England – proof that 11 great players don’t always make a good team

By: Martini Extra Dry | August 20th, 2008

They’ve tried changing the manager over and over, but it seems like every person who takes charge is faced with the same problem; the England players don’t play as well for England as they do for their clubs. When you look at the team on paper you’d think it could compete against Brazil, but I’m not even all that confident about the next game against Andorra!

The first step to identifying the solution is to identify the problem, but this is hotly debated throughout England. Myself, I can’t see why anyone would play Gerrard and Lampard in the same team, how many games do they have to fail to play well together in before the idea is shelved? Papers forever claim that England managers are too scared to drop the big names and they may well be right. Theres got to be some reason why such a failing partnership gets one more chance so many times.

It boggles the mind that 2 players so good for their club can be so ineffective for their country. Other countries should be looking at our team sheet and crapping their pants. In theory, these two players should play even better when put together and produce a monstrous midfield partnership, but this is football. Mathematicians might be confused at how 10-out-of-10 + 10-out-of-10 = 4-out-of-10, but, unfortunately for England, football is a funny old game.

Then you still have the defence, the attack and the goalie to worry about, and it’s not much different for any of them either. Let’s start in the goal, who should be stood between the posts? David James has proven time and time again that despite being able to pull off some amazing saves, he can also pull off some ridiculous errors of judgement. Scott Carson was tried and he did the same, Paul Robinson was a similar story, I think it’s time someone called Shilton and asked him to reconsider his retirement!

In defence we have the same story as the midfield, on paper it looks like a bigger and stronger rock than Gibraltar, but in practice it’s fairly unorganised and leaky. We no longer have a recognised right back since Gary Neville’s been injured but the other three are world class players for their clubs but for England, asking them to win a header is out of the question.

Up front is about the only place we look a little light. We have Wayne Rooney but he can’t seem to fit in with the team and style, preferring to just chase the ball wherever it may go, to holding a position and being in the right place at the right time. Owen is plagued by injury and the lack of sharpness that causes. After those two we have some players who could and should be good for England but so far it hasn’t happened.

Can Fabio solve this long drawn out quandry? I hope so but I doubt it. Already he seems to have slipped into the ’same old underachieving England’.