Hulkfu

Reading some people stating they are glad Capello is gone, and that his reign was completely underwhelming and are looking to the next manager to bring some “deserved” success to England fans.

I’d hate to break it to them, but the last 46 years have been underwhelming for England, we have ridiculous expectations for a completely average nation. We’ve one of the best leagues in the world thanks in no small part to the foreign players who play in the league.

We are actually quite lucky when you look to our future as our younger players have a ton of potential: Hart, Jones, Smalling, Wilshere, Cleverley, Young, A.Johnson, Welbeck, Sturridge to name a few.

Capello had an equal if not better record than most of the managers that have come and gone recently, and I do wonder how many have to fail before we as a nation start looking at the players, you just look at how well some of them play for their clubs, fantastic performances week in week out, but they can’t replicate that at International level, why? You only need to look at the players they are playing with for their club compared to their country e.g.

Lampard - amazing for Chelsea, currently plays alongside Essien and Mata. England? Gerrard and Barry.

Rooney - scores goals for United, support from Young, Nani, Valencia. England? Young still is there now which is a bonus, but then we have Walcott and Lennon, tons of pace, no consistency.

Even Hart who I think has performed well for England, the defence he has in front of him for City is far better than what England could offer (unless people like Jones and Smalling can reach their potential).

And I don’t think it’s only due to the lack of talent in our nations footballers, it doesn’t help that the squad is made up of dribs and drabs of the premier league clubs; United, City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs, Villa etc.

Whereas Spain have the majority of their players from Barcelona, and most of the others are from Madrid, and there’s one from Villareal. It helps that so many of them play with each other week in and week out so stepping up internationally is not as difficult, a good example of what I mean is when a club makes many signings the fans say “they need time to gel”. It’s true and it is the same internationally, though they can’t gel as they don’t play enough together.

World Cup 2010, Spain had 8 Barcelona players in the squad, 7 of them were part of the starting XI.

The England squad in the same tournament were made up of players from 9 different clubs, and 7 different clubs made up the starting XI. While 3-4 clubs made up the Spain starting XI.

It’s simply not our time, the future could be better with the prospects we have coming through, but if they don’t then Harry is just going to be another casualty of the rotating door managerial policy of the FA, and the fans will continue to blame the manager over the players. Fans need to realise England are not as good as people like to think, don’t buy into the media hype, teams like Spain, Holland, Germany, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil to name a few (enough to stop us getting anywhere in a major competition!) are all better than England, and 9 times out of 10 would beat England, but they’ve worked many years to get the teams they have, Brazil and Argentina are on the down slope, they’ve had their dominant period, Spain, Germany and Holland are on the rise, and England have the potential to do in this Euro’s what Germany did in the World Cup and that is to stand up and be counted, make people think that they can do something better in the next tournament.

Our issue is the pressure is never off, Germany built a squad of new players with a blend of experience, there wasn’t massive expectation on them and they wowed people, Spain have built a team on their style of football over YEARS. The pressure on England never changes, new manager, new squad, same pressure, we HAVE to reach the semi final every tournament because it’s our god given right, no matter what happens in previous tournaments.

Best of luck to the next England manager, hopefully they will do well and the players they have to choose from will perform, but they’re fighting more than just the other Countries it seems, and it has already reared its ugly head in the FA’s decision to find Terry guilty before the courts do and overrule Capello, who is a proud man and was not going to accept that, and if anyone thinks for one second Harry would stick around if the same decision was made with him in charge, they’re in for a shock.

At the end of this ridiculously long essay, I would just like England to be able to approach a major tournament without any outside distractions from the FA and/or the media. We’re our own worst enemies.