We’ve been here before haven’t we?
The whole nation right now is feeling down in the gutter after witnessing one of the most nail biting performances that this world cup could have produced. Portugal were the opposition, managed by Luiz Scolari an old nemesis to the England squad.
To sum things up, England outplayed them to some extent but couldn’t get the ball in the net. Tactics were poor throughout the tournament thanks to our manager Sven-Goran Eriksson. Having one player, the awesome young Wayne Rooney upfront was a crucial mistake. If you’re to have a player up front going solo, feed him with a supply of good passes for crying out loud. He looked so alone and confused out there which will no doubt lead to frustration later on.
Frank Lampard missed a host of chances, which is what he’s done throughout the entire tournament so far, he’s been a total waste of space. The team fell apart after Wayne Rooney was sent off after some nice instigation from fellow Man Utd team mate Christiano Ronaldo who had no right coming up to the ref to interfere the way he did when his team mate was tackled - he knew
Wayne would lose his temper since he was already frustrated.
We have had years to prepare a team capable of taking the best in the world and yet we can’t even put out a world class performance when it matters. Throughout this entire tournament we’ve relied on nothing but luck and the odd goal here and there. Every time we play a team that has a major bit of skill, England just fail to cope with it and fall flat on their faces. We’ve got the most powerful side I’ve ever seen - on paper, but down on the field that side just fail to gel together and the blame can only be pointed at our shambolic manager in this case - Sven.
Why can’t we have skilled players like every other country out there? Because our British Premiership clubs are too busy focusing on poaching overseas talent instead of looking at home grown talent - there’s a thousand Wayne Rooney’s, A.Lennons and O.Hargreaves out there, its just sad they’ll be overlooked and ignored and until someone realises this, England will never ever have a world cup winning squad.
My man of the match? Owen Hargreaves, he was like a steam engine on an endless powertrip. He won tackle after tackle and never ran out of steam. Top man