England vs USA - Live!

Ah, international friendlies. I'm not altogether certain what the point of this evening's match actually is. A week after Manchester United and Chelsea slugged out their Battle Royale in Moscow, England have to drag their sorry backsides out onto the (doubtlessly sodden) pitch at Wembley for a match against the USA. Of course, when the USA have beaten England before, it has been treated as a national disgrace. In 1950, Joe Gaetjens' goal was enough to give the Americans a 1-0 win at Belo Horizonte in the World Cup. Skip forward forty-three years, and the haplessness of Graham Taylor's time in charge was emphasised by a 2-0 defeat in Boston. Other than those two matches, England's record against the Americans is pretty decent. Gary Lineker and Kerry Dixon (!) scored two each in a 5-0 England win in Los Angeles in 1985, and a young Alan Shearer scored both of England's goals in a 2-0 win for them at Wembley in September 1994. The last time that the two sides met was on this day three years ago, when England won 2-1 in Chicago, thanks to two debut goals from Kieran Richardson (!!!). We live, I like to think, in an age in which the USA team is no more taken for granted. We could score cheap laughs at their atrocious past kit decisions, but I don't think that there is much between the two teams tonight. England are ranked 11 in the current FIFA World Rankings (on the generous side, one suspects), while the USA are ranked at twenty-one (a little mean, in my humble opinion). This will be a very stiff test for Fabio Cappello, and I suspect that the added enticement of winning at Wembley might be enough to sneak it for the visitors. Here are the teams - we'll be back shortly for some socccccah.

England: James, Brown, Ferdinand, Terry, Ashley Cole, Beckham, Hargreaves, Lampard, Gerrard, Defoe, Rooney.

USA: Howard, Califf, Cherundolo, Pearce, Bocanegra, Dempsey, Bradley, Clark, Beasley, Johnson, Wolff.

20.00: They're kicking off at five past tonight, to accommodate a BBC1 programme called "Fire Detectives", which was all about the dangers of illegally purchased fireworks, and opened with a car that had seen a Roman candle let of inside it. Made quite a mess, it did. David Beckham is presented with something that is either a very old, leather cap or half a pumpkin (it's difficult to say, since it's in a glass case).

20.05: Dear me. A very half-hearted St George's flag behind the goal. England's supporters seem to be on holiday tonight, even if the players aren't allowed to be. England are in white tonight, and the USA are in navy blue. The referee is wearing a shirt so bright that even Petr Cech would probably baulk at wearing it.

20.08: Kick off is three minutes late. Mark Lawrenson has already managed to fit in a Norman Collier gag, when referring to the Wembley PA system. Down with the kids is our Mark. Anyone under the age of 40 will probably have to Google "Norman Collier".

20.11: Kudos, by the way, to the USA's Landon Donovan, who has become the youngest ever player to reach 100 caps tonight. The USA have friendlies after this against Spain and Argentina - warming up with the easy one, then.

20.15: A shaky start from England. The old schoolmasters' favourite, "Stop bunching!", springs immediately to mind, and they've given away a couple of needless free kicks in the centre of the pitch.

20.20: "He can't cross from there", chortles Lawrenson as Beckham crosses a perfect ball for Gerrard to tap in, but the referee's not happy with the haste with which the free kick was taken. He shoots second time around, but it skids across the face of goal and wide.

20.33: We lost you for a moment, there. Blogger gremlins, I think. England had their best chance in the middle of all that. Beckham dragged a free kick back from the touchline, and Steven Gerrard's shot was blocked by an American defender.

20.36: I think that Frank Lampard may have just had his first touch of the ball.

20.40: England, by the way, have got about 16 players on the bench tonight, so don't be surprised to see a completely different team playing in the second half.

20.42: Good chance for England - Gerrard gets away down the left and crosses in low, but Defoe (under a little pressure) shoots wide when he should really have scored.

20.46: GOAL - England 1-0 USA - Very good free kick from David Beckham, and John Terry heads into the bottom corner from twelve yards out.

20.50: England are starting to get a little bit more space now, and are creating more chances. Defoe looks lively (if unreliable) up front for England, and Rooney (who is supposed, one presumes, to be partnering him) is running all over the place. The USA do look a little stretched now, though. Yellow card for Cherundolo for a foul on Defoe.

Half-Time - England 1-0 USA: Nothing to write home about, but a solid 45 minutes from England, and they more or less deserve the lead. Very difficult to read too much into it, because most of the players look absolutely worn out. The Americans look organised and committed, but limited. Ricardo Clark has been feisty in midfield, but they'll have to do quite a lot more than they are now just to get a shot on target tonight.

Second Half - One change for England - Bentley on for Beckham - presumably for a bit of pace. More or less straight from the kick off, Eddie Johnson shoots just wide for the USA. Two changes for the USA, by the way - Brad Guzan on for Tim Howard in goal, and Frankie Hejduk for Steve Cherundolo.

21.16: Ball through for Defoe, but his shot is straight at Guzan. I just have this sneaking suspicion that John Motson and Mark Lawrenson are going to end the night having a fight or in bed together. You can hear them crackling with sexual tension.

21.18: Defoe wriggles free of his marker and his shot is well saved by Guzan, who has had a bright start. At the other end, Johnson's shot for the USA is deflected well wide.

21.22: Further changes for England - Lampard and Brown off, Gary Barry and Phil Johnson on.

21.24: GOAL - England 2-0 USA: Gary Barry plays Steven Gerrard through with more or less his first pass of the ball, and Gerrard rolls the ball past the goalkeeper. Should really be enough to wrap the game up, given that the American performance has been pretty insipid.

21.32: More changes, perhaps unsurprisingly, for the USA. Freddie Adu (who was going to be the greatest footballer in the history of the game, once - must have taken up smoking or something) is on for the USA, and Peter Crouch, who I doubt that anyone has ever thought was going to be the greatest anything in the world (with the possibility of a clothes line) is on for England.

21.35: The match is almost down to a walking pace now, but England are still managing to create a few half chances. The crowd at Wembley tonight is 71,273, which is pretty impressive, considering everything.

21.40: Christ. The crowd are doing a Mexican wave. Fifteen minutes still to play, by the way. Ah, well - at least England won't be stinking out the European Championships. Yellow card for Rooney. He might be trying to get himself sent off in order to avoid the trip to Trinidad & Tobago.

21.46: Half a chance for the USA. A cross from Lewis on the right is pawed away by David James. The first things that he has really had to do all night.

21.51: The BBC just showed a shot of George Cohen (from the 1966 World Cup winning team), and he looks exactly like Nat Lofthouse did just before he died. Mark Lawrenson made a comment that may or may not have been loaded with anti-semitism about Cohen being a very generous host in his executive box at Craven Cottage. The ground's almost empty, by the way. Man, I hate it when people leave before the full time whistle.

21.55: Much Adu about something. Freddie shoots from the edge of the penalty area, and James has to stretch to save.

22.00: Full Time - The match peters out to a dribble, and it winds up 2-0 to England. I'm really surprised at the USA. I know that it's the end of the season, but I would have anticipated a little more fight from them. We didn't really learn much about England or, I suspect, the USA this evening. Time enough, for a little break to recharge the batteries before the start of the forthcoming European Championships.

France 1-0 England (And Other Trivialities)

So, another Wednesday and another week of international friendlies. I'm always somewhat confused over whether we're supposed to care or not, and you had to at least be somewhat impressed by the marketing skills of the French Football Federation, who somehow managed to convince 80,000 Parisians that France vs England was some sort of major sporting event. Perhaps it said that it was a rugby match on the tickets. Or a recreation of The Battle Of Waterloo in which Napoleon won. I don't mind the rounds of friendly matches too much, though there is a case for stating that FIFA doesn't help itself with some of its scheduling. We're a week or two away from the quarter finals of the European Cup and four to six weeks from the end of the club season. Could there be a more pointless time to schedule matches? If FIFA and the Big Clubs are facing up for some inevitable showdown, the battle for hearts and minds will be all-important, and FIFA should stop playing into the hands of the Big Clubs by putting on rosters of matches at ludicrous times of the year such as now. Still, the England players did their bit for that debate last night, by putting in a performance so dreadful that even I was wistfully recalling the last round of the European Cup. It's almost as if some of them don't want to play for England.


Last night was, in truth, a match between two mediocre teams that France just about shaded. The French don't seem to have improved much since losing to Scotland in Paris last summer, and David Trezeguet's impression of an Easter Island statue was indicative of the fact that they still look relatively disjointed without Thierry Henry in the team. The England performance, however, was so woeful that this wasn't even a major concern for them. On the one occasion that they did manage to break through (thanks in no small part to flat-footed defending from John Terry), David James put in an act that raised yet again the question of how England are ever going to be able to do anything without a world class goalkeeper. He seemed transfixed by the ball, having made a decision to try and will the ball to pick up pace off the turf and roll into his arms. Nicolas Anelka was too quick for him, and there can be little argument that James would, in a competitive match, have been sent off. I like David James as a person (his weekly articles for The Guardian are a joy to read), but he retains an infuriating capacity to make terrilble errors of judgement. Robert Green must have performed a little jig.

Ceci N'est Pas Un Maillot Français

I woke up this morning and day had indeed turned into night. One of the small constants of the football world is that Adidas make the French national kit. Ever was it thus, and ever should it be. Indeed, such had the ties between the FFF (the French Football Association) and the German kit manufacturers that France have been wearing Adidas shirts since 1970. It was, I thought, set in stone. Well, it was until now. From 2011, France will wear shirts made by Nike, having signed a deal that will last for a minimum of seven years. The deal, perhaps unsurprisingly, involves the sort of figures that give me a nosebleed. It will be worth more than £240m over seven years - one of the biggest kit deals of all time - and this amount is more than four times the amount that the FFF currently receives. Following on from it's purchase of Umbro, it reinforces Nike's position as arguably the biggest players in a market that is continuing to expand in a year on year basis.

It is a decision that clearly makes business sense for the FFF, but my heart says that, somehow, the French national team won't be the French national team any more without the three stripes on the arms of the shirts with the tricolore cleverly worked into them. There is a case, however, for saying that Adidas have had this coming. In 1978, 1982 and 1984 they made three of the definitive international football shirts, but since then (the 1998 World Cup aside) they have been on a steady downward trajectory. All of this culminated (and there is a part of me that would like to think that it was this rather than the massive amounts of money being discussed that was the deciding factor) in this absolute travesty of a change shirt for Euro 2008. France reportedly wore red as a change shirt in 1906, so there's no great historical reason for this choice, and Adidas' relative silence on the subject is at odds with their usual rush to cite anything historical in the release of any new product, so it's probably pretty safe to assume that this design was based on some sort of focus group telling Adidas that "red will play well in the ABC1 demographic", or some such nonsense.

The fact of the matter is, though (and I like this no more than you like reading it), that Nike are making better kits than Adidas at the moment, and they have been for a few years. Consider, if you will, these two efforts. The US shirt is a simple, elegant design, which nods with deference to the history of the game in America, whilst that OM shirt looks, quite literally, as if it has been designed by a drunk - slurred, asymmetrical lines, disgraceful colours which break all of the rules on what combinations of colours should be seen together (and I'd go a step further and say that this particular shade or orange shouldn't even be seen on its own), and some sort of pattern woven into the fabric to give it the texture of a pair of curtains in an Indian restaurant from 1974. Adidas' most infuriating habit is their laziness. To this day, they have a tendency to design a template and re-jig the colours for all of their clients, no matter how big they are. Nike used to do this too, but one suspects that they have woken up to the fact that people are less likely to buy replica shirts if they suspect that they've been knocked up in five minutes. Nike have got to grips with referencing the history of the organisations that they're working with (Fulham, who went from consistently having the worst shirts in the Premier League to having amongst the best when they switched to Nike, have a kit that is based loosely on the design of their shirt from their 1974/75 season design, when they last reached the FA Cup Final).

A question that Adidas designers must often ask themselves is this: how difficult is it to get the three stripes design wrong? The answer to that question would appear to not be the one that they are looking for. Adidas have consistently got the shirt design wrong for a good number of clubs and countries, and they will continue to lose out on contracts of the size of the France one unless they stop designing football shirts with one eye seemingly on keeping costs down and one eye on teenagers will wear. The three stripes have been overtaken as the symbol of Adidas by the slurred line, severance with history and an almost sociopathic desire to ruin perfectly good designs with unnecessary baubles and trinkets.

Euro 2008 Starts Here!

Is it too early to start getting excited about Euro 2008 yet? I'm going to pre-emptively say "no" to that and kick off (what will initially be sporadic) coverage of this summer's jamboree in Austria & Switzerland. We'll be going through everything that you need to know about this tournament on here over the next four months or so, and I will even be keeping my mentions of England not being there down to an absolute minimum. After all, who cares about England, anyway? Anyway, I thought I'd kick off in a strangely appropriate way by being simultaneously four months early and two months late with a quick look at the ball that they will be using this summer.

Launched on December the third, the Adidas Europass (or, as the press release that accompanied it would have it, "The Adidas "EUROPASS" - the match ball with goose-bumps for UEFA Euro 2008") is, if nothing else, a departure from the standard conventions of the match ball, even if its look throws a deliberate nod back to a more innocent age. Adidas, predictably, are bullish about its look:

"Its classic colouring a white base colour with black dots – calls to mind the balls of bygone decades"

There is an element of truth in this - most notably the Telstar, which was the ball used at the 1970 World Cup (although what the link is between Euro 2008 and the 1970 World Cup is remains a mystery - I rather suspect that there isn't one). Adidas, thankfully, scaled down the original tournament logo from the over-bearingly large one on this prototype, and the result is actually a fairly elegant looking design. The black dots (which were first introduced in the 1960s to make balls more visible on black and white television sets, fact fans) contain the following:

"Individual graphic elements developed by UEFA to accompany the EURO logo. These elements stand for passion, friendship, action, training, fans and the winning goal"

I suspect that the ninety-nine percent of us who don't end up peering at a Europass through a jeweller's eye-piece are unlikely to notice this. I have to say (and, yes, it does surprise me - regular readers will be more than aware that I have a tendency to fear change in this respect) that I do quite like the look of this ball. After "champagne" coloured footballs and the lacklustre looking "Teamgeist" (which blighted the last World Cup with its mediocre appearance), it's pleasing to see that Adidas have designed something that is, at least from a distance, relatively understated looking and pleasing on the eye.

The "goose-bumps" that Adidas refer to are arguably more contentious. They are small dimples covering its surface, which Adidas claim will allow for "Exceptional ball control... and for the goalkeeper too, a much better grip between glove and ball, substantially improving his catching of the ball". These dimples leave it looking a little bit that readers in their thirties might remember their schools having in vast quantities for PE lessons. I can certainly see their value for goalkeepers - it will be, for them, a little like playing with a ball which is constructed if the same material for their gloves. The press release does, however, make worrying mention of "increased swerve", so whether the goalkeepers will actually be able to get any contact on the ball in the first place is open to some degree of scepticism. Still, that's a consideration for the players. It's not champagne coloured or bright orange and (as far as I'm aware) it won't be fitted with a chip that plays an MP3 of someone shouting "IT'S BLATTER TIME!" every time someone scores, so I'm happy enough with it.

Football Shorts 3

After all the excitement of the weekend, it's nice to have a sit down, relax and take in a little of what has been happening in that parallel universe that we call Footie World (Actually, I don't call it "footie", but if it's a parallel universe, then it has to have a different name, doesn't it? I should probably stop reading those booklets about philosophy that they've been giving away with The Independent for the last few days). Anyway, here are a few bits and pieces for you to chew over while you're supping your coffee tomorrow morning.

Keeping The Home Fires Burning Some of you may remember that, when the plan was put forward by Wimbledon's owners, a few years ago, to move the club to Dublin, the plan was quashed by the Football Association of Ireland, who banned it because of the potential damage that Premier League football in Ireland would have done to its already fragile domestic league. Skip back to the present day, and very similar problems could be facing the (surely, surely doomed) plans of the Premier League to play matches abroad. Their plans for global football colonisation are already running into problems, with the USSF and the AFC already stating in no uncertain terms that they are very unhappy at the proposals. Ultimately, any challenges to this would probably have to go through FIFA, but it is difficult to imagine circumstances under which they would be happy to let this go unchallenged. Whether the Premier League could press on with Asia and the USA knocked out of their global market is very much open to question. I get the feeling that this story will run and run.

3-0, And You F**cked It Up More pleasing news from League Two this evening, where Franchise's slow disintegration at the top of the table is continuing apace. Amid continuing rumours about where Paul Ince is going to decamp to (I heard Sheffield United mentioned today and they haven't even offloaded Bryan Robson yet), their league form has utterly collapsed. They were at Shrewsbury Town tonight, and raced into a 3-0 lead before being pegged back to a 3-3 draw. This result means that, should Rotherham, Darlington and Peterborough all win their games in hand, they'd be out of the automatic promotion places altogether. As it is, they've won just one of their last seven league matches. Meanwhile, in the Championship, West Bromwich Albion's lacklustre 0-0 draw with Sheffield United at The Hawthorns tonight meant that Bristol City, who won 1-0 at Scunthorpe United, jump into the automatic second promotion place, with Watford pulling clear at the top of the table after a home win against Leicester City. I'm all in favour of the Championship being an open league in which anyone can beat anyone else, but there's a decent chance that, should they go up, Bristol City would be even worse than Derby County have been this year, isn't there? I still want to see them do it, though.

South American Beauty The Copa Libertadores, South America's sprawling equivalent to the Champions League starts in the early hours of tomorrow morning, and it's pretty much required viewing for anyone tired of the predictability and staleness of UEFA's most sought-after trinket. I'll be doing my best to keep you up to speed with it all (though I know that no-one will thank me if I ease up on the Sussex County League coverage in favour of it), but I'm not going to make any promises, and would advise you to head over to Hasta El Gol Siempre for full updates, starting with this outstanding preview and brief history of the competition. For those of you in Blighty with the appropriate digital bits and pieces, you may be interested to know that there will be liver coverage and highlights on Setanta Sports 2. For those of you without, the seamier side of internet streaming technology may turn out to be your friend.

And Finally... Keep an eye on the links on the right hand side of this page, because there are new ones being added on a daily basis at the moment. Football & Music is almost worryingly interested in football music (and football and music, and... well, you know) and is well worth getting lost in for a couple of hours (I emerged, disorientated, the owner of two new Chas & Dave songs), whilst Treasons, Stratagems & Spoils is clearly written by someone far cleverer than I. I will raise my own personal intellectual bar soon, I promise.

England vs Switzerland

Well, Heidi hi everyone! If you think that's a bad opening, well, things are going to get much worse for all of you before they get any better. I've spent much of the afternoon mentally composing tabloid headlines for tomorrow's papers. On the positive side, there's "Swiss Rolled" and "Berne Baby Berne", whilst on the negative side, I managed "Gouda God" (Gouda's a Swiss cheese, isn't it?), "Cuckoo Crocks" and "Joe Cole Whipped By Young Boys". Anyway, it's Fabio Cappello's first match in charge of England tonight, and he's ringing the changes already. The England team lines up as follows: James, Brown, Ferdinand, Upson, A.Cole, Bentley, Jenas, Gerrard, Barry, J.Cole, Rooney. Gerrard is the captain, Jenas starts on the Voodoo Left-hand Side and David Bentley, apparently, is the new David Beckham. The Swiss line up as follows: Benaglio, Lichtsteiner, Senderos, Eggiman, Spycher, Inler, Gelson, Barnetta, Yakin, Gygax, Nkufo.

I have to say, before I depart briefly, that I have been nothing but impressed by Cappello so far. There are plenty of things within the England set up that he can do nothing whatsoever about - the poor training that young players receive, the lack of investment that big clubs put into youth development and so on, but his attitude over the last couple of days - banning the majority of the circus that follows the team about, impressing upon everybody straight away that things will be done his way and that if you don't like it, you can lump it. There even seems to be what could almost pass for a degree of humble pie amongst the depressingly familiar line-up of Ian Wright, Alan "Newcastle United's Next Manager" Shearer and Alan Hansen in the "Match Of The Day" studio. Cappello seems to have a presence that seems to unnerve the assorted pundits, and his hand is strengthened all the more for this. He's somewhat fortunate in that he's kicking off his time in charge against a very mediocre Switzerland side (who are probably second only to their co-hosts Austria as "The Worst European Hosts Ever Of A Major Tournament"), but it does make for an interesting evening. I'll be back, of course, in time for kick-off.

8.00: Off we go, then. England in their new, 1982-esque red strip, and Switzerland in white. The Swiss national anthem sounds a bit like the backing music to an insurance advert, but it's still five times better than "God Save The Queen". The minute's silence lasted about 30 seconds, by the way. Everyone at Wembley should feel very proud. Also, Wembley seems to have a new pitch, presumably in advance of the rush of cup finals and play-off matches that are due to be played upon it.

8.08: Not much to report - two potentially uncomfortable touches for the 57 year-old David James, and approximately eighteen of the players on the pitch within a couple of yards of the centre circle. England look sloppy and nervous - Gerrard is caught on the edge of his own penalty area and James saves comfortably. Cappello has a "Christ, what have I let myself in for here?", look on his face.

8.12: First chance for England. Cole puts Rooney in from the Swiss goalkeeper blocks his shot. He should, probably, have scored, the big pudding. The band (a long-time bane of my life, as some of you will know) strikes up "The Self-Preservation Society", from "The Italian Job". Is this sophisticated irony or are they taking the piss out of Cappello?

8.17: The Ghost Of David Beckham looms large over Wembley tonight. John Motson has already mentioned him about fifteen times, as if no-one has told him that he's not even playing.

8.21: Rooney hits the side netting for England. If you're watching this on digital TV in the UK, by the way, you can, via the "red button", access live coverage of Northern Ireland vs Bulgaria. Wes Brown gives the ball away (presumably for comic effect), but Barnetta pulls his shot wide.

8.25: Now, I'm no great tactician, but... Rooney looks horribly isolated up front and they are giving away possession far too easily. Also, the defence looks very leaden-footed - the Swiss look much more dangerous than England do going forward.

8.30: Best chance of the match so far from Switzerland. Senderos flicks the ball on but it passes wide of the post from Eggiman's glanced header. A minute or so later, Barnetta wastes a free-kick by blasting it over. They're growing in confidence, and look not far short of as much better than England than Croatia did at the end of last year.

8.35: The crowd is grunting, "There's only one David Beckham", a couple of moments after David Bentley sends over a disappointing free-kick. They should shut the hell up. Morons.

8.39: Oh irony of ironies. The crowd have started booing, and Joe Cole forces a good save from the Swiss goalkeeper - their second half-way serious chance of the match. Seconds later, a massive stroke of luck allows Gerrard to put Joe Cole through, but his shot is blocked.

8.41: GOAL - England 1-0 Switzerland: Gerrard plays Joe Cole through on the left hand side. Cole puts the moves on the Swiss defence and drags the ball to turn the ball in from six yards. They have been playing a lot better in the last five minutes or so - as if they're finally starting to settle into the pattern that they're being asked to play in.

8.47: Half-Time - England 1-0 Switzerland: Cappello doesn't look happy, and it's understandable. The faults with their first half performance have been almost completely down to two things. 1. Individual errors - at lot of the time, they're just passing the ball straight to the Swiss players. 2. They don't seem to know where each other are half of the time. I would qualify this all by saying that they did look much better in the last five or ten minutes of the half or so. Back in fifteen minutes.

9.04: Three changes for the Swiss at half-time, and none for England.

9.06: Tremendous ball into the penalty area from Bentley (who's starting to find his range), but Rooney mis-controls and the ball dribbles just wide.

9.10: Another lovely pass from Bentley puts Rooney through running away from goal. He chips the goalkeeper but the ball lands on the roof of the net. Seconds later, he has a shot deflected wide.

9.12: Jenas shoots from the edge of the penalty area and forces an excellent save from the Swiss goalkeeper Benalia. Calm down, ladies: Peter "The Broken Weather Vane" Crouch is preparing to come on for England.

9.15: Joe Cole and Jermaine Jenas off, and Crouch and Wright-Phillips on.

9.16: GOAL - England 1-1 Switzerland: England are carved open down the middle, and Derdiyok shoots across David James and into the bottom corner. England now have Crouch on his own up front, and Rooney on the left. Crazy times. The goal actually came against the run of play - England had started the second half pretty well.

9.20: GOAL - England 2-1 Switzerland: See? I told you - crazy times. Gerrard gets away down the left hand side and crosses for Shaun wright-Phillips to score from point blank range. In the four minutes between the goals, the England crowd had started to boo the players again.

9.22: This has opened up into quite an entertaining game, now. Rooney picks up the ball about 25 yards out, performs a nice little trick to turn himself towards goal, and shoots a foot or so wide.

9.26: Another terrific pass from Bentley finds Crouch, whose volley brings a good save from Benaglio. This has been a considerably better second half performance from England, and I'm guessing that Cappello may have had one or two home truths for the players at half-time.

9.31: Two more changes for England. Wayne Bridge and Owen Hargreaves on, Gareth Barry and Ashley Cole off. More booing from sections of the crowd, for reasons that I can't quite make out. Motson is back off on one about Beckham. I think he might, you know, fancy him.

9.36: This is much more like it. I don't know whether the Swiss couldn't give a toss or what, but England are playing some very attractive passing football, and are probably worth a goal. The lustre is only being taken off it comes from the witless braying of the home crowd, who - and let me remind you, this is in a home friendly against Switzerland - are cheering every touch.

9.41: Motson's reminder is a timely one: England's next match is away to France. That'll sort the men from the boys.

9.45: More substitutes! Rooney off for Ashley Young. Motson has got Rooney picked out as his man of the match. I'd be tempted to go for Gerrard, myself. This evening's crowd is just shy of 87,000. Not bad, it has to be said, for a friendly.

9.50: GEEKS! That's what Mark Lawrenson (who writes a weekly page for the BBC Football website and is therefore just as much of a geek as me) thinks of you if you voted online for Steven Gerrard as Man Of The Match.

FULL TIME: England 2-1 Switzerland - A decent performance, particularly in the second half, when they played better football than anything that they managed over the last 18 months. David Bentley, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney played well, and what really stood out was that the players seemed to be wanting to do it for him. With ten minutes to play and the score at 2-1, Wayne Rooney was still tearing around as if it was the last minute of the World Cup final and they were a goal down. They looked as if they wanted it for the first time in quite a long time. Room, I think, for cautious optimism.

And, hey... don't forget this and this!

Football Shorts

Over the course of the normal working day, many things flash through my head which I either don't have the time to write up in full or aren't quite fleshy enough to warrant a full article on here. Here are some of the things that have been playing on my mind over the last week or so.

Wasn't January Great? I can't remember another month which has provided so much entertainment. We've seen the crisis at Anfield (which has opened up the Premier League in a way that no-one would have anticipated at the start of the season), the ongoing circus at Newcastle United, two marvellous rounds of the FA Cup, Leeds United losing Dennis Wise and slumping in the league, Franchise letting the chasing pack catch them up in League Two and the outstanding group stages of the African Cup Of Nations. If 2008 carries on at this rate, it's going to be a great year. It won't, though, will it?

Steamy Windows The press are the only people that get massively excited about the January transfer window, aren't they? There's always a frantic rush of excitement on the back pages towards the end of December with feverish speculation over who is going to be going where, and it always turns out to be a bit of a let down. Jermaine Defoe to Portsmouth, Nicolas Anelka to Chelsea and Jonathan Woodgate to Spurs have been the big moves over the last month or so, and Defoe's move was only really exciting because it happened at the very, very last minute. I've got a mental image of it taking place on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, rather like spies being exchanged in a cold war thriller, for some reason. Except, um, there's only one "spy".

Fabio Luvs David It is a clear sign that the world has gone mad, when acres and acres of press coverage are given over to the England squad selection for a friendly match against Switzerland, but I'll allow some slack to be cut on it because it does at least allow us a window into the world of the curious relationship between Fabio Cappello and David Beckham. Cappello was, of course, Beckham's bete noire at Real Madrid, dropping him from the first team and then offloading him to LA Galaxy. Now, with Beckham on 99 England caps and desperate to win his 100th, Cappello has left him out of the squad for the Switzerland match. It is easy to come to the conclusion that Fabio just doesn't like David that much, but I don't think that this is necessarily true. Cappello is a ruthless pragmatist, and I am inclined towards thinking that this was partly a pure football decision (Beckham has barely kicked a competitive ball in the last three months) and partly Cappello imposing his will on the no squad ("bollocks to this so-called 'golden generation' and their entourage, if you play for Fabio, you play on merit and nothing else"). Also, Cappello has sought to assure Beckham that the door isn't entirely closed, which strikes me as being merely good management. Personally, I think he should put Beckham on the bench, bring him on with two minutes to play, and then substitute him again thirty seconds later. Beckham would get his cap, Fabio would send out a clear message, and it would kind of sum up Beckham's international career into the bargain.

Oh Bugger I was momentarily feverishly excited at the news that AFC Wimbledon had drawn Torquay United in the Third Round of the FA Trophy, until I remembered that I'd already agreed to go to Preston to see friends this weekend and that even if I rescheduled this, I'd be helping some friends move house in Brighton this Saturday afternoon. Sometimes the football gods conspire against you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Should anybody be interested in watching it, I'll be doing a topless raindance on the balcony of my flat at 9.00 tomorrow morning in the interests of getting it postponed and rescheduled to Tuesday night, when I would be able to go. Just kidding. Good luck on Saturday, Wombles.

Five Quick New Year Wishes

Obviously, in an ideal world I'd say "knickers" to football and go for the alpaca (see left), but this isn't really an option and, besides, this place remains a football blog rather than an alpaca blog (although I'm open to suggestion on this subject as well). Anyway, I'm still a little feverish, so here are a handful of hopes for 2008.

1. That the BBC and ITV take the European Championships as seriously as they should do, even though England aren't there. The big television companies should welcome the opportunity to get away from the jingoistic nonsense that has blighted every major international football tournament since at least 1996. They should grasp the nettle and do something that journalists should pride themselves in doing - telling you things that you didn't already know. Obviously it will be much easier for them to go on and on about how many of the players of view are from the the Premier League and "how much poorer" the competition will be for England not being there, but hope springs eternal.

2. Somebody, please, other than Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool to win a domestic trophy. I am fully resigned to the fact that it is now asking too much for anyone other than the aforementioned foursome to win the Premier League or, indeed, take the top four places in the Premier League table, but I don't think that it's asking too much for somebody else to win the FA Cup or the League Cup. West Ham United bottled it in the FA Cup two years ago, and the jury is still out on whether Spurs are good enough to beat Arsenal's academy team (this is how far we've come).

3. Milan to get knocked out of the Champions League at the earliest opportunity. Everybody knows that Maldini is too old, that Ronaldo is too fat and that there are too many anonymous players in the current Milan team. It's a damning indictment on the current age that a team so average, below half-way in Serie A, have become a trophy winning machine, with just enough genuinely great players (such as Kaka - and even he manages to annoy with me with his seemingly constant exhortations to Jesus) to be able to keep grinding out the major trophies. Over the last two or three years I have come to the opinion that European football ain't all it's cracked up to be, and Milan are living proof of that. If we can get rid of them early on, it will be a sign that there's life in the cadaver yet.

4. Leave Fabio Capello to get on with the job of managing the England football team. Look, I remain steadfast in my belief that the England football team is in a slow, terminal decline but, in taking on Fabio Capello, the FA have at least given themselves a degree of a chance of winning a major trophy. They have got a coach that is of the calibre of the coaches that appear on peoples wish lists - the likes of Mourinho or Wenger. So, this message is for the English press (and I know that it will be ignored), leave him alone, and let him get on with his job.

5. I know that this might be pushing the boat out a little too far, but can we get rid of the two-footed studs up tackles that seem to be happening in every single match at the moment. Look, I know that at the current rate football will have completely converted into competitive pinball by approximately the year 2020, but can professional players stop trying to commit ABH on each other, please? Oh, and while I'm about it, a rule which says that only the captain can speak to the referee or anyone on the opposition team would be nice, as well.

There May Not Be Trouble Ahead

Oh, to be fly on the wall when Fabio Capello meets the England squad for the first time, if only to see the look on Michael Owen's face. This is, at least, a man that has been there, seen it, done it and almost certainly won it and, in that respect if nothing else, it throws into sharp focus what an amazingly bad appointment Steve McClaren was. It's worth remembering that the people that appointed him are still there, grafting away in the background. Did it really take getting knocked out of the European Championships at the qualifying stages to beat some sense into these people?

First, then, the criticism. Capello may well be no fan of the ego of the modern player, so will this cause major problems in the England dressing room? There's a good chance that it will. However, if he's on a reported £4m a year, he can at least look the players square in the eye and say "I am at least as good at my job as you are at yours", and if David Beckham was hounded out of Madrid by a Real president hell bent on providing a scapegoat for their lack of success over the last couple of years, Capello was the man big enough to realise the mistake and bring him back for one last Indian summer.

You could also make a cogent argument for saying that Capello's greatest triumph of all, the extraordinary Milan side that made Barcelona look like a Sunday League team in the 1994 European Cup final, was a long time ago, and that his record in Europe since then has been mixed. However you have to counter that argument by saying, well, what a team that Milan team was, and it was a team that was at least packed with as much ego as the current England team is.

On the plus side, he is utterly ruthless. There is no question that he will not be interested in the press prying into his private life, and media attacks on him will be like water off a duck's back. It certainly seems to me that England need a coach with a sense of detachment from the position, who isn't going to bow to public or media pressure. Could you, for a single second, imagine Capello having put Scott Carson in goal for the Croatia match? Also, there is the fear factor. Whereas McClaren, somewhat pathetically, always seemed to want the players to be his friends (you don't need me to tell you how, well, weird it looked when he was caught in post-match interviews referring to Steven Gerrard as "Stevie G"), Capello is almost pathological in his desire to bring results and silverware. This is a man that has squared up to Paolo Di Canio. He is utterly fearless, yet never gets blinded by anger.

He's got a year off first, of course. A chance to run his finger over the slim pickings at his disposal and impose his will on a crest-fallen squad. At least you know that, with Capello, it's going to be interesting, and we will know for certain in two years time whether the problems within the current England set up were relating to the coaching staff all along, or whether there are more serious and long-term problems within English football that need to be invested in.

The Long & Winding Road

I'm having a rare night off tonight, to refresh my frazzled batteries. So, I'm giving this place over the good people at Sportsfreak for their analysis of the current travails of the New Zealand football team. They could be set to make the World Cup Finals for the first time in nearly three decades.

On the other side of the world from Europe, twelve hours before a night of European Championship qualification (or otherwise), New Zealand virtually guaranteed themselves passage through to the next round of qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup by knocking off fellow regional heavyweights Vanuatu. That’s right - the much maligned Oceania confederation is a good two years ahead of the rest of the world.

Oceania has always been the ugly kid sister of the FIFA family. So much so that our dear friends over the other side of the Tasman Sea decided that it was way too lowly for them, and felt the Sheilaroos were best served by taking their toys and playing with their new friends in Asia. So now the ugly kid sister is even smaller. But it has always been a difficult group from which to qualify, largely because there is no continuity of matches of a similar standard.

New Zealand have only qualified for the World Cup once before (in 1982), and in doing so set the world record for most matches played to get there. Following topping the Oceania qualifying series, thanks mainly to an upset victory in Sydney, the All Whites were then pooled with the leading Asian teams with the top two qualifying. A year later we were still neck and neck with China for that second spot, so a one-off showdown in Singapore was arranged, and New Zealand made it. Since then, the route from Oceania was made shorter but harder. Following the Oceania qualification round, now split into between two and four divisions and always won by Australia, came a home and away tie against the "Best of the Rest" from whichever confederation got allocated an extra half a place at the top table during the latest round of horse-trading.

This fixture, however, was usually a year or so after Australia’s progression. So while we took delight at seeing them get drawn against Argentina or, even more hilariously, watching Venables’ much vaunted side throw away a two goal advantage at home against Iran in the last fifteen minutes, there was a feeling of injustice in this. They were always drawn against a side that had been through many more competitive matches, and had not had the long stand down. Even though the sequence was finally broken in 2005 due to a penalty shoot-out victory over Uruguay, it was obvious that the Australian decision to join Asia, while geographical nonsense, was a sound footballing move.

Well, New Zealand finds themselves on the brink of something similar. So what does the average All Whites fan get to chew over now? This week’s stroll over Vanuatu (I can hear you all running off to Google Earth now), a postponed “home” game against Fiji in Newcastle (Australia, not Tyneside) in January and a final home and away match against the French colony of New Caledonia in… 11 months time. Still, one shouldn't grumble; the best chance in 28 years for World Cup glory awaits against the 5th placed Asian team. Sadly, it will come a year or so after that last competitive run-out in Noumea (reach for Google maps again). It’s a shame really. Soccer (yes, that what it’s still called here) has never been in better shape. Thanks to its McDonalds’ sponsorship and an increasing physical (read Polynesian) aspect to rugby, it is now the most played sport amongst those under 17. Finally, due to the largely off-field success of The Phoenix, there is now at last a regular professional team to follow, accompanied by TV coverage.

Adding to that, this is a time when other major team sports in New Zealand are at a low ebb. The hallowed All Blacks early exit to a woeful French team at the World Cup will take years to recover from. In addition, the cricket team has just been humiliated in South Africa, the rugby league team have just lost a series 0-3 to Great Britain, and the netball team have lost their world crown. However, by the time that the Asian game comes along the juggernaut will inevitably lost some of its momentum.

No doubt there will be some friendlies in Europe during this 30 month period, especially as a lead-up to Euro 2008. In the past we have also managed to snatch the odd game against sides from the Championship. But whether the likes of Nelson, Killen and Elliot are available for these is another moot point. History would indicate otherwise, so when the big names next don the famous white jersey it will for the biggest game in 28 years.. Hardly the best way of building team-work or combinations. What odds that this tie will be against Australia?

The Runners And Riders

Finally, I've managed to find a spare hour to write this. First and foremost, I should mention that, in my humble opinion, none of those listed below are capable of winning the World Cup on their own, and nor do I think that their appointments will count for anything unless there is a top to bottom shake down in English football, starting with replacing the FA (all of them - every single one of them) with someone that is at least accountable, right down to changing the culture of the game to try persuade more young players to go abroad and get experience if they can't get a first team place in this country. There is no reason whatsoever why the Richest Football League In The World can't do this.

Someone should probably remind the clubs of the Premier League that it was England's performance in the 1990 World Cup which kick-started the resurgence of interest in the game that they are still feeling the benefits of now. Club football, by its very nature, cannot offer the shared experience of international football (no matter how much three of four clubs try to dominate it) - 11m people watched England-Croatia last Wednesday, a figure that compares favourably with the Champions League Final, which is, of course, the biggest match that club football can offer. Don't think that advertisers don't notice this sort of thing, and don't be surprised if TV audiences for club matches for the rest of this season tail off. So, once British youth have got off their fat backsides and started actually playing the game again, they're being properly coached and are choosing to go abroad to play rather than warm a substitutes bench in the Premier League and the entire FA Council has been replaced by a new body that is actually accountable to someone, who might have a chance of getting England back to losing in the quarter-finals of major tournaments?

Jose Mourinho: Pros - Very successful at club level (Really, back-to-back championships with Chelsea? A Champions League for Porto? You have to stop and consider what massive achievements they were). Has the ego for the job. The look on John Terry's face when he turns up for his first training session. Cons - He's lived in England and must surely know what a terrible job it would be, so I can't believe that he would want it. England might start playing like Chelsea.

Martin O'Neill: Pros - Has left every club that he has managed (Wycombe Wanderers, Leicester City, Celtic & Aston Villa) in a better condition than it was in when he took the job. Will give good value for money in media interviews. Cons - Jumps up and down a bit too much for my liking. Hasn't actually won much of note. May already have ruled himself out of the job.

Luiz Felipe Scolari: Pros - Has knocked England out of a major tournament three times. Gave his Brazil players at the 2002 World Cup a copy each of "The Art Of War". Basically told the Portuguese FA to shut up and let him get on with managing the team. Cons - Hit a Serbian player during a Euro 2008 qualifier. Why on earth would he leave Portugal (better team, better weather) to manage England? Definitely wouldn't want the press intrusion.

Marcello Lippi: Pros - Has won the World Cup when no-one expected him to do so. Has actually won more or less everything that you can win in Italian football. Cons - He's in semi-retirement - would he seriously want the job? Leans towards being a motivator rather than a tactician, which is not necessarily what England need at the moment.

Fabio Capello: Pros - Has won the Italian championship at every club that he has managed. Beat Barcelona to La Liga championship last season. Apparently interested in the job. Cons - Has a tendency to get in rows with senior players (Totti, Del Piero, Beckham, Ronaldo, etc).

Jurgen Klinsmann: Pros - Did exceptionally well to get Germany to the semi-finals of the World Cup last year. Speaks excellent English. Always comes across as being an intelligent and thoughtful individual. Cons - If things don't go perfectly, the press will be straight on his back for being German. Unlikely to move from America to live in this country. Managing Germany at a World Cup on home soil is one thing, getting a moderate England team to the World Cup finals is another altogether.

Harry Redknapp: Pros - Has done exceptionally well over the last couple of years at Portsmouth. Looks like a bassett hound, which will be handy for photoshopping tabloid editors if (or when) things start going wrong. Cons - Is doing reasonably well now, but has managed for a very long time with limited success. Faint whiff of untrustworthiness about him. May hire his son as a coach.

Steve Coppell: Pros - Probably the best English candidate. Cons - Probably the best English candidate, and that's about it. His record doesn't stand up to scrutiny compared to those listed above.

Sam Allardyce: Pros - He wears a head-set, so he must know what he's doing! Cons - Redknappesque whiff of untrustworthiness about him. Will make England an even less attractive team to watch than they are now. Ego not matched by achievements.

Stuart Pearce/Paul Jewell/Steve Bruce/Alan Curbishley, etc: Pros - Know all of the words to "God Save The Queen", will bang on about "passion" and "heart" a lot. Cons - None of them should be allowed within twenty miles of Wembley Stadium or Soho Square.

Me: Pros - Exceptionally cheap. May introduce a lottery for one central midfield position per match, with the money raised going to grass-roots training. Will change the national anthem from "God Save The Queen" to "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie". May make John Terry play in a nappy. Cons - Sunday League background, so may offer team places to the first eleven players to turn up. Somewhat forgetful, so may turn up five minutes before kick-off.

So, there we go. If my application isn't successful, I'd go for Lippi, personally, with O'Neill as cover. I wouldn't be ruling out my own application yet, though. After all, these are the people that hired Steve McClaren.

Desperate Times Call For Radical Solutions

One of the things that has surprised me the most about the tone of this week's coverage of England's travails in the media has been the level of surprise at the state of the game. Has everyone really been blinded by the lights to such an extent that they couldn't see what was going on? The interests of the Premier League are and those of the England football team diametrically opposed. Surely the media knew that. Why is it only now that the matter being reported in the press? Danny Baker noted on his podcast yesterday that the players are the first people to realise that we are now in the "post-international" era. The Football Associations don't matter any more, and it's the rest of us that have been left behind. It's a tempting argument. They're in charge now, and we should dance to their tune. I'm not, however, completely sold on this concept.

There is, of course, the small issue of the fact that the international matches pre-date anything like organised club football. If we're going to get into a historical debate, it's worth remembering that England first played Scotland sixteen years before the formation of the Football League, and in the same year as the first FA Cup competition. Traditionally, the clubs do not own football. The Football Association are supposed to be the guardians of the game on our behalf. The reality of the situation is , of course, somewhat different. The FA operates in a bubble - neither publicly accountable in the same way that governments are, nor driven by the need to keep its customers happy in the way that a private company is. It is a self-elected elite, but it is all that we have got if we are to protect our game from being taken to pieces and sucked dry by the big clubs, who have decided that, actually, they are in charge. We, the punters, are stuck in the middle - voracious money men on one side, capable but absorbed entirely in their own interests, and the FA on the other, supposedly acting on our behalf, but so long entrenched in their unelected positions that they are incapable of doing anything but acting in their own interests.

With the formation of the Premier League, a marriage of convenience had to be born. The formation of the Football League in 1888 had left the gruff old walruses of the FA somewhat bemused. The Football League was the Premier League of its day - gruff professionals from the north of England, throwing money into the game for the first time. The FA would spend most of the next hundred years at loggerheads with the Football League, but there was a twist in the tail of this story which has led us to where we are today. By the mid-1980s, the biggest clubs were waking up to the idea that there could be serious money to make from television, but they didn't want to share it out, and Football League rules meant that they would have to. At this point, the FA became involved. The biggest clubs had been talking of splitting for some time before 1992, but the logistical problems were great. The FA, though, could help them out here. The big power play of twentieth century football in England had between between the Football League and the FA, but it was moving into it's endgame. The coming together of the biggest clubs and the FA was a marriage of convenience which suited both parties. The FA, who thought (rather in the manner of Soames in "The Forsyte Saga") that they could tame the excesses of the bigger clubs, neutered their biggest "rivals" in one fell swoop. The big clubs received the logistical support of the FA, the veneer of respectability that they would otherwise not have had. It gave them access to UEFA, and saved them money in infrastructure. Most importantly of all, it gave them a veneer of repsectability and suspended the reality that football was no longer democratic whilst maintaining a facade that it was.

There was never any question of what would happen. Over the years, the FA were slowly pushed out of the organisation. The FA Premier League became the FA Carling Premiership, which became the English Premier League. It's now run by the clubs themselves, and the FA has very little control over what they do. When it was first suggested, the aim was for eighteen clubs, playing thirty-four matches each. The clubs, more interested in money than they ever were in the good of the game, resisted this. They didn't to lose the match day revenue. They compromised on twenty clubs, playing thirty-eight matches each. Remember this, the next time you hear a manager complaining about playing too many matches. The clubs of the Premier League decided that they should play thirty-eight matches per season (as opposed to, say, the thirty-four played in Italy). No-one else. And they did it for financial reasons, and financial reasons alone.

The Premier League is now openly hostile to the England team. Managers now talk openly of their disdain for it. Their foreign markets (and this, let us not forget, is where they believe the future to be - not in dreary old rainy England) don't care much for it, and there is even talk that their younger supporters are now picking and choosing their national teams - it's not uncommon to hear talk of English Manchester United supporters cheering Portugal against England because of Cristiano Ronaldo. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and now it's time for the final severance to take place. Let them go. Bar Premier League players from the England team. Pick the England team from the players in the Championship. The FA can still afford the best coaching, and the performance of the likes of Scotland and Northern Ireland have demonstrated that you don't need superstars to have a decent international team. Cut the player adrift from the enormous bonuses that they get in their wage packets because they are England internationals. Let Sky Sports have them. It will increase interest in the lower divisions and, with the possible rewards for the players being massive, there is no question that they will to play for their country. It will also have the highly beneficial effect of tempering the expectations of the media. You never know - it might even make it fun again.

Now The Dust Has Settled...

So, McClaren has gone - rumour has it that he didn't fall on his sword last night and chose to wait to be sacked the next morning for contractual reasons. Since the majority of the money going into the FA (who are likely to have to pay him severance of £2.5m, according to reports) will, somehow or other, be coming from English football supporters, let me pass on this message: Thanks, Steve. Thanks for choosing to do us all out of a seven figure sum, having bequeathed us with the most clueless national team that we've had in getting on for half a century. Everything that you need to know about what motivates those at the top end of English football can be encapsulated in this paragraph.

While I am looking forward to the finals of the European Championships (I wouldn't be much of a football obsessive if I didn't now, would I?), and even taking into consideration everything that I said on here (which I will, in the long-term, stand by), I have been in a strangely despondent mood today. This despondency hasn't been caused by England's failure to qualify for the finals (I thoroughly enjoyed Euro 84 and USA 94, thank you very much for asking) - it is something altogether more prosaic. This isn't merely a blip on the way to an eventual World Cup or European Championship win. It feels like the start of a very long downward trajectory. I understand that other countries have had this before, but as a 35 year old Englishman, it's the first time that I've come across it. It'll pass in a day or so, but it is a wider feeling that just us weird obsessives. I shall refer you to a post that I put on a message board earlier this evening, and leave you all to draw your own conclusions.

I was listening to one of those old Baker & Kelly radio things the other day, and they were talking about the Spurs-Blackburn League Cup final in 2002. Danny Kelly described the feeling after that match thus:

"I think that when a club has been big and is on its way to the level of mediocrity, everyone knows the steps that you take in the process, and everyone knew that it was absolutely, critically important for Spurs to win that match, and for the players to show up and not realise that, and just turn up with the attitude of 'Well, we're Spurs and we know we are', kissing the badge - it was like a bereavement."

It felt a bit like that last night. I don't think that Spurs are the best analogy, in club terms, for England (I happen to think it's Newcastle, or perhaps Manchester City - for one thing, Spurs have at least won something in my lifetime), but that feeling of England being at the start of a long, slow decline is inescapable. That's certainly how it has appeared in the press, where they've managed to suspend disbelief for such a long time. The slow dawn of realisation that this is now England's place, and will be for a considerable amount of time, is starting to hit home. The manner of the defeat and the disbelief (I mean, did you hear Motson and Lawrenson in the last thirty seconds or so of last night's match? I've never heard anything quite like it - Motson was saying, "I can't think of anything to say", and he seriously sounded on the point of tears) was the sound of the majority of a nation, who have been blinded with smoke and mirrors for years and years, realising that it was all an illusion.

I'm not trying to argue the point of whether England really are or were a "big" footballing nation here. That's not the point of this post, and it's being done to death elsewhere. For me, the stinging sensation last night came, not so much from the not qualifying, as from the ultimate conclusion that it's more likely than not (because of the myriad of problems being discussed elsewhere) going to be like this forever, or at least that, in the long term, this is the likely trajectory that it will take. To have that feeling rubbed in by so much schadenfreude and bad-minding has merely amplified it (and, again, that's not something that I want to go into in too much detail about on here - suffice to say that I just find such pleasure in someone else's misfortune a bit, well, weird), but that's not really what has bothered me the most, but that sense, at least regarding England, has been there for a while. What has stuck me about the last few weeks the most of all is that it's starting to hit everyone that cares in the slightest bit about the England team.

England vs Croatia

Pre-match: Well, the BBC have managed to upset me already, by playing Labi Siffre's elegant anti-Apartheid anthem "So Strong" while looking back over their constant close shaves in qualifying for the finals of major tournaments. Grrr. If the commentary for this match suddenly switches over to Wales-Germany without any warning, you'll know the reason why. Elsewhere, Steve McClaren is still grinning like an idiot, though there is, just from looking at him, still the faint whiff of the condemned man about him. You know how you looked at Graham Taylor shouting and screaming during the 1994 World Cup qualifying campaign and thought, "oh no"? Yeah. It's a bit like that. Meanwhile, it has been raining in London all day and the Wembley pitch is absolutely sodden. In all seriousness, I wouldn't be half surprised if the match was abandoned, if the rain gets a lot worse. Mind you, there are some men out there prodding at it with garden forks, so the vast resources of the FA are already tackling the problem. The England team lines up as follows: Carson, Richards, Bridge, Campbell, Lescott, Barry, Wright-Phillips, Gerrard, Lampard, Joe Cole, Crouch. Now, I'm all in favour of picking youth where possible, but this team leaves me feeling uneasy. It could be Sol Campbell's last match for England tonight, by the way. Also, Paul Robinson's form may have collapsed of late, but I'm not certain about Scott Carson starting such an important match in goal. My final massive concern (I haven't got the time to go into my feelings on Gerrard and Lampard both starting, on recent form, right now) is the lack of fire-power, with Peter Crouch starting more or less on his own up front. What a brilliant move it was, playing an injury prone striker like Michael Owen in Vienna last Friday night. Anyway, back in fifteen, in time for kick-off.

20.00: The pitch looks as bad from a distance as it did close up. The referee looks like Arsene Wenger, which is very unsettling indeed.

20.05: Who are these people that insist on taking big bass drums into football stadia? What on earth makes them think that this is what I want to hear? If I wanted a big bass drum, I'd switch this off and listen to "Physical Graffiti" by Led Zeppelin instead. Actually, England haven't started badly. Now, there's a hex.

20.08: Goal - England 0-1 Croatia: What did I say? What did I say? A moderate shot from outside the area from Krankjar, and Carson spills the ball in to give Croatia the lead. It's all gone quiet over there.

20.11: Wright-Phillips gets the ball in space and shoots, but is blocked. This is followed by a wholly unconvincing claim for a penalty. With eighty minutes to go, where is this goal going to come from?

20.17: Wembley has gone almost eerily quiet, now. Steve McClaren is holding onto a concrete post in the manner of a man about to have a heart attack, and his head has gone very purple.

20.21: Bloody hell. The BBC are getting desperate now. They're still saying that England are still home and dry because (you're going to like this) Russian haven't scored against Andorra yet. Yet.

20.28: Awww. He's cuddling his umbrella now. For all the effect that they've had so far, neither Gerrard nor Lampard could be playing, and it would have made no difference whatsoever.

20.33: Croatia, John Motson has just told me, have been down to ten men for the last five minutes, and I hadn't even noticed. England are starting to look busier, but it's all haste and no speed. They're just going to keep lumping balls into the penalty and nothing will come of it. Believe it or not, I haven't got a crystal ball.

20.41: Hooray! Russia have scored against Andorra!

20.43: Carson flaps at a shot from distance like a nun swatting a fly. This could end up 4-0 or 5-0, at this rate.

20.46: Half-Time - Absolutely awful. Gerrard doesn't look fit, they all look as if they going out of their way to not pass to Shaun Wright-Philips, and there is simply no point in having a player like Crouch there on his up front on his own to knock the ball down when there is no-one to knock the ball down to. The delivery from free-kicks has been atrocious and, generally, they're playing like Notts County - thumping the ball forward for the Croatian defenders to sweep up. They could keep going at this rate for the next twenty-four hours and they won't score playing like this.

Second Half - Defoe and Beckham on for Barry and Wright-Phillips. He's going to 4-4-2, but it won't make any difference. Oh - ha ha ha. I'm sure that the crowd just booed them onto the pitch for the start of the second half.

21.05: Terry Venables watched the first half in the Royal Box, apparently. I'm almost surprised he's not wearing a crown. Gerrardwatchers might be interested to know that it took one minute and six seconds of the second half before Gerrard to let the ball bounce off his knee.

21.08: England free-kick on the edge of the penalty area, but Beckham's tame shot is deflected over. Croatia break quickly and England's defence is presumably still on the edge of the Croatian penalty area, having some sort of tea party. I think that Terry Venables may be constipated.

21.10: Eduardo gets free, and Carson, after hesitating, saves with this feet. The replay indicates that the shot was probably going into the side netting anyway.

21.13: GOAL - England 1-2 Croatia: Terrible penalty decision - Jermaine Defoe was held back by Simunic, but he'd have needed legs like Inspector Gadget to get anywhere near the ball. Notably, it appears to have been given by the referee rather than the linesman. Lampard scores it comfortably.

21.15: It's starting to open up. Croatia hit the cross bar, and then Carson makes a brilliant save from the resulting corner.

21.20: Olic is put through on goal after another terrible piece of defending by Bridge, but he snatches at the shot and Carson, who is actually starting to visibly grow in confidence, saves. Croatia are about six times as likely to score as England right now, by my reckoning.

21.22: GOAL - England 2-2 Croatia - Oh, bloody hell. Beckham crosses from the right and Crouch, of all people, finally does what he's paid to do and finishes brilliantly. Croatia had plenty of chances to finish this off at 2-1 and, up to a point, have brought this about themselves.

21.26: Just when you start thinking, "oh, fair play England for coming from two down", the crowd start singing "God Save The Bloody Queen", and I want Croatia to score again.

21.33: Croatia, I get the feeling, are starting to just run down the clock a little bit with this match. I still fancy them to sneak a third goal, mind.

21.35: GOAL - England 2-3 Croatia: Croatia were starting to wind down a bit, but Lampard starting throwing himself about in the middle of the pitch. A minute later, Petric curls the ball into the bottom corner from the edge of the penalty area.

21.40: They're not going to score, England, just in case you were wondering. They've had every chance to get back into this, got back into it with a massive slice of luck and still managed to throw it away. They haven't so much as looked like scoring since. I'm not a believer, but there are wider forces at work here. They're getting what they deserve in a very profound way.

21.43: Bent gets though and shoots just over. I hadn't even noticed that he had come on.

21.45: I think that John Motson might be about to burst into tears. "Surely, there's got to be one more chance, surely. Say something, Mark, say something". I'm not making this up.

21.49: FULL TIME - England 2-3 Croatia: And that's your lot. There's no part of this that England, and the whole money-centric, insular world of English football doesn't deserve. They have been outplayed by one reasonable and one moderate team, and do not deserve to be amongst the top sixteen in Europe next summer. Even when they got back to 2-2, they still managed to get themselves carved open and throw it away. There was a part of me that, on account of the general bad-minding about England almost wanted them to win but, ultimately, they didn't deserve it. Now, can we get rid of McClaren, Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham and all the rest of them, forget about trying to win the next World Cup, and start trying to rebuild a team around young players that want to win and that don't act like the sort of people that you'd want to punch if you ever met them. It won't be enough to get rid of McClaren, though that would be a start, of sorts. His position, however, is almost certainly untenable. The likes of Brian Barwick, though, should also be considering their positions.

Bad Omens?

Well, no matter which way you look at it, there aren't many, are there? This will be a quickie, ahead of a live commentary of tonight's match at Wembley. It's probably not helping much that I'm watching England's best international performance on DVD as I write this (the 2001 win in Munich, as if you need ask). Let's get a couple of things out of the way first: this is by no means a done deal, and any talk of a carve-up between England and Croatia is as much nonsense as the talk of the possibility of Roman Abramovich paying off the home team in last Saturday's match between Israel and Russia was. Professional footballers are like thoroughbred horses in that respect, although some are more like Red Rum than others, and some are more likely to be headed for the glue factory than others - they are coached for years and years to win. To say that Croatia will turn up tonight and, for some reason, not bother is, frankly, insulting to them.

Before we go any further, here are a few things that I want no mention of in the press or from the crowd during tonight's match and its inevitable aftermath: I don't want to hear anything at all about bad luck. England are ludicrously lucky to still be in the competition at all going into tonight's match. For all the Grade A horse dung that I hear about Beckham's sending off in St-Etienne in 1998 and Wayne Rooney's injury in 2004, I can, without breaking into a sweat, give you two or three examples of England being unbelievably lucky. The vast majority of times that England have failed to achieve, they have failed to do so because of their own incompetence. If David Beckham comes on as a substitute and they get a free-kick just outside the penalty area, I will put my foot through the screen if I hear the words "Beckham" and "territory" being used next to each other. I would like to hear the BBC being unbiased tonight (though the chances of that happening are slim to nil) and I would like to not hear any excuses whatsoever about the pitch, or injuries or anything, should they fail tonight. Let me just remind you all of something. England are plenty capable of losing tonight. They have a goalkeeper that has only played about three times at international level, and are playing two players in the midfield who, as we have seen time and time again, cannot play together. This is the culture of English football. If Croatia go a goal up, and with Owen and Rooney injured, I can't see where an England goal is likely to come from.

Reaching back into the past, there have been many nights like this before this one. The first cut, as former singer and now celebrity Scotland supporter Rod Stewart (who, let us not forget, was born in London now lives and in a tax haven in the Carribbean) once said, is the deepest, and England's failure in 1973 will still bring a tear to the eye of some men of a certain age. Everybody knows about that night at Wembley against Poland, but the seeds of England's demise were sown in Chorzow earlier in the year when a poor performance and a 2-0 defeat left them needing a win in their final match rather than just having to avoid defeat in the first place. They were dealt a slightly tough hand in 1978, drawn against the Italians with only one team qualifying and in 1984, no-one even knew that the Denmark team that knocked them out were on their way to becoming one of the top ten teams in the world. Finally, in trying to get to the World Cup finals in 1994, Graham Taylor was dealt a double whammy of being incompetent and having terrible luck. They were unlucky in losing to the Dutch in their final significant match in Rotterdam (cf: Ronald Koeman), but the seeds of this implosion were sown in their failure to beat either Norway or Holland, home or away. Their 2-0 defeat in Oslo remains arguably the worst performance I've ever seen by an England team.

Once in the European Championship Finals, there isn't much by way of good omens to go on either. It's worth remembering that their 2-0 win against Scotland at Euro 96 was England's first win in a European Championship Finals match since a meaningless 2-1 win against Spain in Naples sixteen years previously. They failed to qualify in 1984, lost all three matches in 1988 and were knocked out of a relatively weak group in 1992, as well. Since then, there hasn't been a great deal of improvement. In 2000, they narrowly beat arguably the worst German national team in living memory, but this win was dwarfed by them throwing a two goal lead away against Portugal and throwing away a 2-1 lead against Romania when they only needed a draw to get through to the quarter-finals. For good omens, we could look to Euro 2004. Considering the fortunate run that England had to the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup (when they were dreadful in the group stages, scoring just two goals in three matches, and very lucky against Belgium and Cameroon before, ironically, losing a semi-final against West Germany in which they played their best football of the tournament) and Euro 96 (disjointed against Switzerland and reliant on one last moment of genius from Paul Gascoigne's flickering flame against Scotland when they should have been pegged back to 1-1 by Gary McAllister's penalty just seconds before, they then beat Spain on penalties in the quarter-finals while Spain had a perfectly good goal disallowed for offside in extra-time), Euro 2004 was arguably England's best performance in the finals of a major tournament since 1970. Against France, they should really have been 2-0 up when two late defensive errors gave the French an ill-deserved win. They then followed this up by brushing Switzerland aside in a manner which showed up the 1996 effort against them for what it was and, once in the quarter-finals, had a perfectly good last minute goal disallowed against the hosts, Portugal. If you are looking for good omens for England (and I'm not, to be honest - if they get knocked out, it will be a pretty good thing for English football), then their final group match against Croatia is a pretty good place to start looking. They won 4-2, but the manner of their win was outstanding. After Munich in 2001 and the match against Holland in 1996, it is the third best England performance that I've ever seen.

That, though, is where the good omens begin and end, unless you factor in England's tendency to do just enough to get to the finals of major tournaments. Such a reliance on leaving it to the last minute, though, is, to say the least, living dangerously. That, accompanied with the unabashed mediocrity of the current batch of "stars" leads me to believe that we could be for a night to rival Wembley in 1973 or Rotterdam in 1993. I'll be back here in about forty minutes bringing you most of the action, less than five minutes after it has actually happened. Ah, the joys of the multi-media age.