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By JAMES CURTIS For anybody who was excited about the prospect of Arsenal signing Joe Cole, most likely that feeling has been replaced by an uninspiring dreariness after England were eliminated from the World Cup on Sunday. A sense of wintry flatness now lingers over him, like a Christmas toy which has become the source of boredom by mid-January. “Don’t worry about it Wenger, I’d rather have a foreigner,” were the words of one Arsenal friend, all of a sudden turned off Cole simply because he’s English.
Immediately following Fabio Capello’s feckless attempts against Germany on the BBC was Priceless Antiques Roadshow. By the talk of the nation come Monday morning this is exactly where I expected to find the England players, alongside some cracked ceramic vase, an ivory chess set with two pawns missing, or perhaps in the shape of a “burnt out” walnut grandfather clock, just as Franz Beckenbauer had bid for leading up to kick-off. Beckenbauer’s assessment of England after three games had been more perceptive than Capello’s over the past two years.
England’s performance had been about as attractive as the Roadshows’ Fiona Bruce and as exciting to watch as former presenter Michael Aspel talking about a rocking horse. The chance of witnessing an imaginative England performance was also about as rare as rocking horse shit. Leftover was the start of another enquiry into the root causes of English football’s problems, but not before I placed my forehead against the wall and slowly began banging.
The first shortcoming dates back to this ancient divine right, that the cream of England’s highly paid are untouchable, however two-bit they play. The dross Wayne Rooney was allowed to stay on the pitch against Germany, confirming the flashes I had after the Algeria game when he left the pitch questioning the people’s loyalty to the throne. With his ginger beard and arrogant stride, Rooney was football’s answer to Henry VIII.
Like a servant to the sovereignty, Capello allowed Rooney to do as he pleased. Slowly the Italian had transformed from being the severe stature of a funeral director into a bit of a national clown. For fear of a King Wayne tantrum, Capello was reluctant to haul him off. Others grovelled at his feet. Why wasn’t captain Steven Gerrard telling him to liven up or clear off? Where had Rooney’s own loyalty to the badge and to his team-mates gone? It seemed the only people who would stand up to the distant England striker were the disappointed England fans.
Behind Rooney were a group of players equally far-flung from the requirements of a World Cup match against the Germans. Winston Churchill would have been turning in his grave the moment Mesut Ozil to skipped past Gareth Barry on the half-way line. Barry had a five yard head start but forgot how to run. He also drew a blank on how to be English, allowing Ozil the freedom to jog down the left where any normal countryman would have wiped away his legs, pushed him into the hoardings, stood over him with a waterfall of saliva and said “that one’s from Rio, son”.
Aggression was missing on the day and it’s not as if good technique could replace it. The speed with which the South American teams have played football throughout the World Cup makes England look like geriatrics. After defeat to Germany I dug out my old FA Coaching Certificate handbook. It was dusty, made of flimsy card and printed in black and white. I remembered my instructor, always the centre of mockery by the group because of his stockings, comb-over haircut and bumbling ways. Together the whole thing was enough to kill a kid’s brain cell, not fill the mind with the colourful ways of playing football.
Instead of trying to become more like the Latinos, or even the Asian teams who have been impressive too, it’s easier to point the finger and blame the foreigner, blame Arsenal, and make Wenger out to be some kind of neglectful dad who doesn’t pay child support to his English sons. It’s not hard to see why the English footballer is unappealing to Wenger. They can’t even do that move synonymous with Spanish team, where you turn full-circle using the outside of the boot. No, just give the ball to Heskey and he will hold it up.
Are we trying to make football as boring as possible for the new generation? Work in a school for long enough and it becomes clear the youth are more interested in talking about Call of Duty on the X-Box or Tinnie Tempah’s new music video, than they are football. Trying to run a Sunday League team is increasingly difficult. A typical scenario is getting a call from a talented teenager looking to play, only for him to turn up without money, warm up wearing an NY cap, play twice and go back to waking up on Sunday’s logging onto Facebook.
England need to look at themselves and start coming up with new innovative ways to play the game, not just settle for “kick and rush” as my senile old uncle put it. I doubt he even knows that Bobby Moore is dead but he had seen the obvious setback to English football from his electric riser chair. Beckenbauer called England a “long ball team”. Again, he was right, we are.
England need to look at new ways of getting kids involved in football. Sure, you could say a teenager looking for Sunday League isn’t going to change the face of the national team, but what’s not to say somewhere earlier in his life this kid wasn’t good enough to turn pro? I know of a handful of listless kids more taken with electronic Twenty-first Century entertainment than heralding the beautiful game, and I suspect it’s happening across the country. Football shouldn’t be taught from a dull manual like the one I was given on the FA coaching course, nor should I have to read from chapters called ‘resources’.
Luckily, Joe Cole is as close to a foreigner as an English footballer will ever get, so I’m not so opposed to his signing. He knows what it takes to win a Premiership title. Let’s just hope he leaves behind the pictures that have emerged today, of the England team relaxing in their hotel after losing to Germany. Aaron Lennon is smoking a cigar. If you look close enough you should see Wayne Rooney at the head of the table, wearing a satin tunic, fox-fur mantle with emeralds, chewing on a chicken thigh, slapping the backside of a passing woman and laughing at Fabio, the court jester. All hail King Wayne!
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