Sunday, July 30, 2006
The end of an error
I've just about got over the World Cup. Not the disappointment of not winning, I'd fully accepted we had no chance pretty much as soon as the squad was named. I'm still angry about the wasted chance given the talent available and comments by players since the tournament finished give more evidence that things were not as they should have been. Still, the useless Swede has gone, albeit with a huge pile of cash....at least Dick Turpin wore a mask !!!
So now we move into the Steve McClaren era. I suppose at one stage, it would have been hoped that the first game would be at the new Wembley but incompetence at various levels of the project have made the opening game for the new managers reign seem a more realistic proposition.
The first opposition for McClaren will be Greece at Old Trafford (so much of taking the team around the country). A few weeks ago, there were some doubts about the game going ahead as FIFA decided to suspend Greece from international football due to political interference. Of course, governments getting too involved in the running of football happens in plenty of other countries around the world but as Greece are not known to be a supporter of Blatter, they were fair game. FIFA can be seen to be clamping down and they aren't upsetting any of Blatters precious voters. Since then, the suspension has been lifted and the game will go ahead as planned on 16th August.
The main talking point will be the squad and the tactics employed. A major concern amongst supporters is that things will continue as before as McClaren was part of the Eriksson regime. I think most people will give him time but he doesn't have long to convince people the negative, boring dross we had to endure for the last few years has been left behind.
The biggest area of intrigue will revolve around the choice of strikers. First to consider is Rooney. Normally an automatic choice but he will be suspended for the first 2 Euro 2008 Group E matches so should McClaren include him. It would make more sense to give more match time to the players who will come in but who will these players be. Owen is out injured and personally, I don't believe Crouch is good enough to play international football. Players like Darren Bent, Jermaine Defoe and Andy Johnson will be desperate to prove they are the right players as well as others like James Beattie and Dean Ashton.
Whoever is selected, I don't imagine it will be pretty viewing. Greece are current European Champions and will be coming to England determined not to get a hiding. At least the FA have had the decency to make sure the Andorra and Macedonia games at home have been moved to 17:00 kick-offs which means 2 more hours drinking to help numb the experience.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
The dream dies...........again
For the 5th time in 7 tournaments, England went out on penalties. Sadly, the prediction (actually, it was more of a rant) about not having enough strikers came true. In 5 games, England scored just 6 goals. Compare that to Germany and Argentina with 11 or even 'boring, negative' Italy who scored 9 and it's easy to see why we failed. The man who has to take the blame for this is Eriksson. He picked the wrong players and employed the wrong tactics. No amount of apologising will ever change that and our best chance to win the World Cup since 1990 and maybe 1996 has gone.Last 16 - Ecuador
The inquests have been covered in depth elsewhere, this blog is about my experiences so lets move on to them. The last 16 match was played against Stuttgart (pictured) against Ecuador. Back in December, I had been confident enough to book travel for the last 16. I flew into Munich on the Friday and caught a train to Stuttgart on the Sunday. Munich is great. I worked there many moons ago and I met up with some friends from Sunderland and basically we got drunk for 2 days. Making the 9:39am Intercity to Stuttgart on Sunday morning was a struggle !!!
We found a nice beergarden to watch the Germany v Sweden match which was being played in Munich. It was a good friendly atmosphere with German, Swedish and a few English fans drinking together. The weather was fantastic as it had been for the entire tournament. After the game, we made our way back to the area around the station for some food and more beer. One of the waiters at the bar we were looked just like Rod Stewart and seemed to enjoy the attention. We also met some German fans from Kiel which is in the north. They were just like us. They support a rubbish club side and travel everywhere watching Germany home and away. Hopefully, we'll be able to meet up again after the World Cup. Cheap airlines, email and the internet mean it's very cheap and easy to keep in touch with and meet up with people anywhere in Europe.
The nights in Munich meant very little sleep and the train journey to Stuttgart was only 2 hours so I wasn't going to get much rest on that either. I arrived in Stuttgart at noon, 5 hours before kick-off so there was time to check-in to my hotel and get over to the stadium to collect my ticket. The first part wasn't as simple as planned. To cut a long story short, my hotel reservation didn't exist and a 98 Euro hotel bill ballooned into a 300 Euro bill.....not a good start. Next thing was to pick up my ticket so I got a taxi over to the stadium. The temperature gauge in the car showed it was 34 degrees celcius, it was going to be another hot, sweatty day in the stadium.
The ticket office was right at the far end of the biggest car park in the world and I spent more time walking to the office than queuing for my ticket. While I was there, I got a call from another friend who was over with his family. He was also in the vast car park so we met up and wandered over to see his wife and girls before walking over to the stadium together. Over the years, I've made a lot of friends through supporting England and it's just not possible to see everyone all the time so it's always good to take these opportunities to catch up.
On the way to the stadium, we met up with my drinking mates from Munich who were laying into the beer again. I was too hot, too thirsty and too hungover to have any more beer so I went off in search of some water/juice/cola. It was very hard to find something to drink and almost impossible to find something cold. We found some at a petrol station near the stadium. I had one of the famous wurst in bread and a horrible weak, fizzy apple juice which was truely disgusting.
Now it was time to move on to the stadium and we passed countless touts who clearly weren't making the money they had hoped for from the England fans. It wasn't difficult to find tickets for 250 Euros or less. When you consider tickets for the Sweden matches had been sold on Ebay for well over 1,000 Euros it's easy to see how far prices had fallen. I think there are a few reasons for this. Firstly, there is an increase in the number of fake tickets as well as used tickets. What some people were doing was after they got into the stadium, they passed tickets back out so they were sold again. Unfortunately for the new holder, the ticket showed it had already been used and they were refused entry. The other main reason was the Fan Fests. These were massive parks capable of holding 20,000+ (depending on the venue) where you could watch the games on giant screens. I didn't go to any Fan Fests but I understand the atmosphere was fantastic. If I didn't have tickets for games, I would have probably gone there as well. The only game I would pay over the odds for would have been the final.
Anyway, back to the game against Ecuador. Here is my match report. Utter garbage but we won 1-0.
Quarter Final - Portugal
A rematch of the Euro 2004 quarter-final in Lisbon was setup in Gelsenkirchen and for the 3rd consecutive tournament, we face a team a team manager by Phil Scolari. Only weeks had passed since Big Phil had told the FA that he would not take the England job while he was still manager of Portugal although if they were prepared to wait until after the World Cup he would accept the job. Well done Brian Barwick and other FA idiots, we now have Steve McClaren instead of one of the best coaches in world football.
The stadium at Gelsenkirchen is probably the most impressive and modern stadium I have ever been to, apart from Portman Road, of course. The roof was closed and they also have the ability to slide the entire pitch outside of the arena to allow the turf to grow under natural conditions.
As for the game, the main talking point was the sending off of Wayne Rooney and the conduct of his Man Utd team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo. The video of the whole incident has been replayed countless times and you can see the BBC video clip here with comments from Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Alan Hansen and Ian Wright
Judge for yourself but I'm convinced the ref was not going to send off Rooney until Ronaldo got involved. He's a disgrace and will almost certainly be hounded out of England as a result. England played for an hour with just 10 men and neither side could score so for the 5th time in the last 7 tournaments, England faced exiting on penalties. Portugal missed 2 of their attempts but in reply, Owen Hargreaves was the only England player to score with Lampard, Gerrard and Carragher all failing which meant defeat yet again for England.
There is only 1 person to blame for this sorry situation and that is former manager (god, that was good to use the word former), Eriksson. He picked an inadequate squad, he didn't prepare the team correctly and his tactics failed. True in the shoot out we missed 3 penalties and the players involved must take the blame for that. In truth, we couldn't beat a very average Portugal side who were without 2 key players. They were there for the taking and we failed due to poor leadership by the manager and poor leadership from the FA.
So now we move to the Steve McClaren era. We had Eriksson in charge for almost 6 years. There were highs, beating Germany 5-1 in Munich, beating Argentina twice. Initially, Eriksson took us forward but ultimately, he under-achieved and there were more lows than highs.
My next entry will be about the FIFA experience at the tournament and then we'll move on to the qualifying for Euro 2008.
