Squabbling, squabbling....my dad's bigger than your dad.

I must say that the World Cup is the competition that does bring great players (on the face of it) to the attention of the world....and was more so in the past when football seemed a bit more insular internationally. Which is why I remember some players like Chumpitaz and Cubillas of Peru from the World Cup and never saw them any place else. They were fascinatingly good players along with their names.....and I shan't forget them.

So I think the World Cup is still the showcase for many a great player....although less so in terms of exposure than was the case when I was a youth.
And as result it will be the venue from which many a young person will remember and associate great players. More accurately their great play...which I suppose makes them great...whatever. But it's only a showcase. The players that are good were presumably good elsewhere and they certainly don't have to win anything at the World Cup to be thought of as great. It's just the longer they go in the competition, the more the exposure, the more etched the image in the memory.

Klose of Germany is in my view a great World Cup player, because he does it when it matters......and whether he does it at club level is immaterial to me, since I rarely see that.He doesn't apparently, but no matter....he goes down as memorable, World Cup winner or not.....hopefully not!!!

Although winning a World Cup is the not the be all and end all of greatness, it certainly helps.

As for blaming Capello....Mugwump makes the point that he (Mugwump) couldn't see it to be in Capello's master-plan that his defence perform as they did...and he'll be right.
BUT Capello was sitting on the touchline....he did have influence...he surely could see players doing things wrong very early doors, yet they carried on going AWOL to the tune of four, and luckily not more, goals. Now either some of them weren't listening or he wasn't getting his message across. Either way he was the man supposed to be in charge.

Still up to the ref. As I say, it should only be used for absolutes because otherwise there's too much interpretation to be applied which would slow it all down too much.

Any system brought in doesn't have to make things perfect, just better.

Except the situations you describe are not all absolutes....at the margins they are down to a judgment.....
Most handballs are fairly clear...at the margins someone will have to make a judgment....but what's to worry about...that's what the ref does now with often less information...so it can only be better. Using technology will never be perfect, but that should not be the argument against it's use.

How are they not absolutes?

1. Either the ball did or did not cross the line. No grey area there.
2. Either a challenge occured inside or outside of the penalty area. The only possibility of debate is when a player lands inside after a challenge outside, but still, the location of the challenge is either in or out regardless of where the player lands.
3. Onside or Offside. I'd maybe better elaborate on this one. I meant a replay could be used to establish if a player was in an offside position or not, which is definitive. The decision of whether or not a player was active should remain with the ref before referring any call.

All of the situations I described are questions of location, which is a matter of fact and not opinion.

And he certainly LOOKED like the man in charge - bellowing like a silverback gorilla on the touchline in the vain hope that his team would form up into their pre-planned positions. I mean, FFS professional footballers of the calibre of Terry, Upson, Ashley Cole, Gareth Barry etc. shouldn't NEED any intervention from a coach to stack up in three rows of 4-4-2, go forward and back in unison and not allow any row to become isolated. This is basic stuff that kids learn to do at a very early age. Usually the call is made by the captain and lord knows England had plenty of those.

Capello is very unlucky in managing England during a period when we are not strong defensively. The alarm bells starting ringing under Sven when we couldn't defend corners (something that England have traditionally been strong at). The cancer continued to grow under McClaren and it ultimately metastasised in this World Cup to terminal effect. We have reached an all-time low in the goalkeeping department. We lack pace at centre half (something that Germany took massive advantage of) and we are now unable to hold a defensive line.

I think Capello was out of options against Germany. Perhaps he could have re-jigged the defence with a couple of substitutions (who would you haul off FIRST?) - but, again, the problem was pace. Carragher's lack of foot-speed was cruelly exposed against Algeria. Ozil would have put a fork in him. Ditto Dawson, who is no Des Walker. Ledley King? Capello had his fingers burned with him against USA. I doubt he would risk having to bring him back off twenty minutes later with a re-occurrence of the same injury. Who else?

Some might say this highlights Capello's blunders in squad selection. But it's not like there's a barrowload of talent waiting in the wings. Two years ago our brightest hope was Micah Richards - one of the very few English defenders with pace, athletic ability and physical presence. Unfortunately his form has flatlined and I doubt any English manager (even Keegan) would have risked a punt on him.

In truth, we should have seen this debacle coming when Capello a) sought assistance from Carragher (who came off a poor season) and b) held out to the absolute last second for Owen Hargreaves (who is the very definition of a crock). These are the actions of a manager who has very little confidence in his defence.

If you can't see that there is an area in all these positions where someone has to say 'Ooh that's close...was it?, wasn't it?' then there is nothing left to say.

You didn't have to go to such great lengths, because most of which you have written apart from the relevant bit at the start I would have no problem with. I wasn't talking about substitutions, which by the way he looked very dodgy on, I was talking about keeping the players he did pick staying in the areas they should have. A situation that would have turned a massacre into a very tight game for the Germans.

My only contention is with the first paragraph.
Yes... what else would he be saying but 'eh! getta backina da position!'....we don't know, but that must have been part of his utterings. But they didn't get back into positions, so at the very least he was useless at that part or they ignored him...which either way makes him ineffective as a coach...at least during this game.

Perhaps some of them mutinied, Terry in particular looked like Fletcher Christian (and of course had been acting that way before the match)... and it was indeed the players' fault.

Personally I would let Capello take us into the European Championship and run his contract out and see what happens...I should imagine that would also be the cheaper option too. It shouldn't hinder our World Cup chances...since that is in Brazil (so no chance anyway) and if he does OK...who knows? I wouldn't sack him just yet...even though he presided over a shambles in South Africa.

As I stated much earlier in the thread - whilst Capello is one of the most successful coaches currently employed - with a panoply of experience in just about every area of the game - he **may** have struggled to comprehend the (for want of a better expression) English Disease - a deadly combination of unrealistic expectations (fuelled by the media which, paradoxically, acts as both jingoistic cheerleader and insatiable vulture), bitter memories of prior defeats, fear and a fundamental lack of self-confidence which, when brought to bear on the players in competition, paralyzes them completely. I doubt Capello has any experience of managing players under similar strain. The job isn't labelled a "poison chalice" for nothing.

Ultimately it boils down to pressure (and the fact that our star man was either knackered or injured). Yes, England are a bit short of pace at centre half - but that problem would have been mitigated had the players not cracked under the pressure. Until we unearth players who can triumph over the English Disease and function under an atmosphere's weight of pressure we will continue to fail at international level.



I'm not sure Capello's position is tenable. Certainly, the longer the FA takes to ponder Capello's future the less likely he is to stay. And there seems to be an undercurrent of bad blood amongst a section of the senior players, which - if not dealt with - will be highly corrosive to our chances of qualifying for EC. And there's the thorny issue of which senior players will be culled in favour of youth. THAT alone has potentially nuclear consequences.

Just as a general question....since I recall you said you had lived in other countries.... are we the worst at exhibiting this 'English disease' as you describe it?
I mean don't other countries have unrealistic expectations and media that fuels them?

I'm not trying to be cute or anything, but are we alone in this?

It's hard to say. I lived in countries which struggled to put up a team for the World Cup qualifiers, let alone make it to the finals. Look, unless you're some weird kind of morbid fatalist - i.e. Dutch, it's human nature to big up the national team's chances. In my experience, there's nothing that goes on in England which doesn't take place - in some form - abroad. But there IS something distinct - perhaps it has something to do with the level of intensity. I do think we English are natural worriers who lack self-confidence (we tend to view games against Spain, Italy, Germany, Brazil etc. as an excuse for failure rather than an opportunity to succeed).

I remember Alan Ball working as a commentator for either ITV or BBC on the Portugal (I think) game a few years ago. At half time he made a sterling speech along the lines of "If I were in the dressing room now I'd be telling the lads that this is THEIR TIME. Their chance to become HEROES!". It really made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I just wanted him in there instead of dour, monotonous Sven.

I'm pretty sure Spain went through something similar during their seemingly interminable period of underachieving (decades). It wasn't that they lacked ability. They always had that. But self-belief - the ability to function under intense pressure - was another issue. IMO, you can't coach self-belief. It's something innate and singularly mysterious. Some might call it cockiness. Whatever it is it is every bit as important to success as strength, athletic prowess, the ability to dribble past an opponent in the box etc.