After the World Cup I vowed to boycott watching England until I could see some real changes in the way that our national team is run. When I did this I was fairly confident that by being so embarrassingly piss poor in the biggest tournament in World football, the England players and manager might think it was time to pick up the slack and improve themselves. How sad that I am being proven wrong.
Straight after returning so early from South Africa, you might have thought that the players would be so disappointed and solemn faced that they may just want to go home and stay out of the public eye for a bit. Instead, most of them saw it the ideal opportunity to go on a bender of epic proportions in what I can only imagine was an attempt to drown their sorrows. After catastrophically dashing the nations hopes and apparently not being particularly abashed about spending so lavishly on their return party (even in the middle of a recession), Ashley Cole saw it an ideal opportunity to really try and spit in the faces of the English fans. The phrase "I hate England and the people" may have been slightly fabricated by the media, but for me I believe it wasn't too far from the truth. I remember thinking to myself that after seeing such disregard and a complete lack of passion and discipline in the squad, surely Fabio Capello and the hopeless, bumbling idiots that run the F.A would decide that it was time for a shake up?
Fast forward 5 months and I find myself sitting here, more disillusioned with English football than I thought was possible. The epitaph this time being England 1, France 2. The french team was the only bigger joke than us in South Africa; a manager who looks like Sam the eagle from the muppets and picks his team according to the stars(!?!), and a squad that on paper should walk the finals but crashes out in the first round. Clearly though, after such a soul destroying World Cup they have managed to turn themselves round a bit. England on the other hand haven't quite done the same, and I think I saw this one coming. Capello apparently picks his squad on a rating system of first team games played, current form, etc. regardless of who they play for. Sounds brilliant. But when I saw that he had picked the likes of Kieran Gibbs, Jay Bothroyd and Chris Smalling over people like Matty Etherington, Kevin Davies and other possibly more deserving players at the moment, I could immediately see that nothing is changing. Its still the case (with the exception of Jay Bothroyd) that some players are overlooked, seemingly just beacause they play for more glamorous teams like Manchester United. Maybe I'm just being biased and typically derogatory in the way I view the way things are in English football at the moment. But can you really fault me?
Rant over.
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