The best engineers in the world are Germans and like a well-oiled machine, der Deutschland was very clinical in its 4-1 throttling of England Sunday.
Not good enough was the general consensus of the English performance from start to finish in South Africa by most of the experts. My favorite biting comment came from famed Liverpool and former English national team player Steve McManaman, who said his home country's players looked as if they were pulling a horse and buggy with every run they made in the German match.
Die-hard English fans will blame the referee and his linesman for missing Frank Lampard's obvious game-tying goal when his chip clearly came down off the bar and over the yard by about a yard, which brings up the endless cries for FIFA to institute technology. I am one of those people by the way, but that's an argument for another time.
Neutral followers like myself and my partner Rich Slate on www.redwhiteandbluearmy.com as well as most of the ESPN experts and the analysts (Andy Gray, Warren Barton, Christopher Sullivan) on the great Fox Sports World show Ticket to South Africa all agree the better team won and deserved to win.
The question then becomes again, why did England fall short again for the 11th straight World Cup since the country's only triumph in 1966?
Player for player, England have plenty of stars from the English Premier League, guys that do very well not only domestically but also in the big European competitions like the Champions League. Wayne Rooney (Manchester United), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), and John Terry (Chelsea) - all these players are the key kogs on their teams, and each one of these players has either won the Champions League or advanced as far as a semifinal on multiple occasions. And I think the argument that the EPL season is too long has no merit because every other big country in the competition has long domestic seasons that were just as long as England's.
On the sidelines, England also had the highest paid coach in the Italian Fabio Capello ($9 mill) for good reason. He was the best available after the epic Euro 2008 disaster (the team didn't qualify for that tournament), and Capello is also on virtually everyone's shortlist as one of the best managers in the game along with the likes of Jose Mourinho (just won Champions League at Inter Milan, however, moved to Real Madrid afterward), Guus Hiddink (currently in charge of Turkey), Alex Ferguson (Manchester United), and Arsene Wenger (Arsenal).
In my opinion, the answer starts with the revelation about the affair Terry had with former Chelsea and English national teammate Wayne Bridge's former fiancée Vanessa Perroncel back in late January of this year. At the time Terry was England's captain, but rightly so after the details emerged in the British tabloids, Capello stripped Terry of the captaincy.
For years the English Football Association had battled to piece together a group of players that acted as a team, had chemistry, avoided spats in the media and with the media, and put together spirited performances on the field. In qualification Capello seemed to have finally achieved what Doc Rivers and the 2008 Celtics called "Ubuntu" and the results were quite prosperous as the team flourished easily winning its group with nine wins and only one loss.
But when the crap hit the fan and all the juicy details came out, all the good will Capello had mustered up was fractured permanently, and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put England back together again.
I think also there has to be some very big questions asked of the tactics Capello used once the Three Lions began their World Cup run. From formations to players used, Capello seemed to be blinded by his own ego.
Forcing a 4-4-2 formation upon a team whose personnel was calling out for a 4-5-1, the English players never looked comfortable on the attack.
You look at a player like Rooney, who was invisible in this tournament scoring zero goals, and you wonder how that could be when he scored 34 goals for Man U in the EPL 2009-10 campaign? Well at Man U, Rooney played almost exclusively as the team's lone striker where for England he always had a partner restricting some of the space he was usually accustomed of running into.
Then there was the problem of Gerrard and Lampard, both attacking central midfielders, who have never played well together because they are essentially the same player. Supposedly they don't get along well personally either, which should be taken into account. Capello chose to push Gerrard out to the left midfield spot, a spot he loathes, when holding midfielder Gareth Barry was ready to return from an ankle injury. What could have worked a lot better was to allow Gerrard to play the free-roaming spot behind Rooney as the fifth player in the 4-5-1 midfield, and then slot a more natural wing player on the left.
Unfortunately, Capello stuck to his guns and England deservedly went out to a much better organized and prepared German team that should be viewed as a big threat to win this tournament.
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