of arrogance to a whole new dimension).

Back to this weekend, though, and the sight of Rooney’s pasty moon-like face contorted with anger was a sight to behold, if not a particularly pleasant one. Quite rightly dismissed for a childish display of dissent, he dragged his knuckles off the field spitting his usual array of expletives before completing the pantomime with a rousing punch of the corner flag, in full view of two members of the constabulary. Brilliant. It certainly capped off a fantastic weekend.

What a child, though. How can he expect us to hold any respect for him as an England player? As we know from the Ronaldo/Real scandal, Utd fans are about as fickle as they come and I therefore doubt his actions on Saturday will dent their undying love for him, but as an England fan I simply don’t want a bad-tempered little child playing for us. Look at the greats – Pele, Gazza, Moore, Van Basten, Lineker; none of them possess Rooney’s temperament and as a result were greatly respected by football fans worldwide. There’s nothing wrong with being arrogant if you want to be a successful sportsman – look at Ali – but there is a line and Rooney, along with the majority of his team mates, appear to be suffering from a massive, collective, over-inflated ego. Saturday was embarrassing for all Utd fans. I just hope they take their red blinkers off and discover the deep mess their team is in.

When will people realise he simply isn’t quite as good as his acolades and awards suggest? Lazy, selfish, petulent and more obsessed with his free kick technique than teamwork, he isn’t a player I’d want in my team.

How many times have we seen him trick himself into no man’s land this season? Eighty-seven step overs later and he’s given the ball away when the simple pass should had been his first thought. This is always followed by inane hand waving and praying to the gods. I despair. Or at least I would if I was a Utd fan. Suffice to say I’m not. At all.

ITV commentators may worship this man but give me a Torres or Gerrard any day. And no, I’m not a Liverpool fan either.