Euro 2008 Qualifying Russia v England - Murder in Moscow, Suspects Named

England collapse the same old story

Sean O'Conor

The press have named 46-year-old Steve McClaren from Yorkshire as the prime suspect in the killing of England’s Euro 2008 hopes, which collapsed on a cold night in Moscow on Wednesday...

So, England beat a sorry retreat from Moscow following their 2-1 loss to Russia.

Euro 2008 looks out of their reach now and Steve McClaren’s days at the helm look numbered. Was this a surprise? Yes, given the three lions’ recent performances, including a commanding 3-0 demolition of the Russians at Wembley.

So how did this turnaround occur when only days ago, after three successive home wins, England were set fair for the trip to Austria and Switzerland?

Because those victories over Israel, Russia and Estonia papered over the points dropped to Macedonia, Israel and Croatia in the same qualifying Group E: England has been struggling since McClaren took the reins after the 2006 World Cup.

But I don’t blame him, although he probably deserves to lose his job once the group games conclude, unless Israel take points off the Russians and England beat Croatia to sneak through at the last minute.

I for one am jaded at yet another collapse by an England team who should have done better, far better. We have been here so many times before and will be here again for the foreseeable future. It is not about McClaren, it is about the perennial fault lines running through English football.

A myriad of post mortems accompany every England failing at or before a major tournament.

Some of the explanations go round in circles e.g. ‘they lacked passion’, ‘they don’t fight for the shirt’, ‘they don’t believe in themselves enough’ etc.

These are just hot air. The players are not wanting for commitment and desire to succeed. Footballers are well aware of what success means and are itching for it all the time.

Others conveniently attribute blame to the available scapegoats – players, managers or match officials.

The suspects never fail to appear. This time you could take your pick from Steven Gerrard for missing a sitter, Wayne Rooney for conceding a penalty, Paul Robinson for palming a shot into an enemy’s path or the team as a whole for panicking once Russia stole an equalizer and letting them dominate the game and score a second.

Add to that the incompetent coach McClaren and the dodgy ref Luis Medina Cantalejo who awarded the spot kick which put Russia on level terms.

Sounds familiar? Remember Graham Taylor banging on about the referee failing to send off Ronald Koeman for a professional foul, when Holland knocked England out of the 1994 World Cup? Yes, we have been here before all right.

This time we had a novelty candidate for stoning, in the form of the artificial surface of the Luzhniki Stadium and the blazered twits who permitted its usage for such a big match in the first place.

Plus, don’t forget a resurgent Russia were at home in front of a passionate crowd and were out for revenge after surrendering at Wembley.

Under Guus Hiddink, the Russians merited at least a goal after clawing themselves back into the game following Rooney’s 29th minute opener.

These factors are all suspects for the axing of England’s Euro hopes in Moscow, so who is the murderer? Answer: All of the above. Yet the guiltiest party must still be England: The country’s players, coaches and general soccer culture for failing to produce a successful national team in 2007 like they have failed in every year since 1966 are all responsible.

On the night there were tactical failings by McClaren’s men, who missed the chance to score a second and slit Russia’s jugular, gave away a goal and then pulled back pessimistically and defended deep, with inevitable consequences.

If passion is an English football virtue, then this must be blended with a mental toughness not to concede so much space and possession as England did in Moscow.

When I spoke to Guus Hiddink prior to the 2006 World Cup, the Australia coach spoke of his players’ impressive technique and passion, but also of their pressing need to understand the phases of a particular game.

England clearly got that one wrong in the Luzhniki, retreating too far when they needed to battle for the ball and stop Russia gaining in confidence at crucial turning points over the 90.

Face the facts: We struggle once we get to the quarter-finals of an international tournament and have only reached three semi-finals in our history – the 1966 World Cup, 1990 World Cup and 1996 European Championship, and TWO of them we played at home.

Deep down, our technical and tactical shortcomings persist. We have a tradition of strong goalkeepers, defenders and strikers, but our midfielders, supposedly the vanguard of our golden generation, are not as creative as we might like to think and seem to concede space too readily.

Up front too, Rooney and Michael Owen never look like happy bedfellows and the list of alternatives is painfully thin if we are looking for another Sheringham & Shearer or Lineker & Beardsley to spearhead our attack.

Even our defenders, supposedly our strongpoint, are not world class, with the possible exception of John Terry.

The fact remains the average Spanish or Italian defender, for instance, is more technically proficient than ours are and at the highest level, a deficit of skill in any area will be exposed sooner or later.

Is the foreign influx in the Premier League to blame? For some reason, those who deny a connection get extremely irate at the idea. I suspect they are Arsenal or Chelsea fans who care little for their national team.

The more foreign players occupy the starting slots, the less young English players can develop, surely. True, the likes of Dennis Bergkamp, Eric Cantona and Thierry Henry have improved the overall standard of play in England, but the gaps in several key positions for England will appear more frequently the more overseas players dominate the top clubs’ lineups.

But equally, given it is much easier to recruit English youngsters from the locality than it is to jet around the world on scouting missions to persuade talented kids’ families to relocate their offspring, why are clubs like Arsenal preferring overseas teenagers?

Why did Sven-Goran Eriksson, well versed in the English talent available after four years at the helm of our national team, scoop up a host of foreign players when he took over at Manchester City, notably lamenting he could not find a home-grown equivalent of Brazilian midfield wizard Elano?

The talent is not out there is the uncomfortable truth, but how so in a land of 45 million when the Netherlands has a production line of talent with one third the population.

There goes an argument, following the ethno-football writings of David Winner, that every football culture is organic to its homeland, and that the English style can only change from the up and at ‘em style with a lot of time and hard work.

England’s traditional footballing virtues had fallen behind the rest of the world by the time the national team first entered the World Cup in 1950 and was defeated by Spain and the USA.

Our supposedly august history is clearly not with only one trophy to crow about, which must imply deep-seated weaknesses in the national style of football.

But alas, the reactions of another lamentable England collapse to ‘lesser’ opposition (how many of the Russian team can you name?) have mostly missed the real target.

Sam Wallace in The Independent came close when he spoke of “an obvious pattern. It is systematic failure - which cannot simply be explained away by the caprice of referees, artificial pitches or injuries,” but did not take his analysis further.

Steve McClaren has received most of the custard pies but he is not the point. Nor is Gerrard’s miss, the plastic pitch or the bad penalty decision.

But it is so much easier to pin the blame on the usual sorry parade of scapegoats, than address the real underlying cause for what is now 41 years of hurt, and counting.

Sean O'Conor

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