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I used to think people were crazy to complain that foreigners in the Premier League were killing the England national team. But now I think they’re right - only it’s not the foreign players, it’s the foreign owners that are to blame. The massive influx in money (highlighted by the recent madness at Manchester City) has created a culture in the Premier League where winning and staying in all competitions is important not just for the fans and players, but also to the long-term financial health of the club. Meaning that trivial things like World Cup qualifiers and even cup games are given second-class status to Premier League weekend games and European competition.

Take the example of Steven Gerrard’s latest injury. It seems that Gerrard has been playing on a groin injury for a while, even after further aggravating it in a midweek Champion’s League qualifier that Liverpool had to win. So what does Manager Rafa Benitez do? Asks him to gut it out for the weekend Premier League game and then schedule surgery for the international break - which, as you can imagine, did not initially sit well with England Manager Fabio Capello.

Rafa Benitez insisted he had made his peace with England coach Fabio Capello yesterday and dismissed claims of a breakdown in communication over Steven Gerrard’s latest injury absence.

Gerrard will have the second of two minor groin operations today and will miss Capello’s first two competitive games in charge, as England begin their World Cup campaign against Andorra next Saturday and Croatia four days later.

Capello was reportedly unhappy at being kept in the dark over Liverpool’s decision to arrange surgery for their skipper in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday night’s Champions League qualifying round win over Standard Liege.

Now it seems that captain John Terry, Frank Lampard, Owen Hargreaves, Wes Brown, and Ashley Cole will also miss one or both international games - which leaves me wondering how England is expected to get a result against Croatia - the team that will most likely be their toughest competition in the group - in a competition where, unlike Euro 2008 qualifying, winning the group is paramount to qualification. I know it happens on-and-off already, but is this going to get to the point where clubs will start to come up with all kinds of excuses to keep their best players out of all international games?

I suppose the good thing is that some non-regulars like Fulham’s Jimmy Bullard will get a chance to impress Capello. But without some kind of continuity in Capello’s system, how can the team be expected to play as a unit? Some would say Capello should drop the overpaid regulars and give the young England stars more consideration. But Capello seems to have a fondness for a more grizzled England team (see:David Beckham) with Michael Owen the only notable exception.

I say instead of picking an England All-Star team, just send Aston Villa. They seem to be the only Premier League team stockpiling young England talent (Ashley Young, Gabby Agbonlahor, Gareth Barry, Steve Sidwell, Luke Young, Curtis Davies, etc.) and there’ll be no worries about not playing together. I suppose they need to find someone to replace Carew, Laursen, Friedel and a few others, but it would certainly have saved them from paying both Shteve McClaren and Fabio Capello all that money when they could get the guy (Martin O’Neill) they probably should have hired after Sven left. Of course we’ll look past the fact that Villa’s owners are American and their manager is Irish!

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Lots of interesting articles questioning the qualifications of Steve McClaren and the skill level of English footballers in a culture that perhaps doesn’t value the right qualities. Simon Barnes of the Times writes about McClaren’s desire to please the press rather than find his own way.:

It is not that the job is impossible. Eriksson took England to three successive quarter-finals and through three successful qualification campaigns. Of course the pressure is intense, that’s why the job needs a man of remarkable strength, one who is certain of what he wants, equally contemptuous of critics and flatterers, with the nerves of a burglar and a deep understanding of international football.

Such men exist. They are rare, which is why they command high salaries. The pressure is absurd, the criticism hysterical in many countries: we need not plume ourselves on being especially awful, save in our fascination with the sexual lives of footballing men. But what the job demands above all else is a self-confidence devoid of vanity. McClaren had the exact opposite.

This has been a woeful 17 months for English football. It looked like a disaster from day one and so it turned out. I don’t think any of us is in the least bit surprised about that. McClaren never had it: you could see it in the cut of his jib; above all, you could see it in his smile.

Michael Owen, who was injured and watched the game on TV, thinks that England succumbed to the pressure of the moment:

‘It came down to the pressure of making a mistake when it really mattered. If we’d won the games we should have, we wouldn’t have ended up putting that kind of pressure on ourselves. It was our own fault.

‘The best sportsman can deal with it, someone like Tiger Woods thrives on it.

‘When you play at this high level, 99% of your performance level takes place in your head and that puts a big onus in coping mentally.

‘When fear takes over, you start to do things wrong and take the easy option which in our case is lumping the ball forward to the front men.

‘I’m not absolving myself from blame just because I was not playing. What must be addressed as much as anything is our psychological preparations.’

Martin Samuel thinks that there’s a culture of fear in English Football:

Brooking talks up his skills programme, but there is little point in teaching a ten-year-old the Cruyff turn if he is expected to put it into practice on a full-sized pitch with his coach screaming at him to clear his lines. The whole process requires reform, not one executive aspect of it.

It is almost as if English footballers are out of practice in thinking about the game. Gareth Barry was required to anchor England’s midfield against Croatia, yet the statistics show that his touches of the ball were generally in more advanced positions than Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, thus negating the plan to have them breaking forward to latch on to Peter Crouch’s knock-downs. Other countries, the Netherlands in particular, give the sport an intellectual centre. Yet in both games, Croatia’s midfield looked brighter than ours. Better educated. Better prepared. They knew what they wanted to achieve and had paid attention in class.

Whoever follows McClaren will need to be a strong personality. Some of the malaise within the English game, specifically at grass roots, is not his to change, so all that can be done is to work on removing the fear from the elite players. It requires a psychologist — José Mourinho or Martin O’Neill, thinking men who may approach the problem from a fresh angle, single-minded and unafraid.

And finally, Bobby McMahon confronts the idea that passion is the number one quality to look for in a player:

Passion - England (and often Scotland’s) answer to any football problem. Could someone please explain to me why so many British fans seem to believe that passion is some sort of differentiator between British sides and foreign teams?

How does that square with the foreign (particularly Latin) stereotype of being hot tempered and dare I say overly “passionate”? Isn’t the constant use of the word “passion” just another way of saying technically inferior and the only way that it can be covered up is running around more and trying harder? It may work in the short term but it has a limited shelf life.

Doesn’t it strike everyone as a bit odd that while British fans worship at the altar of passion that it is other countries - who apparently are not so passionate - produce teams that win the WC and European championships?

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So Steve McClaren, given a second chance after Israel’s defeat of Russia, decided to shake things up a bit for their crucial game at Wembley to get them into the Euro 2008 tournament next summer. And what did he do? He eschewed the experience of veterans like David Beckham and David James for newcomer Scott Carson and winger Shaun Wright-Phillips. He then decided to play a 4-5-1 formation with only Peter Crouch up front. After 14 minutes England were down 2-0 thanks to a horrendous blunder by Carson and poor defending. Needless to say Mac’s strategy backfired on him.

On a night when a point would do for England, their first half showing was that of a side who were intent on getting their manager sacked, with their so-called ‘world class performers’ such as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard looking more like non-league players having an off-day.

Indeed, it was not until the chief marketing icon of the aforementioned and much lambasted competition made his belated entry at half-time that England began to rally and David Beckham was the only player who deserved better than this embarrassing demise.

Those who have written that this brilliant footballer is merely a walking advertisement in a generation of plastic celebrities fail to appreciate just what he has brought to the English game in the last decade. His mere presence lifted the crowd and his energy and delivery on the right flank was of a quality McClaren’s first pick, Shaun Wright-Phillips, can only produce on a PlayStation game.

Beckham’s pinpoint pass to set-up Crouch for the equaliser that should have sealed England’s qualification was a touch of pure class and it was a shame for the LA Galaxy star that the rest of his team mates were not good enough to capitalise on his enthusiasm and brilliance.

This was Becks’ 99th international cap and as he took a bow to all four corners of Wembley at the end, he knew it would probably be his last. England will not be lucky enough to see his like again for some time and the FA should put on a game that ensures he collects the century.

If only the same tribute could be paid to McClaren, whose decision to change his goalkeeper and stick Scott Carson between the sticks for his competitive debut, not to mention his shock move to pick Wright-Phillips ahead of Beckham, ensuring this would be his final game as England coach unless he got the result he needed.

Some argue that the 4-5-1 formation was unfamiliar to the players who usually play a 4-4-2 in club football. Arsene Wenger suggested the 4-5-1 formation but with Beckham instead of Wright-Phillips.

Arsene Wenger, interviewed prior to the 3-2 loss to Croatia, suggested that Stevie boy play 4-5-1 just as he did but with David Beckham on the wing rather than Shaun Wright Philips. Looking solely at Beckham’s predictable blood-and-guts effort and his beautiful cross for Crouch’s goal you’d have a minor hindsight argument to make.

But, more importantly, it made sense. The pitch was always going to be a pile of crap with the weather coming and the mud would mean that England wouldn’t be able to pass it on the ground easily, or dribble it effectively (at least for England’s somewhat technically inept players) which means - all together now - a reliance on high/long passes and set pieces. Hmm, if only there was a player in the squad who was still among the best in the world at said skill.

So we’re left to wonder, what if Beckham - fueled by being given the chance to save his country yet again - had been able to supply crosses to Peter Crouch all game long? What odds that McClaren changed his team just to stick it to Wenger and avoid anyone say he copied him?

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but so is not being a cocky idiot.

Playing the single striker was music to the Croatians though. On the way out the door, their manager let the English press know that England needed to look deeper than just the formation.

Croatia boss Slaven Bilic claimed England had lost to a better team tonight as a 3-2 defeat at Wembley eliminated Steve McClaren’s side from Euro 2008.

Bilic believes the pressure got to the England players and insisted McClaren’s tactics played right into his hands.

‘We didn’t feel that kind of negative pressure,’ he told Sky Sports News.

‘It’s a bit hard, although they are world-class players and should cope with it, it is hard to cope with that kind of negative pressure.’

Bilic admitted he was overjoyed when he discovered McClaren was playing just Crouch in attack - to the point where he was happy for an impotent England to have the ball.

‘We let their two centre-halves take the ball,’ he said.

‘Of course Crouch is a great player but he is not that quick.

‘It is much easier to play against a team with just one up front.’

Bilic added: ‘Wake up. You didn’t lose the game tonight because of the tactics.

‘We are simply a better team. I admire your team and your players but my team is a much better team.’

The FA have an emergency meeting set up for the morning where it’s expected that McClaren, who has refused to resign, will be given his walking papers. Meanwhile and more long-term, there have been calls from all over for the FA to address the state of the game from all levels, from the youth level all the way up. And more than just the xenophobic idea of removing foreign players from the Premiership. Perhaps missing out on this prestigious and lucrative tournament (estimated GBP1,000,000 economic impact for missing) is in fact the wake up call that England will need to ensure that World Cup 2010 sees the best team that England can muster. Perhaps led by a certain Special One?

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England were half an hour away from qualifying for Euro 2008, putting behind their poor start in qualifying, choice of manager, team selection debates, and goalkeeping errors. Then it happened. The bottom fell out with a silly Wayne Rooney tackle and another Paul Robinson blunder in goal. McClaren reacted in a panic, bringing on Frank Lampard and Peter Crouch too late to make an impact. And now Russia
are in the driver’s seat with a 2-1 victory.

England’s Euro 2008 qualifying hopes were wrenched out of their own hands as they crashed to defeat in Moscow. The result means Steve McClaren’s side must now beat Croatia at Wembley next month and hope Russia stumble in their remaining games against a hopeless Andorra and an Israel side with nothing to play for.

The Russia substitute Roman Pavlyuchenko grabbed both of his team’s goals in a four-minute spell in the second half, cancelling out Wayne Rooney’s delightfully volleyed first-half opener.

Of course the focus will be on the ineffectiveness of Lampard, the hapless Paul Robinson and the “plastic pitch” - an advanced FieldTurf surface which bears no resemblance to the awful Astroturf surfaces of the 70’s and 80’s - instead of maybe focussing on the overrated Wayne Rooney who scores only for his club, and seems to always make boneheaded decisions that cost England. How many penalties and red cards, hot headed challenges, and ineffective play is worth his supposed special talent? Michael Owen and Emile Heskey or Peter Crouch have yielded much better results for England while Wayne Rooney tries to play left back.

Perhaps one can blame McClaren for putting him in the lineup with Owen instead of trying a better combination - as well as sticking with Paul Robinson even with his poor club play (can you remember successive clean sheets for Tottenham?). There’s also keeping the Gerrard/Lampard combination for too long. All topics for spirited debate over the next month until Russia kick off against Israel. Just don’t blame the surface.

UPDATE (10:39pm Paris time):  France’s Thierry Henry has just put 2 past Lithuania with 10 minutes to go - this coupled with Scotland doing what they do and choking against Georgia and their 17 year old keeper means that neither England nor Scotland now look favorites to go through. I wonder what this means for ESPN’s viewership for the Euro 2008 next summer. At least one good piece of news came out. The US finally won in Europe. Michael Bradley scored the only goal against Euro co-host Switzerland to win 1-0. Freddy Adu almost had another.

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