Toothless England and Capello are over and out
Over the line and far away.
Far away from looking like a World Cup winning side, far away from bettering a vibrant, youthful Germany and, as of today, far away from South Africa and the quarter-finals.
England are out of the World Cup, and, quite frankly, the tournament will be better off without them.
They were bad enough to have exited without any help, but quite how different yesterday’s match with the Germans would have been had Frank Lampard’s effort – which must have landed closer to the back of the net than the goalline – been allowed is up for debate, but the fact remains that England were simply awful. You don’t need video technology to see that.
Lampard’s moment in English footballing history has reawakened that old chestnut of the technology question, but it would have surely been spotted had Fifa allowed the use of extra officials behind the goal, as Uefa experimented with in last season’s Europa League.
That can’t be changed, at least not for the moment – Sepp Blatter is still sticking to his guns on that one – and so attention can switch to England’s performance, or lack of it.
Slow, ponderous in possession and unable to cope with the pace and power of their opposition, England got exactly what they deserved yesterday. Regardless of Lampard’s “goal”, they were three goals worse than Germany. At least.
Wayne Rooney – supposedly primed to take this tournament by the scruff of the neck – was anonymous, as he was for the majority of the time in England’s group fixtures.
In midfield, Gareth Barry struggled with the pace he was up against, while it’s obvious to all observers that Steven Gerrard doesn’t enjoy his berth on the left-hand side. The less said about the case for the defence the better.
Where does the buck stop? His players haven’t helped him, but Fabio Capello has some serious questions to answer.
An amended contract signed just before the World Cup – which removed a clause that allowed him to leave after the tournament – ties him to the job until after the Euro 2012 finals, which England will start attempting to qualify for in September, joined in their group by Switzerland, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Wales.
There are gathering calls for the Italian to resign, which he has insisted he won’t. The FA might make that decision for him of course, but that remains unlikely. What is clear though, is that he’s got some bridges to build.
His decision to stick rigidly to a 4-4-2 formation – a system that sees Gerrard and Rooney, his two best players, playing out of their preferred positions – hints more at a bloody-minded, stoic English coach than the savvy, experienced Italian that the FA thought they were appointing.
Perhaps he has become weighed down by “the Impossible Job.” When he needed to be ruthless, he made his team toothless.
It’s happened to so many others before, bosses become strangled by the hopes and expectations heaped upon them, yet few thought it could happen to Capello.
He was supposed to be a firm, hard-line presence that would whip England’s millionaires into shape. His start was good, as the Three Lions sailed through a World Cup qualification stage that, retrospectively, they should have sailed through, but the stresses and strains of tournament football soon appeared to take their toll.
For all of his club experience and trophies, he’d never managed at a World Cup before, and that showed with some of his selections.
The omission of Theo Walcott from the squad was a mistake, as was the inclusion of the injury-prone Ledley King, while many were surprised at his reliance on Shaun Wright-Phillips as a game-changing substitute.
Capello used 19 players in England’s four games at the World Cup, and while he couldn’t control elements such as Rio Ferdinand’s pre-tournament injury or Jamie Carragher’s suspension, a general air of uncertainty seemed to surround the squad.
They didn’t look prepared enough, or set out well enough, to win a World Cup.
Germany exposed that deficiency horribly in Bloemfontein yesterday afternoon, and now Capello may have to face the music.
It’s unlikely to be an happy tune.
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