My England thoughts

My Thoughts on England:

Now one thing I have noticed about when people talk about England’s World Cup chances, and this may sound a pretty obvious statement but the only people who believe we can win it are English. We have all seen the TV adverts starring Ian Wright and Terry Venables for ‘The Sun’ hyping up just maybe England can add the famous second star above the England badge. Every former England manager, player and of course all fans say England can win this World Cup with this squad.

This week Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas came out and said England’s goalkeepers lack big game experience, this got a few eye-brows raising but and boy was he right. It’s not an unknown fact that neither David James nor Robert Green has played European football in recent years. Joe Hart will of course play at the highest level one day but Green and James are not experts when it comes to major European events. They are good goalkeepers, not World Class goalkeepers in the league of Gianluigi Buffon, Julio Cesar and the man himself Iker Casillas.

Now here’s my point, England is only hyped up in the World Cup because of the profile of names – such as Wayne Rooney, John Terry and Steven Gerrard, all big players in the big English clubs. But apart from those names and a handful of others none of them play in the top four clubs in England (including Liverpool in that and not Tottenham). The Premiership has become such a high quality league because of the high quality international talent the top teams have. It’s quite an amazing fact that seven of the American starting XI have featured or do feature in England’s top league. Yes there is a valid argument that if you take Wayne Rooney out of Manchester United and they are not the same team, the same argument is valid with Gerrard at Liverpool and Frank Lampard and John Terry at Chelsea. But what people forget is there are 11 players in a team and there are more foreign players than English players in team in the top four.

The big England clubs are dominated by World Class talent who are not English. Theo Walcott can be electric for Arsenal and look awesome at times but this is because the ball is being played onto the perfect spot by one of the world’s best creative midfielders Cesc Fabregas (who happens to be a European Champion and wanted by the best club team in the world). All Theo Walcott has to do is control it and play the correct ball or get a shot on target (which most the time he fails to do). However, give that same opportunity to team-mate Andrei Asharvin and he makes it look effortless.

This is exactly the same for players such as Steven Gerrard who had the perfect ball supplied to him from Xabi Alonso over the last three or four seasons, which in my opinion Alonso was the real star of Liverpool but does not get appreciated in a media dominated around English celebrity footballers. Now it does not take a genius to see why Liverpool and Steven Gerrard has struggled this season as Xabi Alonso now plays for Real Madrid.

On Saturday night the world got a glimpse of exactly what England should be capable of doing on a regular basis. Emily Heskey played a perfect ball into Steven Gerrard who did exactly what other team’s see when he is given the service he gets or used to get for his club. Gerrard is a very good finisher and that’s why he’s given the title of being one of the best in the world in his position just off a front man, and of course here comes the ‘but’. With Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard being forced to play together in centre midfield of a 4-4-2 formation (who by the way none of the top four teams in England play this formation) you are limiting their attacking instincts and they are playing different roles to the roles they play for their clubs. This is why Gareth Barry is so important because he is the one breaking up play and supplying the service to Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard who are responsible for supplying service to Wayne Rooney, Emile Heskey and Aaron Lennon, or by scoring goals themselves.

After watching the German’s cut Australia into little sorry pieces England need to take notes and instead of passing the ball to player in ‘position’ you need to pass the ball into the space where the player is ‘heading from his position’ and play at a high tempo when attacking. That is how Wayne Rooney scored the majority of his 30+ goals this season, by moving into a position in the box and receiving the ball at the perfect time; only once did that happen for Wayne and he was very unlucky the ball was just too high for him. That is also how you expose the electric pace of Aaron Lennon; who must of been so frustrated at the poor service he got and where he got the ball, static and having to go backwards more or less every time instead of attacking the bye-line. When Aaron Lennon got the opportunity to do that England looked frightening and the US could not cope, on another day the squared ball across the 6-yard box falls straight to Rooney and not an inch to the side of an out-stretched right foot.

This could be an over-reaction and a slight bit negative as England did deserve the win in Rustenburg and credit must be given to the US team who were organised and closed down England’s key men well and restricted England to more half chances than full chances. If England is to be serious contenders in this tournament they must take those half chances and they must fall to the right players. With a draw from the first group game it is expected that England and US could both finish on 7 points and it is important to finish top of Group C with second place looking like they are facing Germany in the last 16. Goal differences will more than likely be the difference and England must beat Algeria by a healthy margin and hope that the USA don’t as Slovenia needed a late goal from a goalkeeping mistake to dismiss the Algerian’s.