You’ll never look at him the same again. Let alone give you a crisp.

Joe has himself a Liverpool jersey – it may well be a good move, but he is still an apt example of the counter-productive manner in which English football treats its creative players. 

English football is full of ill-conceived ideas, but its predilection for heart and graft over art and craft is the most frustrating of them all. This week, with Joe Cole’s move to Liverpool confirmed and a place on the left wing waiting for him, was just another reminder – after the World Cup – of what the flawed football culture in this country does to players with more talent than ‘guts’. 

At 17 Joe Cole was the hottest star in England and a classic number 10. His ability to find space and substantiate his play with goals and assists made him an excellent player to watch and an effective enough player to be linked with a £10 million move to Manchester United. And yet, ten years on and Cole finds himself moving to Liverpool on a free transfer following marginalisation at Chelsea, where he was unable to get into the team and forced out wide when he did get a game. His experience in South Africa, where he made two brief substitute appearances for England on the wing, ran around a lot, but ultimately failed to live up to the media hype beforehand, summed up his career to date.  

Mourinho - acting as an agent of English football - started the transformation from butterfly to caterpillar when he arrived at Chelsea and insisted that Cole worked harder tracking back and played him on the left-hand side of a midfield five. The Special One argued that teams – in the Premier League and European competitions – couldn’t afford a player with the kind of purely attacking mandate Cole had become accustomed to at West Ham, particularly in a central position.

Quickly, Cole moved from a classic number 10, to a rudimentary wide-man with strict defensive duties. And at the time the move was lauded as a crucial part of his development into a more well-rounded, better player. Mourinho explained that he wanted him to keep his “beautiful face” and only replace his “other face” which saw him lacking when “[Mourinho] needed 11 players for [his] defensive organisation and [he] had just 10″.  And it worked for Chelsea, just as Wesley Sneijder’s defensive efforts worked for Mourinho’s Inter last season, but it nullified Cole’s attacking instincts far more than it did Sneijder’s – he has just 13 assists to show for his last 3 seasons of football.

Adding hard work to the likes of Joe Cole’s game, logically, restricts them – it is not simply an added dimension. An attacking player’s defensive duties are essentially about pressing opposition space: not only does that make their own search for space difficult: it is a directly competing priority. The two can be done successfully, as Sneijder has shown, yet the compromise remains significant and a burden that most players cannot handle – it made Joe Cole less of a joy to watch and, ironically, less effective as his falling number of assists shows.

Interestingly, Fabio Capello, with experience beyond English football, has also shied away from offering a free-role to the new Liverpool signing, or any other player for that matter. Yet Capello’s scepticism, rather than representative of the football world’s, is a symptom of the conservative coaches that the FA favour when making appointments – Steve McClaren and Sven Goran Eriksson were both defensively orientated. The World Cup showed us – or those of us that hadn’t been watching the Champions League at least – that the most successful teams benefit from creative players free of defensive responsibilities. Spain has Xavi and Iniesta, the Netherlands has Sneijder, Germany has Ozil, England has…no-one.

England has no-one because Joe Cole is one of many players to have fallen victim to English insistence on rigidity – namely, a dislike of number 10s. Wayne Rooney, for one,  was touted as a link man in his early Everton days and even after his move to Manchester United, where he began playing off Ruud Van Nistelrooy. However, his lack of goals led to allegations of unfulfilled potential, until last season when Sir Alex moved him further up the pitch to become a – yes – rudimentary striker.

What’s the problem – Rooney was excellent alone up-front? For Manchester United, a team that boasts two excellent wingers (Nani and Antonio Valencia) to supply the ammunition, there is no problem. But for England, Rooney’s reliance on other players is limiting and can leave him isolated (even with a subservient partner up-front with him, offering support) because – and this, ironically, completes the cycle – there are so few players in the squad that can create the opportunities he craves.

English football still treats play with aesthetic value with suspicion, regardless of its outcome. It is this same suspicion that leads to assertions about Spain’s tiki taka, regardless of its success, being somehow superfluous. And as long as that mentality remains, English football will always find ways to eliminate creative players from its midst. It will negate their abilities by forcing them to track back, it will push them into simplistic roles that it can understand, or, worst of all, it will injure them so that they can’t play at all. Ask Joe Cole.

How can we get success like this?

Tradition dictates that all value judgements made before an England World Cup exit be immediately reformed in the weeks and days that elapse following it. The regularity of the clamber has undoubtedly dampened its effect over the years and, as such, scepticism about the extent to which anything England will change after the latest knockout is justifiable: therefore for suggestions to be anything but fantastical they’re going to have to be minimal. Here are five that fit the bill (over the course of five posts):

2.) Offer incentives for English clubs to provide players for the national team

The impressionthat England have been unlucky in international tournaments is comforting, though ultimately illusionary. Injuries to Rio Ferdinand and Owen Hargreaves this time out added to a linesman’s decision to perpetuate the myth, but poor decisions and injuries afflict all teams to an (almost) equal degree, only their impact varies.

The Three Lions remain vulnerable to injuries because England, the country, does not produce enough top-class players. Germany’s manager, Joachim Low, was able to bring Sami Khedira into his team for South Africa when his captain, Michael Ballack, sustained an injury whilst playing for Chelsea; Fabio Capello was eventually forced to bring in hapless Matthew Upson for his captain. One injury usually costs us, it does not cost them.

How can the talent pool be increased? The general secretary of the German Football Association, Wolfgang Niersbach, points to their investment of “an annual €20m [£16.5m] earmarked for talent promotion in the widest sense of the word. At grassroots level, a nationwide network of 366 training centres has been set up, mostly using the infrastructure of local clubs with above-average facilities, where 14,000 youngsters aged 11-14 receive extra tuition by way of a weekly two-hour training session imparted by a DFB-appointed coach. This is in addition to the training they do with their respective clubs”. 

Relatively insubstantial figures – around that paid to Fabio Capello over the course of his proposed four year tenure - can reliably and efficiently generate talent if targeted correctly. Yet root-and-branch reform remains difficult to imagine with the same people who invested over a billion pounds into Wembley stadium still in charge of the FA.

Instead, reform may have to be led by clubs. Premier League chairmen have fought off various threats to their sovereignty – FIFA’s 6+5 rule was quietly abandoned around the beginning of the World Cup - ensuring that it remains their prerogative whether or - usually - not to bring young English players through their academies.

They have at least agreed new rules on the number of “home-grown” players in their squads as an indication of willingness to preserve some kind of link to the fundamental aims of their national association, yet the commitment remains shallow and for progress to be made  it appears frustratingly inevitable that incentives must be put in place.

This could involve grants for clubs that supply England internationals and the transferal of the burden that is insurance liability whilst on international duty to the FA. It must also involve an improved dialogue between the clubs and those in charge of the national team – concessions on friendly appearances may have to form a part of that dialogue. There is no stick (how we wish there was), so the carrot will have to do - clubs will have to have it all their own way again.

*Please try the links – they take ages to find and usually (except for the odd self-indulgent one) enhance the ideas put forward

How can we get success like this?

Tradition dictates that all value judgements made before an England World Cup exit be immediately reformed in the weeks and days that elapse following it. The regularity of the clamber has undoubtedly dampened its effect over the years and, as such, scepticism about the extent to which anything England will change after the latest knockout is justifiable: therefore for suggestions to be anything but fantastical they’re going to have to be minimal. Here are five that fit the bill (over the course of five posts):

1.) Keep the manager.

The CAPITALISATION mob need no excuse to slip some xenophobia into their World Cup blame game and they’ve certainly enjoyed throwing insults at Fabio Capello in the course of the last week. But the underlying insistence that an English manager could do better is strange and wrong.

No Englishman, available or otherwise, offers the level of experience or natural ability necessary to coach the failing national team. Placing an under-qualified candidate at the helm of one of the most fragile ships in world football is unwise in the short-term and only distracts from the systematic inadequacies which have led to a lack of genuinely high-quality English managers in the long- term.

Another - new - foreign coach then? Perhaps, but not yet. Capello’s England have failed once, but it is another unfortunate feature of the reactionary rubbish that comes out after any defeat that the manager is scapegoated above and beyond the players.

The former Milan and Juventus man made so many right decisions in South Africa: he was right not to answer calls for Joe Cole’s inclusion – the media was wrong. He was right not to trust a faltering, possibly injured Wayne Rooney up-front on his own – the media was wrong. He was rightly desperate to include Owen Hargreaves in his squad – clearly aware of danger of lacking a genuine midfield destroyer. A variety of factors combined to cost England, but not Capello. 

Regardless even of that, consistency in itself, the part-time fan will not observe, so often breeds success in the place of quality. Another two years of Capello now brings World Cup experience (lest we forget that this was his first international tournament), consistency and quality – and saves a rather substantial sum of money too. The Football Association has already made one right decision.  

Of course, Fabio is unlikely to stay on beyond the Euros, but the point about consistency still stands in that that tournament is a legitimate long-term goal in itself and the manager’s continued presence will aid the transition between the World Cup and said Championships.

*Please try the links – they take ages to find and usually (except for the odd self-indulgent one) enhance the ideas put forward

Part two tomorrow.

1966 World Cup Final.

Obviously, it all started here, with England’s first, and to date, only, World Cup victory. It was, I think its fair to say, a bit of a cracker. England won 4-2, after Extra Time and a controversial hat-trick from Sir Geoff Hurst. Franz Beckenbauer was just a 17 year old who showed a lot of promise. He’d get his revenge.

(West) Germany opened the scoring after a defensive blunder, Geoff Hurst equalised after a quick Bobby Moore Free Kick. Martin Peters seemed to score the winning goal after a Hurst shot was blocked and fell into his path, but right at the death, a goalmouth scramble gave Germany a draw. To extra time. Alf Ramsey sent his troops out with the words “You’ve beaten them once, now go and do it again”. They did. Geoff Hurst scored a controversial on the line/over the line strike, before finishing the game off drilling it into the top corner. We were World Champions, but it wouldn’t be the last we’d see of the Germans.

1970 World Cup Quarter Final.


Alot of people will tell you the 1970 World Cup team was even better than the 1966 team, but history doesn’t bear this out. They lost to Brazil in the group, which led them onto a meeting with the Germans in the knockout stages.
There were a few things that made the difference in 1970. Franz Beckenbauer had gone from good to great. Gordon Banks had got food poisoning. It was really hot (though it was for the Germans as well). And Alf didn’t understand how best to use subs.
This was the first World Cup with substitutions, and that cost England, ultimately. Bobby Charlton was dragged off too soon, Peter Bonetti had an afternoon to forget, and England crashed out.

1982 World Cup Group Stage


A second round match, and a goalless draw (there was a second group stage at the complicated 1982 World Cup). Nothing really to write home about.

1990 World Cup Semi Final.

An absolute classic, this thought. England, Germany, the Semi-Final. England had started the campaign in a quite mediocre fashion, but had quickly stepped up the pace. They’d had a bit of luck on the way undoubtedly – 2 penalties against Cameroon, David Platt’s last gasp effort against Belguim, but we matched the Germans over 120 minutes here. Germany opened the scoring with a freak goal, which looped over Shilton’s head, but Gary lineker got a scrappy one back. Waddle hit the post. Gazza came close. So did the Germans. Gazza got booked and would miss the final, but was immense anyway. It went to Penalties, where of course, Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle missed, and England were out. Germany went on to win it.

*This is playing it the FIFA way that Germany are the heirs to West Germany. We’ve never actually played the United Germany at the World Cup.

“Ethan, stop talking about the midfield all the time”. Or what?

England and ‘The Gerrard and Lampard Conundrum’ have been synonymous since the days of Sven Goran Eriksson. After various unsuccessful attempts to crowbar the two outstanding English midfield talents into the same team Fabio Capello appeared to have the answer: placing Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard in the holding midfield positions and Steven Gerrard either in a free role on the left or behind a target man. Then Gareth Barry got injured and James Milner and Michael Carrick, his most likely replacements, performed relatively poorly in his place against Mexico. Now Fabio’s thinking about moving Gerrard back next to Lampard.

Sven tried to force the two together in a 4-5-1 system at the 2006 World Cup by placing Owen Hargreaves just behind them in midfield, but, whilst he, doing all their work for them, was named England’s player of the tournament, they were largely ineffectual – scoring just two goals between them.

Steve McLaren arrived after that and immediately placed Gerrard on the right of an orthodox four in midfield, with Lampard and Hargreaves in the centre. Gerrard appeared unhappy out-wide (publicly doubting McLaren’s tactics) and eventually injuries to the Chelsea and Manchester United men coupled with poor results allowed him to come back inside to play with a new partner: Gareth Barry.

That match-up proved a winning formula for England in notable 3-0 wins against Israel and Russia at Wembley. But when it failed away to Russia in the next game McLaren didn’t hesitate to return Lampard to a midfield five for the crucial last qualifier against Croatia, with Barry moved back behind him and Gerrard (id est, where Sven finished, except with Barry instead of Hargreaves.)

Barry went off at half time in that game and when England lost the game 3- 2 they ended it with Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in the middle of an orthodox midfield four. Of course they did.

Two years and twenty-three games under Capello since then and we could be back in the same place again – the manager was quoted this week as having said that ‘Gerrard can play in midfield with Frank Lampard.’

Maybe ‘back in the same place’ is overly emphatic. We can be sure that Capello’s Lampard and Gerrard combo would not replicate McLaren or Sven’s. His defensive instincts will never allow him to place them in a 4-4-2 together and neither is he likely to allow both of them the freedom of a three man centre midfield in which a Scott Parker or Ledley King do their work for them - given that that might force Wayne Rooney into a target man role, or worse, encroach on his space in the final third. Strangely, if Capello does use two of club football’s foremost attacking midfielders in combination, it is likely to be as England’s two holding midfielders. 

Everything changed when James Milner and Michael Carrick failed their auditions to play alongside Lampard - averaging just an 82% passing success rate between them in a friendly against a team ranked 17th in the world as compared to Barry’s 85%, achieved in mainly competitive games.

Both looked poor bets to partner Lampard as England failed to control possession in the first half. The game became radically different though in the second half when Gerrard moved back to the deeper position he has occupied for Liverpool for most of the season: England controlled posession, Mexico’s pressure subsided and the ball’s passage from defence to attack became much more fluid. Gerrard won tackles, made passes and looked much improved from the player who hardly saw the ball playing behind Peter Crouch in the first half – ironically, he looked ‘freer’ to link up with Rooney in spite of his more restricted role.  

Based on that second half of football and Lampard’s consistent performances deeper in midfield for England over the past year and a half, it is only sensible to consider playing the two England enigmas together as the ‘two’ in England’s 4-2-3-1. Yes, it would somewhat negate both’s creative impacts, but of late we have not seen much of that side of Gerrard’s game anyway and we must surely avoid moving Lampard from the midfield base given the stability he has so often provided for Capello.

‘Consider it’ at least. Milner too must and will be given another chance – preferrably alongside Lampard. Carrick has so often been Barry’s replacement for Capello and may still realistically be thought of in that same light. Parker, King, Huddlestone and Carragher also remain serious candidates. But be in no doubt: Capello does believe that ’Gerrard can play in midfield with Frank Lampard’ and he might just try it.

I posted about Beckham’s most famous sending off on the main page earlier, but thought it was worth re-posting here on the England blog too.

We all know what happened. The 23 year old David Beckham was fouled by Diego Simeone, and then foolishly had a kick at Simeone’s calf in retaliation. The ref saw it, Beckham was sent off, and we went on to lose the penalty shoot out to Argentina.

I had a lot of sympathy for Beckham over this incident at the time, and still do today. Yes, it was a clear red. But Simeone clearly over-reacted, and we still went on to draw 2-2, and could easily have won 3-2 had Sol Campbell’s header not been disallowed. Any other year, the scapegoats would have been Paul Ince and David Batty, the two players who missed their penalties. But our nation’s frustration centered on Beckham instead, as it would on Cristiano Ronaldo eight years later.

Credit to Beckham for surviving the headlines, the dartboards, the effigy hanging and the boos the following season. He came through it and came out the other side as a stronger player and arguably the most media savvy footballer in the history of the game. Here’s hoping David Beckham’s final appearance at the World Cup this year ends better than his first.

Let me take you back to World Cup Italia ‘90. England had narrowly won Group F and had been drawn against Belgium in the round of 16. The game was goalless at 90 minutes, and still goalless with extra time about to run out. Penalties loomed.

But in the 119th minute, Gazza dribbled straight at the Belgian defence. He was fouled. He got up to take the free kick himself, and chipped it into the area towards 23 year old Aston Villa midfielder David Platt, who had come off the bench to replace Steve McMahon in the 71st minute. Platt waited and waited for the ball to drop before turning and striking it on the volley. Take a look:

That gave England a 1-0 win, and sent us on to the World Cup quarter-finals to face Cameroon (though that’s a whole other flashback post).

Platt played one more season at Aston Villa before heading back to Italy to play for Bari, Juventus and Sampdoria. He won a UEFA Cup with Juve and the Coppa Italia with Samp. Definitely one of the more successful England internationals to play in Serie A.

Platt also went on to captain England during the Graham Taylor era. Though the less said about that the better. If you really want to relive those years, then give this documentary a watch.

Here’s three minutes and 24 seconds of highlights from that England vs Belgium game, including Gazza picking up a yellow card that we’d all regret two games later.

For more England Flashbacks, click here. If you have suggestions for other England Flashbacks you’d like us to post about, let us know in the comments.

So yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and thusly the reunification of Germany. To mark the occasion I watched the rather brilliant film Goodbye Lenin! (recommended, if you haven’t seen it), which basically takes place during the fall of the Berlin Wall, from the East German perspective.

Anyway, one of the subplots of the film is the newly reunified Germany’s run in the 1990 World Cup, in Italy, in which they famously beat a brilliant England team thanks to Chris Waddle’s inability to keep his penalty in the stadium (above, at the end of the video)

The penalty is shown, and I absolutely cringed as I watched it, but as the film progressed, I realised that actually, it wasn’t such a bad thing that Germany went all the way.

Alright, so i’m morally obliged not to be happy about the Germans winning, but think about it, 20 years ago, Germany was facing a real identity crisis, as its two sides had to approach living together for the first time in a long time.

Their run in the World Cup bought the Country together, literally, as it gave the two sides, one which had been living in capatilistic excess, and the other which had been living under strict Communist conditions, some immediate common ground.

And really, it provided that unique thing about football – it brings people together. Germany might have been playing – for the final time – under the “West Germany” banner, but the German people as a whole got behind the team, and politics was forgotten, as people from East and West could talk about how bloody good Lothar Matthäus was.

So its actually quite nice that Germany won that World Cup. And we might not have ended our 24 years of hurt, but we did get alot out of that World Cup, Gazzamania, Terry Butcher and Chris Waddle dancing, John Barnes rapping with New Order.

So I don’t hate Germany for 1990 anymore. 1996 though? I’m not forgetting that in a hurry.

The documentary is now infamous for all kinds of reasons. Taylor’s use of the phrase “Do I not like that”. Phil Neal emerging as the ultimate Yes Man. Ronald Koeman escaping a red card and then destroying us with a free kick. San Marino putting one past us after seven seconds. And of course the swearing, which seemed like a big deal in 1994, but now barely registers.

The documentary is available on YouTube in 14 parts, which I’ve embedded sequentially below so you can watch online:

Hard to know what to think fifteen years later. I was young at the time and had fallen in love with football (and the England team) as a result of our performances at Italia ‘90. I couldn’t wait to see England play in a World Cup again, and it seemed to me that Graham Taylor was to blame for that not happening. I remember being very very angry, and this documentary did nothing to change my mind.

But watching now I mostly feel sympathy for Graham Taylor. He made some poor decisions, and had no clue about public relations and how to present himself to the media. But he was also desperately unlucky, dealing with injuries to key players like Alan Shearer, Stuart Pearce and Paul Gascoigne, a fair bit of injustice in the Holland game and a hostile press that couldn’t wait to see him fail.

If I was desperate for England to qualify, then I can’t even begin to imagine how Taylor was feeling.

Still… part of me wonders if maybe the results might have been better if the camera hadn’t been there. Here’s what Taylor told The Guardian in 2006 when asked if he regretted the documentary:

Q: If you had your time again would you take part in that Channel 4 documentary?

Taylor: That was planned in the event of England qualifying for the 1994 World Cup. In effect it was to show what the England manager’s job was other than when internationals were going on. A decision to go ahead was made six months beforehand. I made the decision and then we lost to Norway and Poland, which opened up the possibility we may not qualify and changed the angle of the documentary.

So as with Euro 2008, the failure to qualify seems to have its roots in an arrogant assumption that we definitely would.