Filed under: Football, England Football
Here's how times have changed for English football on the world stage. On 20 May 1909, an all-English team took on Switzerland in Basle. It wasn't a full international for the English; the proper England team, consisting of players from big clubs such as Sunderland, Blackburn, Chelsea, West Brom and Liverpool, had two games against Hungary and one against Austria to play the following week. (They'd win those 4-2, 8-2 and 8-1.) The side to play the Swiss - who were treating the fixture as a top-class game - was instead a representative one, featuring men from Woking, Glossop, Stockton and Oxford City. The England XI still won 9-0.International success is rather harder to come by for England these days. At the weekend, the current Swiss team turned up at Wembley and gave the very best English football has to offer - with the infamous exception of one striker, who was away getting himself a new crown topper fitted - a terrible runaround for 50 minutes or so. It had been a match England were expected to win comfortably; in the end, they were thankful for a 2-2 draw and left wondering if, a decade after David Seaman retired, the three lions will ever see a dependable goalkeeper again.
England will be doubly glad to see the back of the federal republic of Switzerland, given the previous week's shenanigans at Fifa HQ in Zurich. The FA, supported by their fellow old-school counterparts from Scotland, acted admirably in standing up to Sepp Blatter's saucy regime. Problem was, they'd spent the previous decade and a half sucking up to the man, voting for him in the 1998 presidential election despite previously pledging their support to Uefa's Lennart Johanssen, reneging on a deal with the German FA not to go for the staging rights for the 2006 World Cup, and bending over backwards in their attempt to land the 2018 tournament. Only when Russia came out of the envelope for 2018 did the moral ground seem appealing. The rest of the world were resolutely less stunned by Businessman-Makes-Business-Decision-After-Receiving-Business-Envelope-Gate, and acted accordingly. Much like the FA did while still angling for those World Cup finals.
So England find themselves no longer the force they once were off the pitch, or on it. These twin revelations have been headline news all week, but in truth it's only really the administrators and the media who have been shocked. The punter on the street is more capable of taking things in their stride. It would have been nice to hold a World Cup, sure, but Uefa giving one or some of the home nations a European Championship in the next decade or two is hardly pie-in-the-sky dreaming, a perfectly acceptable second prize. Besides, the nation is hardly the sporting pariah we're being painted in some quarters as: the UK has just held its third Champions League final in nine seasons, while next year London holds the Olympic Games, for goodness sake.
As for the on-pitch travails, the average fan is in no illusion regarding England's true standing nowadays. It's all good and well throwing the toys from the pram in a perfect parabolic arc, demanding the removal of Fabio Capello, but the simple fact is that England's players, judged by the very highest and harshest standards, are not up to scratch. Nobody's kidding themselves that James Milner, Darren Bent, Frank Lampard, Scott Parker or Theo Walcott, all starters against the Swiss, would get anywhere near a Spanish or German squad, never mind the first XI. There's very little Capello - or Harry Redknapp, or Jose Mourinho - could do to change that basic truth. Xavis and Iniestas do not grow on trees, and despite his generous financial package, there's very little Capello - never mind Harry Redknapp or Jose Mourinho - can do to change that basic rule of nature.
Two decades ago, fans schooled in the lessons of the past would have baulked at the suggestion that England are a resolutely second-tier outfit. The recent years of failure have gone some way to changing perceptions, though for the most part England had struggled - the blip of the Alf Ramsey years between 1965 and 1970 apart - on the world stage anyway, and still the outrageous expectations remained. But nowadays a whole generation has grown up watching the world's top talent play in the Premier and Champions Leagues week in, week out, and that, Wayne Rooney apart, there is little in the way of stardust sprinkled over the England team.
But this acceptance has its benefits. After the Swiss debacle on Saturday, ITV anchor Adrian Chiles didn't portentously announce the end of the world, but sighed in the manner of a man who'd had his hopes dashed a thousand times before, but realised that's part of the fun. Fans didn't spill out of Wembley red-faced with impotent anger at England's failings; instead, collared for their views by roaming television crews, they explained that the result was a wee shame, but there's nothing major to be worried about ... England are still favourites to make it to Ukraine and Poland next summer, and if they get there, nobody's expecting much ... maybe the team will get out of the groups, or maybe England will lose in Montenegro and go out in the play-offs, who knows ... England aren't going to win the whole thing, so we might as well just enjoy it for what it is.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/06/08/england-football-fabio-capello/
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