Expectations low as England make for depressing viewing

Seven. It’s an interesting number don’t you think?
Roy HodgsonRoy Hodgson
Roy Hodgson

In Rugby Union it’s the number of points you get for a converted try, it’s also the number of players you get in a handball and water polo team. While for Liverpool fans the No 7 shirt has almost hallowed status as it’s the one traditionally worn by some of its greatest players, including Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish and Luis Suarez, to name just a few.

But there was nothing magnificent about it last week when England played out a goalless draw against Ukraine in their World Cup qualifying match in Kiev, for seven was the highest number of consecutive passes England managed all game. Seven.

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Ukraine, hardly footballing aristocrats themselves, managed 18 apparently.

I didn’t actually count them but a friend did. He sat and watched the match with his young son marking the passes down on a piece of paper.

At one point his son turned to him and said, “you’re right dad, we can’t pass.”

It’s a damning indictment from an eight-year-old boy but it’s one that few who sat and watched the match on TV, as I did, would be inclined to disagree with.

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Afterwards, England’s manager emphasised the fact that it was a good result, which it was.

However, even though the draw left England top of their group with two home games left to play against Poland and Montenegro, fans are hardly brimming with hope and expectation at this moment.

The worrying thing is what will happen if England do actually qualify for next summer’s World Cup in Brazil when it’s going to be hot and possession football will become even more important.

The tournament is already being billed as a samba party in which case we’re in danger of becoming the footballing equivalent of Ann Widdecombe, whose leaden performances on Strictly Come Dancing a few years back made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

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England’s performance on Tuesday night also made the recent assertion by the new Football Association chairman Greg Dyke, that England should be aiming to at least reach the semi-finals of Euro 2020 and win the World Cup in 2022, sound like nothing more than wishful thinking.

The team may have defended well but you don’t score goals, or win matches, just by defending and watching the match I lost count of the number times I willed players to keep the ball – usually just at the moment it was ballooned forward in the general direction of lone striker Rickie Lambert.

Needless to say, it made for pretty miserable viewing but perhaps what’s most depressing is that football fans, players and pundits alike have been talking about the need to play a more expansive, possession-based game, for decades.

There have been repeated calls for the need to improve coaching at junior levels and maybe it is starting to happen, but judging by the dearth of young talent coming through it doesn’t look as though we’re going to reap the rewards any time soon.

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There are some people who say it’s not in our DNA to play this kind of football, others, too, who say the weight of public expectation is too great for the players to bear.

Nonsense.

The likes of Germany, Italy, France and Holland have all won major tournaments when the pressure was on. While Spain, once dubbed perennial under-achievers, have taken modern football to a new level. This is the same Spain that back in the 1990s was spearheaded by Julio Salinas, a classic English-style centre forward if ever there was one.

The question of whether our expectations are too high is an interesting one, though, and the match against Ukraine was noteworthy for the fact that it saw Frank Lampard win his 100th cap for England.

The 35 year-old became only the eighth Three Lions player to reach this impressive milestone. The others on the list are Peter Shilton (125 caps), David Beckham (115), Bobby Moore (108), Bobby Charlton (106) and Billy Wright, Ashley Cole and Steven Gerrard, (all on 105).

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What struck me about this list, which represents the cream of English football over the years, is that four of them – Beckham, Cole, Gerrard and Lampard – were all part of the same, so-called golden generation upon which so much recent hope was pinned.

That hope disintegrated in a series of penalty shoot-out failures and knock-out blows in the big matches, which raises the possibility that perhaps they weren’t as good as we thought they were.

Yet those four players have not only appeared in a Champions League Final, the toughest club football competition in the world, they have won it. This would seem to undermine the argument that our players aren’t good enough, which makes the travails of the national team even more baffling.

Some people might point the finger at Roy Hodgson, but that would be unfair as he’s a highly-regarded coach with an impressive track record both in this country and abroad.

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There is perhaps no single reason why England have failed to reach a major final since 1966, but last week’s underwhelming performance came as they dropped to 17th place in Fifa world rankings, their lowest position for 12 years.

Perhaps we shouldn’t give too much credence to these rankings as despite a quarter-final exit at Euro 2012, England were third in August last year – an all-time high. Even so, there’s a feeling of grim inevitability that England’s footballing fortunes aren’t going to improve any time soon.

It’s 47 years since they won the World Cup and there will be many people who will say “aye, and it’ll be another 47 before we do again.”

Maybe. But either way, the likelihood is that the person who scores the winning goal when England finally do hold the trophy aloft again probably hasn’t even been born yet.

and another thing...

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Rafael Nadal’s stunning four-set victory over Novak Djokevic to clinch the US Open was as brilliant as it was brutal.

The Spaniard’s victory took his number of Grand Slam titles to 13, one behind Pete Sampras and four behind all-time leader Roger Federer.

The crowd at Flushing Meadow were treated to another pulsating match between these titans of the sport which included an incredible 54-shot rally, that Djokevic won to break Nadal’s serve.

It was another reminder that we are witnessing arguably the greatest tennis rivalry of all time. Not just between these two but also Federer and Andy Murray, whose two Grand Slam triumphs have now elevated him to another level.

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Since 2006, only one other player – Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro, who beat Federer to win the US Open in 2009 – has broken the stranglehold these four men have on the four tennis Grand Slam tournaments.

It’s a remarkable statistic and one we may not see repeated. There have been epic rivalries in the past, most notably between Laver and Rosewall, Borg and McEnroe and Agassi and Sampras.

But surely nothing quite rivals what we’re witnessing now.