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The Portugal Match: Final Takes, With Some Thoughts On The Whole English Campaign

July 2nd, 2006 | By: Shawn | 7 Comments »

A night’s sleep and a clear, bright day, and so to the autopsy.

Yesterday’s match was a battle of wills between two teams afraid to lose. Both sides featured egoistic foreign coaches, both had superstar players who’d grown up together and were likely participating in their final World Cup tournament, both had some hot young stars, both had underperformed in the tournament (England by a wider margin) and yet scraped through to the quarter-finals.

England seemed to struggle with the conditions, suffered an unfortunate injury with the loss of Beckham, and had a harsh but justifiable decision against it by a referee who, unfortunately, has a history of such calls against the side.

All of that would seem to bode well for Portugal, but they were unable to make a significant charge despite having an advantage of one man for nearly an hour of regular and extra time. Indeed, in the final 10 minutes or so of the second extra period, England — playing a ludicrous 4-4-1 with Peter Crouch up front — looked likelier to break through.

And then the penalties, and, well, you know the rest.

From my perspective, the match was generally played without violence in excess of hard play and without too much in the way of theatrics. The exception, of course, was the incident involving Wayne Rooney, Ricardo Carvalho and Cristiano Ronaldo, and as that’s being beaten to death elsewhere I won’t dwell on it. Suffice to say that the combination of the stomping — intentional or not (intent isn’t part of the rule, friends) — and the shouting and the shoving was a clear case of a player out of control and likely to continue so. A yellow would have been justified as well, but Elizondo, the ref, made his decision and I have no doubt that FIFA will stand by it. Not because they hate England, but because they can’t sanction the sort of combination of acts Rooney took.

But as I have said elsewhere, the blame shouldn’t be placed at the feet of Rooney or Beckham or even the trio of penalty-missers — Lampard, Gerrard and Carragher.

The fault is almost entirely that of Sven Goran Eriksson — and the FA who stuck by him irrationally despite his many failures, transgressions and indiscretions. The squad was poorly assembled, insufficiently trained and, it would appear, weakly inspired by its management.

To succeed in the tournament England would’ve benefitted from an additional speedy winger (Shawn Wright-Phillips instead of Jermaine Jenas), and two more forwards — or, rather, two forwards with international experience or even first-team Premiereship experience (Jermaine Defoe or Darren Bent or Andy Johnson in the place of the space-eater Theo Walcott, who, as I predicted from the moment his name was pulled from the hat, never saw one second of play).

That faster line-up — with more depth up front — could have pressed harder for goals (England managed only 6 in four matches, one an own goal) and played the second halves of matches at pace and not as if trying to jumpstart a dead battery. Yesterday, for instance, Lennon might have combined with Wright-Phillips or Defoe to create a true counterattack threat, not the ghastly marionette display of Peter Crouch trying to make dribbling runs in the open field.

But that wasn’t the side Sven assembled, and then Michael Owen got hurt (gee — who could’ve foreseen that???), and those options weren’t available any longer. So he had to rely on Sven’s analytic skills and ability to rally the troops. Lotsa luck. The FA had a chance to give the squad to somebody else in January — McClaren was already there, yeah? And who knows? That might’ve given the squad a sense of urgency that it never had under Sven — ‘let’s show the world we haven’t beaten ourselves’, that sort of thing. But no. Dazzled by his long-ago good fortune on the Continent, the FA stuck with him.

The squad were never truly on fire — and, indeed, never have been under Sven. Everyone who watches English football knows this. Why didn’t the FA?

Tags: England, Portugal

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Comments

By Big Banana | July 3rd, 2006 at 2:38 am

England simply weren’t good enough to win the WC. They struggled in the group stage and just picked the wrong squad. Why pick two injured stikers and a 17 year-old just out of nappies? They had Crouch up-front and nothing else.

If you are going to lose you at least would like to see your team playing good, attacking and entertaining football. I would be extremely dissapointed if I were English as their play was boring and unimaginative. Here in Australia the games are on between 1am and 7am, and I think I fell asleep more times during England games than any other.
If I were an England supportor I would feel cheated by the poor level of entertainment supplied by your mob.

Better luck next time, but with McClaren in charge I don’t think your luck will change any time soon.

Posted from Australia

By Chung Chung | July 3rd, 2006 at 9:04 am

England will do better. I’m sure they will be the champion in next world cup!

Posted from Hong Kong

By Enough is enough | July 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 am

Wake up? England has been over rated. It is the case of , if you are in the land of the blind, one eyed Jack is the King. Sorry mate, the World Cup is fully sighted. I never enyoyed so much everytime I see England got kick out of the World Cup. I would stick one up Alan Shearer. Your over rated Roo or rather I call him Gooney(King of Goons) deserved the red card. All these years since my student days in the 80’s in England, because of the hype and self praise, my friends and I have resented English National Football. We rejoiced and screamed in estacy when Ronaldo scored the winner. Ha ha ha.

Posted from Malaysia

By Pedro P | July 3rd, 2006 at 11:48 am

ENG made one hell of a match and as a super Portugal suporter, I must congratulate ENG for the match they made. Into second half, had you put Crouch next to Rooney, POR’s defense would have shaken and I’m sure ENG would have scored.

Of course, this would mean getting ride of one of your midfield players (one of the inner - NOT Hargreaves cos he was everywhere, or maybe Beckham who eventually left anyway) which would also mean allowing POR to enter more and maybe score. This would have probably been better than penalties, for both teams…

POR lacked Deco to open the ENG defense from the centre.

With 10 men, ENG fought bravelly.

Ricardo weas a giant in POR’s goal and set a new record in WC’s penalty saves.

Posted from Netherlands

By Kyan | July 3rd, 2006 at 12:58 pm

dont forget england is supposed to have the 2nd and 3rd best players in the world atm, on paper, u would be hard pushed to find many better defences and better midfields.

however, ur completely right in that they didnt perform and didnt deserve to win the competition as if i werent english im not sure i would have bothered watching the games (and ive missed very few games)

im not sure if sven is to blame either tho, yes he was conservative but im not sure if he made all the wrong decisions. i think in his position maybe it would have been wise to drop lampard and include crouch but thats the only real decision i think he could have changed. i thought lennon as a supersub was a better idea as beckham had already shown what he was capable of. if i had one criticism it would be that sven chose the best individual players rather than the players who would best suit the team

Posted from United States

By BendIt_In | July 3rd, 2006 at 4:13 pm

I was hoping to see an England-France match. That would have been GREAT. Oh well, it’s not to be. Much like our own USA had a McBride who just couldn’t put the ball into the net; I think of Rooney having that golden opportunity right at his foot and couldn’t put away what would have been the game winner. Overall, the lads played well and showed heart and passion. Again, I really would have loved to see England/France. There is just something special about those matches. I only hope that some day our own national team can rise to the level of passion as your side.

cheers

Posted from United States

By Chainsaw Charlie | July 4th, 2006 at 10:18 am

Sven is a great club manager, but clearly not a good National Coach. I mean, England has in gerard and lampard two of the most complete midfields in the world, they are the classical definition of the box-to-box midfield, why not go for 2 wingers and 2 strikers?or play hargreaves in those more dificult games and push up the wingers, have then really hug the line and then have then do diagonals into the box on a 4-5-1/4-3-3? England will nevere never be able to play a possession football, so play the pace. Jenas and Defoe should have been called.

Posted from Germany