FIFA World Cup 2010: Aftermath of England’s worst performance at the tournament, Capello admits the preparation was not ideal & players were exhausted
When a team like England crashed out of the world cup in the manner they did, people start wondering what actually went wrong. Now the England manager, Capello has come out and said that maybe the preparation for the world cup was not quite right.
At a time when most of the teams were in South Africa ahead of the world cup or resting at home, England was doing some altitude training in Austria and later played two friendly matches against Mexico and Japan. Not to forget they had just come back from a 10 month long premier league season. In addition, the fatigue and tired legs were there for everyone to see in the world cup.
Team manager Fabio Capello, who has received support from FA to continue his job and lead England into Euro 2012, has admitted that his players were overworked and did not have enough left in them when it came to the big matches.
Capello said that he has already said what can be done; he added that he thinks after the end of Premier League season and the FA cup final, the players need to have some more time off to get in shape mentally and physically.
He reflected on the 1992 European championships that took place in Sweden, when the Denmark team, who had come to the tournament after relaxing at the beaches for days, came there fresh and managed to win the cup. He said he remembers clearly, when Denmark won the Euro championship, their team was not under the pressure that England had.
Capello also added that England played a warm up game against Mexico at Wembley, which was decided in advance but looking at things now, maybe it was a mistake. He went on to say that now things are different, he said we are talking about what ‘could’ have been done.
Majority of players in the England team got at best 6 days off after the domestic season ended on May 9th, and then they reported for national duty.
While Chelsea players like Ashley Cole, Lampard , Terry and Joe Cole had even less amount of days, as they were involved in the FA cup final against Portsmouth on may 15th.
England team then headed to Austria just 2 days after the FA cup final, and came back home to play Mexico.
However, that was not the end of it, the team was once again sent back to continue some more Altitude training and later they flew to Gaza to play a friendly match against Japan.
Although England were one of the teams to get to South Africa ahead of time, but it was not before 25 days of rigorous preparation in 3 different countries, and the manager now admits that his plans were not ideal.
Looking at Spain, the European champions who have already made it to the semi final of the world cup, they stayed at home rather than heading to an altitude training camp, and played a game against Poland on 9th June before flying off to South Africa the very next day.
Capello went on to say that, they really have to understand what went wrong not only in the world cup but before that even. He further added that they have realised there are a number of players who were tired not just physically but mentally too, they were exhausted, they were basically over-played.
The Italian Manager said that now that he has the task of making sure that England makes it to the euro 2012, and he would make sure not to repeat the same mistakes. In addition, promised that it will be a New England team that will take part in the Euro championships.
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