Day 17: FIFAk’s Sake!

Germany 4 – 1 England

Argentina 3 – 1 Mexico

And thus concludes a thoroughly embarrassing day for FIFA and a thoroughly depressing day for me personally. Please bear with me, dear readers, as I am feeling quite sick today, and not only because of the England performance.

Let’s get one thing out of the way straight away: Frank Lampard’s brilliant lob should not have been disallowed. Yes, technology could have corrected the mistake almost immediately. Yes, it was an absolute howler for the officials and a huge egg on FIFA’s face. But let’s not let that overshadow the fact that England were absolutely abysmal apart from the 54-second period between Matthew Upson’s headed goal and “Lampsgate” (copyright: The Sun). I have never been a professional defender but it was really obvious to me that England’s positioning was all wrong, accounting for all the four German goals.

Culprit numero uno was Terry, who was playing like his first name was Hans-Dieter rather than John. He ran around chasing the ball like an exuberant puppy with absolutely no sense of organisation, and Upson followed him like the nerdy kid peering over the popular kid’s shoulder. With Gareth Barry further forward than a holding player should be because of the 4-4-2 formation, Mesut Oezil was constantly given acres of space in which to frolic like, well, an exuberant puppy. The difference is that Oezil is supposed to be that puppy. Terry is not. Elsewhere on the pitch, James Milner seemed to try but made little impact down the right, Jermain Defoe touched the ball little, and Wayne Rooney looked no less burnt out than he has done all tournament. Steven Gerrard showed signs of trying to lift the team single-handedly like he (used to) do for Liverpool, but after a few second-half long shots came to naught he faded as well. The only player to actually have a decent game was David James, despite conceding four. The goals were the fault of defensive mistakes and James prevented a couple of good chances from adding to them.

When trying to determine exactly what went wrong this summer for England, my first thought is to look primarily at the players. Whatever mistakes Fabio Capello has made (I’ll discuss those in a moment), this is a group of players who, by and large, have been part of the England setup over the past six to eight years, through three stewardships of two very different styles. They have consistently been unable to gel into a fluent team and have performed, for many years, several levels short of their club form. This is partly explainable by the fact that at club level they are surrounded by players of different nationalities, who have different mentalities and approaches to the game. However they must take responsibility for poor performances at big tournaments. Looking forward now to the future, England should take a leaf out of the German book and phase through a younger team sooner rather than later, one less burdened by years of failure. Terry in particular is one player who I don’t think should play for England again, but Upson, James, King, Heskey, Wright-Phillips, and maybe even the likes of Gerrard and Ferdinand should all be phased out. Now is the time for Joe Hart, Adam Johnson, Theo Walcott, and Jack Rodwell to be brought in alongside Milner and Rooney.

It’s hard to say whether Capello is the right person to do that or not. I like him, I think he’s the best manager England have had in a long time, and should have the experience and the knowledge to make a new England side work. He has made some serious errors in this tournament, though, of that there can be no doubt. For one thing, this World Cup should be remembered as the one that consigned the traditional 4-4-2 formation to history. Playing 4-4-2 throughout the competition, England were exposed as too flat and predictable. In the modern game at least one holding midfielder playing much deeper than Gareth Barry is required, and most good teams now operate with two deep-lying central players in a 4-2-3-1 that gives greater flexibility. Barry was too far forward to pick up attacking midfielders like Oezil and Messi, and Frank Lampard was too deep to trouble holding players like Schweinsteiger and Gilberto Silva.

Capello’s substitutions were also poor at the World Cup, particularly today. Emile Heskey has his uses but he is clearly not an out-and-out goalscorer. If you have Jermain Defoe on the pitch rather than the bench to come on as a sub to stretch the game, then you can’t replace him with Heskey when you need to score three goals to get back into the game. In the squad, Peter Crouch was a more obvious replacement. In theory, Darren Bent should have been backing up Defoe.

I hope Capello’s forthcoming meeting with the FA to decide his future involves him convincing them that he is willing to adapt his tactics to better suit the challenges of modern international football. If he can’t overcome his stubbornness, then he should be removed from his post. I hope that it doesn’t come to that, but one way or another a change is required. If he does go, then I hope somebody intelligent, thoughtful and tactically modern can be found to replace him, and that the FA avoids the temptation to knee-jerkingly appoint an Englishman on principal, because not many English managers fit that description (I’d probably settle for Woy Hodgson, but I can’t think of anyone else. The worst case scenario would be ‘Arry Bloody Redknapp).

I must of course take a moment to comment on Germany, who thoroughly deserved their win, playing well and doing exactly what was required to exploit England’s weaknesses. Another four goals wouldn’t really have flattered them. Oezil had another excellent game – I really, really like him – and so did Thomas Mueller, who pulled the trigger twice halfway through the second half with two powerful shots, and Lukas Podolski. They did again look vulnerable at the back, just less so than England.

They will be much more tested by Argentina, who weren’t at their best but did do enough to beat Mexico in their second round match. They were sent on their way, though, by an even worse incident than the Lampard disallowed goal. When Lionel Messi, who was a little more subdued this evening, flicked a pass through to Carlos Tevez who scored, Tevez was clearly offside, with not even a single player ahead of him. Disallowing the goal was bad enough but when the man operating the stadium’s big screen oopsied and replayed the decision, clearly showing everyone inside the stadium that the officials had made the wrong call. The Mexicans knew and duly surrounded the referee, the assistant who flagged the offside knew and looked hugely guilty and upset at his mistake, and the referee knew but also knew that by the letter of the law, having already given the goal, he could not reverse the decision. And so everyone played on having discovered, like the TV viewers, that the goal should not have stood within about thirty seconds of its occurence. Sepp Blatter blathers on about technology eliminating the human nature of refereeing mistakes and taking away from the authority of the officials, but when we all know almost instantly that decisions are clearly wrong it degrades the referee’s authority even more severely. The technology exists, it’s quick, and yes, there would be some difficulties in deciding and fine-tuning exactly when and how often the technology could be applied, but it’s a bog that FIFA absolutely needs to weigh into for the good of the game.

There was no doubt about the second goal, though, as Ricardo Osorio made a catastrophically bad error passing the ball straight to Gonzalo Higuain who took full advantage. From then on Mexico did not look like seriously getting back into the game, and Tevez’s second goal in the second half was magnificent, a ferocious shot from the edge of the area. Javier Hernandez pulled one back with a really good goal, completely bypassing Martin Demichelis, who still looks like a major weakness for this Argentina side, and firing home with venom. The Mexicans just didn’t put together a strong enough push to capitalise on that lifeline, though, despite the best efforts of half-time sub Pablo Barrera, who looks a real player, and will be left to wonder what might have been if they’d had a more clinical target man and less of a shafting by Lady Luck.

Germany-Argentina will now be a fascinating quarter-final, which should produce plenty of goals. Both sides are weak in defense but posess two of the tournament’s best performers so far in Oezil and Messi. I wouldn’t want to call it.

Man of the Day: Sepp Blatter. (all right, Mesut Oezil.)

Tomorrow, I can’t imagine lightning striking twice with this Slovakia side and the Netherlands should blow them away with Arjen Robben now fit and looking in dangerous form, but Brazil-Chile could go either way. The suspensions will probably take their toll in the end. Brazil to win.