THE THEORY OF HIRING A NON-ENGLISH COACH...:

No one outside England thinks we’ve got a prayer: Rod Liddle wouldn’t risk more than a tenner on the team getting beyond the group stage in the football World Cup. The truth is, we usually perform more or less exactly as well as might be expected given the size of the country (Rod Liddle, 6/02/10, The Spectator)

Nobody outside of this country thinks that England stands a cat’s chance in hell of winning the association football World Cup, which is due to kick off in South Africa very shortly — if all the teams are not abducted upon arrival and shot. Almost to a man the leading foreign players and pundits predict a final between Brazil and Spain, and on the rare occasions there is a demurral from this assessment it is to mention the name of Argentina, squired by its porky coke-headed maniac of a boss, Diego Maradona, or somewhat less frequently, Holland (who always play lovely football and never win anything). England? Nope, not a chance. This isn’t because they hate us, the foreigners (although they probably do) — it simply hasn’t occurred to them that we might win the thing. They see a team with only one proven international class forward, the perpetually splenetic potato-headed kidult Wayne Rooney, an ageing and fragile back four which recourses habitually to violence when beaten for pace and, behind them, an embryonic catastrophe waiting to happen. It is a very long time since England had a goalkeeper on whom they could depend.

...was supposed to be that he'd strike so much fear into the players over who was going to get starting jobs and make the team that they'd all be driven to excel. But Fabio Capello appears hell-bent on starting the same old dreck. Terry and Ferdinand in central defense with James in goal will be a disaster. Upson/Dawson/Hart would at least give them a chance of not causing their own downfall.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 4, 2010 4:42 PM