Why South Africa 2010 Is The Best Thing That Could Have Happened To Europe

Eng­land, France, Italy. Prover­bial heavy­weights of Europe are going home in dis­grace to deves­tated fans and more ques­tions than answers, the most promi­nent of which is how this hap­pened? Play­ers like Ribery, Lam­pard, Rooney, Pirlo, De Rossi, Ger­rard and Mal­ouda shouldn’t be strug­gling against the likes of Alge­ria, Slo­va­kia and South Africa. 2010 marks a turn­ing point for Europe. Out of the 13 nations that qual­i­fied for the finals, only five made it to the round of 16. Jux­ta­pose that with Asia, who got two out of four teams through, CONCACAF, who got two out of three, and CONEMBOL, in which all five nations advanced. The tra­di­tional model isn’t work­ing and steps must be taken.

Step one, learn some humil­ity. After a 0–0 draw against Alge­ria, Eng­land skip­per Steven Ger­rard said “This was like their [The Alge­ri­ans] World Cup Final.” Actu­ally, it was a group game for a team hop­ing to advance to the knock­out rounds, same as Eng­land. That kind of arro­gance is pre­cis­ley why Eng­land looked unmo­ti­vated, unpre­pared and absolutely dire against a team with a lot less indi­vid­ual tal­ent but played as a unit rather than indi­vid­u­als. The tal­ent gap around the world is clos­ing. Teams from Asia, North Amer­ica, Africa and even Ocea­nia are mak­ing pushes to be more than seat fillers at the World Cup. Gone are the days of the tra­di­tional pow­er­houses coast­ing through the group stages with all nine points and not fac­ing a real test until the quar­ter­fi­nals. It’s not that Europe is get­ting worse, it’s that the rest of the world is get­ting better.

Step two, invest in youth. After England’s 4–1 cat­a­stro­phe against archri­vals Ger­many in the sec­ond round the British press decried the death of the prover­bial “Golden Gen­er­a­tion” and the lack of young tal­ent mak­ing it’s way into Eng­lish foot­ball. The Pre­mier League is made up of 73% for­eign play­ers and the FA has yet to show the com­pe­tence of devel­op­ing tal­ent since suc­ceed­ing con­trol of the EPL in the early 90’s. No longer is the EPL the cat­a­lyst for nur­tur­ing young, Eng­lish play­ers. Africa, South Amer­ica, and Asia have emerged as fer­tile tal­ent grounds for rich teams and England’s top clubs make no secret about their lack of loy­alty to the country’s national team.

The same goes for some of Italy’s top clubs. There are very few Ital­ian stars at the top clubs in Serie A. Inter Milan is made up almost exclu­sively of for­eign play­ers and the one Ital­ian club with a plethora of Ital­ian play­ers, Juven­tus, is com­ing off an abysmal sea­son. These leagues are too pow­er­ful and too lucra­tive for the national asso­ci­a­tions to chal­lenge so what they must do is develop tal­ent inde­pen­dently, using com­pe­ti­tions such as the U-17 and U-20 World Cups. England’s U-20 squad hasn’t played an inter­na­tional friendly since the con­clu­sion of the U-20 World Cup over eight months ago. Italy barely has a U-20 side and same goes for France. Focus­ing only on the U-21 Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships demon­strates the same Euro­pean elit­ism men­tioned ear­lier. The club and inter­na­tional facets of the game are becom­ing increas­ingly dis­parate and, for Eng­land, hav­ing one of the top leagues in the world is becom­ing a hin­drance rather than a benefit.

Step three, there is no I in team. If France showed us any­thing this year is that tal­ent means jack unless com­bined with team­work and cohe­sion. Play­ing well as a team starts with the man­ager. Fabio Capello’s strict dis­ci­pli­nary style may have worked well dur­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion, when play­ers only had to spend a few days with each other but it obvi­ously grew old after three weeks in close quar­ters. If you look at Argentina, the tal­ent is matched by a man­ager who knows how to deal with his play­ers. Diego Maradona might have been some­thing of a cir­cus dur­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tion rounds but knows how to take star play­ers and make them work well within a sys­tem. Just because a player is indi­vid­u­ally tal­ented doesn’t mean that he’ll help his team. Dunga left Ronald­hino home much to the dis­may of the Brazil­ian pub­lic but he sim­ply didn’t fit into Dunga’s sys­tem and the move seems to be pay­ing off. Maybe Capello or Lippi should have taken a good, hard look at play­ers like Can­navaro and John Terry.

And finally, lower your expec­ta­tions. It is only a mat­ter of time before nations from out­side Europe and South Amer­ica start­ing chal­leng­ing for the World Cup. When that hap­pens the teams that have a legit­i­mate shot at the title will grow from seven or eight to well over a dozen at the begin­ning of every tour­na­ment. That means the odds for Eng­land, France and Italy will become longer and a spot in the quar­ter­fi­nals might be as far as they can go. The days of the soc­cer super­pow­ers are gone, and never to return.

So why is humil­i­a­tion a good thing for coun­tries with proud soc­cer tra­di­tions? Because, finally, change is the only option.

You can fol­low John Bos­chini on Twit­ter at Twitter.com/Johnbo01