Ok let’s get this straight from the off: England are an average international team, and as soon as the public gets that into their collective head we can start to actually enjoy watching them again.
I think one of the main reasons that we feel so let down with every abject performance, every scraped result against lowly opposition, every early competition exit, is that we have an elevated opinion of how good we really are as a footballing nation, and where we sit in the real world elite.
Unremarkable history
The long and short of it is that we aren’t in the world elite, and we haven’t been for probably 10 years now, since Beckham, Gerrard, Cole and “The Golden Generation” made it to a couple of quarter-finals. I do have to counter that by saying that in several tournaments we weren’t a million miles away. Two quarter-final penalty shoot-out defeats to Portugal in the noughties, another quarter-final loss to eventual world champions Brazil in 2002, and another loss on penalties to Italy in 2012. However in the here and now my personal opinion is that a quarter-final - and certainly a semi-final - would be an overachievement for the current crop of players.
England have no divine right to a place at football’s top table. I feel like there are lots of England fans who think that we should breeze past teams like Iceland and Costa Rica, purely because we have a decent-ish history. Yes we won the World Cup, but success 50+ years ago does not guarantee future generations will be at the same standard. Likewise in the nineties we enjoyed a couple of semi-finals, but if you look back at our performance in major tournaments since ’66, it has been the absolute definition of hit and miss.
Several times we have had to watch the summer showcases from afar. Indeed in the 70’s we didn’t go to a single tournament, failing to qualify for Euro ’72, World Cup ’74, Euro ’76 and World Cup ’78. There have been another three qualification nightmares since then.
When we do get to a tournament the outcome is a real mixed bag. Plenty of group stage exits, plenty of quarter-finals and three semi-finals, but not a single final since ’66.
Self importance
We have a great big national stadium, one of the best domestic league competitions in the world and excellent club sides, and all of this conspires to fool us into thinking our national side should perform with the same excellence.
But (the vast majority of) England players are average at best. This has been the case for a while; we’ve only ever had a smattering of real top, top talent. Look at the current squad and ask yourself how many of them would get into any major national side. Harry Kane would walk into most, but apart from him I can only really think of Kyle Walker that might have a shout. We as a viewing public are tricked into thinking that our players are better than they are because of the way they play with their club sides.
How many of Harry Kane’s goals are set up by Christian Eriksen? David Luiz and Cesar Azpilicueta make Gary Cahill look a much better defender than he really is. I don’t think Jordan Henderson actually looks that good in his club side to be honest so that’s him dealt with, and even Adam Lallana - one of our best players at the moment - is servicing a foreign front line at Liverpool.
When the squad gets together they have to try and knit together all their different styles of play at their clubs and work within the FA’s possession-based “philosophy” that they want filtered through all age groups. And that was only introduced as a decade-late reaction to the fact that Spain won two international trophies in that way, forgetting that Spain were able to field unbelievably gifted, once-in-a-generation footballers who had been schooled in that footballing approach since they were boys.
If we are genuinely going to implement a top-to-bottom philosophy, we’ll have to wait 10 years or so before we see any fruits born from it. The kids who are getting taught that way of playing now at the age or 7 or 8 are the first group who will be able to try and imprint it on the senior squad when they get there. But as we all know we’re impatient for success now, and the same old questions will be asked each and every time we squeak past Lithuania or go out on penalties to Portugal.
England fans have even booed performances and specific players in the past. What the hell is that about?! How do you expect players to perform at their level when they’re being treated like that by their own fans? It’s disgraceful. As I mentioned before we have no divine right to be smashing teams 4 or 5 nil, or even to play entertaining football.
Which leads me onto to the recent qualifying campaign, and why I don’t understand the negativity surrounding the end of it.
Glass half empty
It feels like we can never have enough to moan about in this country. I’m fed up of people complaining that they want to see more attacking football, or being disgruntled when a defensive minded team is successful. There are so many ways to win football matches, but ultimately that is the end goal: to win. How you do it is almost irrelevant.
Entertaining football, beautiful goals and exciting matches is absolutely secondary to the outcome. I often hear fans say that they would happily lose every now and then as long as they were being entertained. What total bollocks!
There was a lot of discontent at the manner of England’s victory versus Slovenia the other night. Let’s look at a couple of reasons why it wasn’t as much of a let-down as some would have you think.
Wembley is so often labelled (by English people) as the home of football. This is probably because we make every other country feel so at home playing there.
England did win the game, unless I’m mistaken. Winning that game meant that we qualified for the World Cup. That game was just about getting the job done, and it’s understandable that there was probably a bit of tension in the players, not helped by a negative atmosphere in the stadium. The fans were throwing paper planes round the stadium because they were so bored with the match. How about getting behind your team like proper fans do? How about creating an atmosphere that opposition teams don’t want to come and play in? Wembley is so often labelled (by English people) as the home of football. This is probably because we make every other country feel so at home playing there.
But back to our qualification performance, how many countries qualified unbeaten, with a game to spare? How many countries qualified conceding just 3 goals in 10 games? How many traditionally big nations haven’t qualified, scraped through or are having to go through playoffs? Holland, Portugal, Italy, Argentina, Chile, Sweden, France. All either just made it, or didn’t make it at all.
England fans need to get a grip, get behind the team and most importantly, stop thinking we should win every game. We might just enjoy watching England a bit more if we did.