At the end of that night at the Castle Pub in Surbiton, the walk home was filled with what ifs complaints that young Beckham had far too much expectation on his tempremental shoulders.
Walking back from the Ship and Anchor in Calgary today, the same stuff was going through my head with Rooney and Ronaldo the new scapegoats. Copy and paste from 8 years ago. It was raining, all the July 1st sun had vanished.
But what can you do? If only scouts had been watching the Surrey Oil League fixtures, and given me a run out in Sapporo or Gelsenkirchen, I doubt I would have got sent off.
The next time we get in this position, the team surely has to have a tougher manager who can get the most out of the undoubtably talented players at his disposal.
Scholes was always out of sorts for England, and the same seems to be happening with Lampard and Gerrard. Maybe their international team mates have been carrying them at club level for some time.
The only time to test out winning formations has been in meaningless friendlies, but a combination of Sven's ludicrous substitutions and player/manager antipathy has driven out any public interest in shelling out to go and get behind England against Belarus or whoever comes to town.
Qualification for major tournaments is generally quite straight forward, and it would take a spectacular balls up to miss out. All teams need to do is win against the part timers, and do enough against the bigger teams. It often only really boils down to one or two truly competetive must win games.
My suggestion for improving the team? Group together with a few other nations, and create a international mini-league. Have a fairly loose structure and time scale behind it, but TV rights for such a tournament could cover insurance costs for players so there wouldn't be such an intense club Vs country rivalry.
posted by Andy Lepki @ 8:46 PM
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