Another World Cup, Same Old England

In the lead up to the make or break tie for Eng­land against Slove­nia, the gen­eral con­sen­sus shared was that England’s World Cup campaign/dream was on the verge of col­lapse if not already over. A series of unfor­tu­nate events had seen Eng­land only acquire two points from their open­ing two group games and con­fi­dence in Fabio Capello and the play­ers abil­ity to qual­ify from their group quickly diminishing.

Today’s result against Slove­nia may have aided England’s pro­gres­sion into the knock­out phase of the World Cup, but has done lit­tle to quell trou­bles in their setup that can­not be erased with a sim­ple 1–0 win. Still the ques­tions stand about unity in the Eng­land camp and whether this is yet another over­hyped and over­rated World Cup cam­paign that will end in tatters.

The rea­sons for their decline have been obvi­ous to see.

Capello pre-World Cup errors

Lauded through­out the qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign as the admin­is­tra­tor of a no-nonsense atti­tude in the Eng­land squad, Fabio Capello was in turn built up as a fault­less char­ac­ter that could do no wrong. His abil­ity to mould Eng­land into a cohe­sive unit that brushed aside for­mer foes Croa­tia in qual­i­fy­ing gave him god­like sta­tus in the eyes of Eng­land fans and thus began the increased enthu­si­asm with regards to the pos­si­bil­ity of Eng­land win­ning the World Cup.

Although in the final month build­ing up to the tour­na­ment, a suc­ces­sion of bad lapses in judg­ment on Capello’s part saw his once supreme per­sona appear mere human. Dur­ing his 30 man squad selec­tion, last minute calls to Owen Har­g­reaves, Paul Scholes and Jamie Car­ragher to inquire about their inter­est in going to the World Cup showed inde­ci­sive aspects of his demeanor. While the con­cept of the Capello index was just baf­fling in general.

These mis­judg­ments have shown Capello to be imper­fect and have altered his per­cep­tion amongst the Eng­land fans and pos­si­bly the his players.

Eng­lish mentality

Every four years since 1966, Eng­lish men­tal­ity from not only the play­ers and staff, but also the fans and media has been a key rea­son for the down­fall of their very own team. Post any major tour­na­ment that Eng­land flop at, the nation goes through a lag phase in opti­mism for the prospect of their national team. This lag phase con­tin­u­ously ceases roughly six months before the start of an approach­ing tour­na­ment off the back of a suc­cess­ful qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign. This cycle has repeated yet again and pre-World Cup hype sur­round­ing the Eng­land team has brought stress amongst the play­ers to an unbear­able level as they strive to pro­vide for their nation.

A post match inter­view with Capello by a UK ter­res­trial TV sta­tion show­ing the game typ­i­fied the delu­sion shared amongst the Eng­lish pub­lic as to how the game against Slove­nia actu­ally unfolded. For the pun­dit to address Capello with the state­ment stroke ques­tion “Is this more like the Eng­land we know?” just proves that the media are either try­ing to pro­mote a pos­i­tive atti­tude amongst the pub­lic, unable to prop­erly ana­lyze that Eng­land were hang­ing onto a 1–0 result or are as pre­vi­ously stated delu­sional to the stage of being unable to see any fault.

After hav­ing the very ques­tion directed at him already answered, Capello could only be expected to be drawn into agree­ing with the inter­viewer and added his own touch to the far­ci­cal analy­sis by pro­claim­ing his side played with “free­dom”. In this case one could only hope that Capello was cun­ning enough to take the bait and con­tinue the delu­sion and not be actu­ally seri­ous in what he is saying.

Try­ing not to be harsh in any way on Eng­lish men­tal­ity, just purely real­is­tic, this World Cup has showed that Eng­land are not per­sis­tently arro­gant about their chances at major tour­na­ments. A more accu­rate eval­u­a­tion would be that they are plainly delu­sional and have a false sense of teams actual abil­ity built up in their own mind through the media.

This may seem like a very harsh cri­tique of Eng­land and prob­a­bly a more suit­able to be pub­lished if they were knocked out of the World Cup. On the other hand, this is a sim­ple real­is­tic out­look at the cur­rent rut Eng­land have them­selves in. Every four years they exit the World Cup lament­ing numer­ous dif­fer­ent rea­sons. In most cases it is the inabil­ity of their play­ers to keep suf­fi­cient nerves dur­ing a penalty shootout. Yet again Eng­land are dream­ing, and closely fol­low­ing behind are the tat­ters of those dreams.

Tagged as: Capello, England