Group Winners
Coach Fabio Capello
One to Watch Kyle Walker
As we approach the summer of 2012 all of our minds, well most of them at least, will turn away from the domestic football competitions within our own countries, towards the International arena for the eagerly awaited European Championship Finals, to be held in Poland and the Ukraine. Within a fortnight from now, the world will know the names of the last four teams/countries that will join the 12 nations already guaranteed a place at Euro 2012. Over the next three weeks, we shall be profiling each of the 16 finalists that will bid to become the champions of Europe until 2016.
In the next of our Euro 2012 team profiles, England come under the spotlight. England have the joint oldest national football team having been formed in 1870, they have a proud footballing history and see themselves as inventors of the game which has become their national sport. Needless to say England have been a regular feature at major international tournaments, appearing at the World Cup Finals on thirteen occasions since 1950 and making the European Championships eight times, the first being in 1968. Success however, has been harder to come by in the competitions themselves, the English have only ever won the World Cup once, famously on home ground in 1966, the closest they have come since then was an agonising penalty shoot-out defeat by West Germany in the semi-final at Italia 90. The European Championships, formerly the European Cup of Nations, has proven an even more difficult nut to crack, England’s best achievements in that tournament so far have been a third place finish in 1968 and, another penalty shoot-out defeat by the Germans in the semi-final of Euro 96, this time in front of their home fans.
Since then successive England managers, Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan and Sven Goran Eriksson have fared no better, all successfully negotiating tournament qualification groups and then failing to deliver anything more than quarter final elimination at best. Following Eriksson’s unsuccessful 2006 World Cup campaign he was replaced as head coach by Steve McClaren. Under McClaren’s direction the England team slumped to a new low in modern times, failing to qualify for Euro 2008 was the first time they hadn’t reached a major international competition since their failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. McClaren was duly sacked and became the shortest serving England manager ever, he was replaced by Fabio Capello.
Capello arrived with an “Iron Man” reputation, he would instil the discipline required to turn England’s ageing, so called “Golden Generation” into “lean mean winning machines”, and for a while, it looked like he had. England qualified for South Africa 2010 in impressive style, with a game to spare, sealing their place with a 5-1 home win over Croatia. Things were looking rosy, however, once again at the tournament itself, England started off in shaky fashion, only just scraping through the group stage. It was clear from the very start that the problems of old hadn’t been fixed, Capello was unsure who his goalkeeper should be, Gerrard and Lampard were still being used together despite their obvious deficiency as a partnership, and the 4-4-2 system employed by Capello looked totally out of date. By the time England faced Germany in the second round, the team were at sixes and sevens, bereft of drive or confidence in themselves or each other and pretty quickly were being put to the sword by a dynamic, exciting, young German side who knew how to play together. England went home.
Since then, Capello has been forced to ring the changes and has tried to bring in some younger, fresher talent. It seems to be working at the moment with the England side qualifying unbeaten for next year’s Euros and recently defeating World and European Champions Spain in a friendly. One of the newer players in the England fold is Kyle Walker. Walker is a whippet-like right back who can play on the right of midfield too, his pace, fearlessness and ability to deliver in the final third, along with real defensive ability make him one to earmark in the summer when the tournament begins.
It is almost impossible to predict England’s chances of success in Poland and Ukraine, they have qualified well enough, but then they have done that many times before without further achievement. I don’t think Capello knows his best eleven at all and despite having a fairly deep pool of talent to choose from, he doesn’t transmit the confidence of having a clear plan as yet. The suspension of Rooney for the Group Stage is also a major headache along with the poor form of recognised central defensive pair Terry and Ferdinand. With all of these factors in mind and their abject showing in South Africa, I would be fairly surprised if England made it past the quarter finals this time around.
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