Too late to sack the coach, so...

This is an excellent analysis of England, how they should play and how they could go wrong. It's almost exactly why England will not win the World Cup under Svennis.

How could a manager be clueless enough to even consider playing Rooney on his own up front? That's demented. His big strength is running at defences from deep. If opposing coaches could choose your tactics for you, they'd have Rooney lead the line, so that his brilliant bullocking style is nullified.

And England's problem has long been that we field too many players who want to make the killer pass, and too few who want to play carefully and solidly and make good opportunities. Contrast us with Argentina, who played solid, attacking football, using their options smartly, not panicking against a spirited Mexico (who played a great deal better than England have at any point in this tournament. What a great match that was! Two teams refusing to play defensively, both striving to make and take chances. Argentina could play a game in which Riquelme sits back in front of the back four and looks to hit his pacy front two with the long ball. It would probably work sufficiently often to be a good approach. But Argentina refuse to play like that. They have far too much talent and ability across the pitch to settle for a functional system. England do too. We really do, although Sven left half the talent back in the UK, and won't field some of the rest (why pay no serious consideration to starting the brilliant Aaron Lennon and why rely on strikers with poor fitness records' staying fit for the whole tournament?). But Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham and Rooney are seriously good players, and at least a dozen other Englishmen are of decent quality -- no, that does not include Owen Hargreaves. We are a match for anyone, or should be. But we laboured against Sweden, who we should have outclassed. As did Germany, who put in as good a display of midfield power and positioning as you're going to see. The creation and use of space was first class. Ballack looked scarily good, and if he'd packed his shooting boots (and Isaksson had not had a very good evening), Sweden would have been on the end of a drubbing. England never looked like taking them apart the way Germany did. Germany do not have the talent of an England or Argentina: only Ballack and Schweinsteiger are genuinely classy players. But they have started playing ruthless, hard football. They are not going to be an easy prospect.

Ecuador should be. They played attractive football in their group games, but they could not match Germany physically, nor in football terms. England should easily outclass them, and then they have a great chance of progressing by beating the winner of Portugal/Holland, neither a particularly scary prospect, although obviously good enough to beat anyone on their day. But the fear has to be that a halfarsed tactical plan is good enough to beat Ecuador but is seriously exposed against a better side. I hope it isn't. Even though I despise Svennis, and do not rate him at all as a manager, I hope he brings success. But I'm not harbouring any illusions: Argentina and Germany have both been a league above us, and Brazil will improve as the tournament goes on. Holland negotiated a difficult group and Portugal played well enough in theirs. We are going to need to improve a great deal to beat any of those teams.

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:58 pm