Weep for England

So we weep for England.

Once again we were beaten on penalties in a quarter-final. It is our lot.

But let us not disguise the fact that it would have been an absolute travesty of Chelsea-like proportions for England to have sneaked past Italy to the semi-finals. Italy totally dominated the whole of the second-half and extra-time, but just couldn't turn their dominance into a goal. England, however, barely got into Italy's half in that time.

Yet there is some pride in England's performance in the tournament. It does seem to show a new realism about England's limitations. We are simply not good enough to compete with the top nations in World football, of which most are in these European Championships. Top eight (i.e. quarter-finals) is the best we should realistically expect.

My worry is that the fact that Roy Hodgson has done pretty well with a weak and threadbare squad may blind people to the dearth of English talent and the trends that continue to sweep English players aside in our own Premier League.

With few English owners and English managers in the English Premier League, where is the concern for English players and the English national team? It isn't there.

We've got years of this international misery to come, and it will get worse.

As a final point: let's finally lay to rest this myth that there are any World-class English players. There are none.

Nervous about England's chances

Am I alone in being a little nervous about England's chances this evening?

They 'only' need a draw against Ukraine to progress to the quarter-finals and everyone seems to think it'll be a bit of a breeze.

I don't.

• We are AWAY to Ukraine in what appears to be the hottest venue (at least it has been before).
• Ukraine MUST WIN to progress themselves.
• England drew unconvincingly with France.
• England did beat Sweden - but that wasn't convincing either.

No, I don't want to be a pessimist, but getting knocked out of the Euros is such a common occurrence for England, that I'm always amazed at the optimism that usually abounds. This time round - at least, before the tournament - no one gave England a chance - even in England!

But of course it only takes one win for England to become world-beaters in so many eyes. And "we've got Wayne Rooney back". He might just upset such a delicate balance, but let's hope not; let's hope he shines.

England are no world- (or even Euro-) beaters for me. They're not the weakest team in the tournament, but are they really one of the top eight (i.e. worth of a quarter-final spot)? No, Ukraine might be one of the best eight either, but they'll quietly fancy their chances.

Beware the cauldron-like atmosphere that is bound to greet England's players this evening. Have they got the right stuff to progress?

We shall see.

Table ordering system at Euro2012 is over-complicated

I'm delighted to say that Euro 2012 has so far risen above expectations. There have been some interesting and some exciting games, and very few have been boring. No nil-nil draw yet either! Excellent.

However, there are always one or two things to gripe about (of course!).

As we half-way through the final round of group matches, it has come to light the extraordinarily stupid way of determining the order of teams in the groups. The number of points is the key way to order the teams and, thankfully, that is still the main way (but, as we see the way order is determined after that, we cannot be sure that UEFA will always retain points as the key method!).

If teams are level on points we go through this ridiculous ordering system:

1. head-to-head results
2. if three countries are level, goal difference from games between them
3. if three countries are level, goals scored in games between them
4. goal difference from all group games
5. goals scored in all group games
6. UEFA coefficient rankings
7. fair play ratings from the finals
8. drawing of lots.

All this head-to-head nonsense unnecessarily complicates the picture and means that you can't look at a league table and no who will qualify - you have to know all the results too. What is wrong with goal differences, then goals scored? This is supposed to be a LEAGUE system; i.e. it is results over the whole league that should count. By pinning so much on  head-to-head results, they're turning the league into a knock-out.

In other words, ignore numbers 1, 2 and 3.

In this more sensible method, Group One's qualifiers would have been Czech Republic and Russia (rather than Greece).

But there's no hope. Why keep something simple if you can over-complicate it?

Negativity beckons in Euro 2012

So we come to Euro 2012 in Ukraine and Poland. I never was convinced of the validity of these two countries as a joint venue, and the stories we hear as we approach the tournament are not encouraging. Blimey - if it's enough to put England fans off travelling, then things must be bad! Let us hope that the tournament passes off without any major hitches.

On the field I have a feeling it's going to be a negative tournament. The trouble is that success can be achieved by negativity - you don't actually have to win or seek to win football matches to win football tournaments. Chelsea have proved that recently in the Champions League and Greece have proved it before in Euro 2004.

I know there's more than one way to win a football match, but we must do away with the odious penalty shoot-out and think of a better way to encourage teams to actually score goals - that is meant to be the object of the game after all. I have always advocated taking a player off each team every five minutes during extra time, and just play on till someone scores.

The old Golden Goal didn't really work - and it didn't work because there was still the back-up of a penalty shoot-out. Get rid of it! If you take a player off from each team during extra time and they know they MUST SCORE to win, then a goal will come. It will have to!

I can see teams trying to stifle the teams that want to attack and, having seen Barcelona fail this season, lesser teams will be encouraged to snuff the light out of the more enterprising teams.

Sadly, England fall into the "lesser team" category (they have done for years, but it seems that everyone has finally realised it htis tiem round!), so don't expect many goals in England's games. I could yet end up hoping against hope that they can win a penalty shoot-out!

Give Rooney a year off from international football

So there it is: Wayne Rooney got the three-game international ban.

So, as I said in this blog on Monday: don't take him to Euro2012.

Rooney will miss the whole of the group stages. The last time England played more than four games in the Euros was at home in 1996, so is it worth taking Rooney for one game in the hope that he can squeeze us through to another?

For those first three games England will have to play a Rooney-free style; a style that they will have developed over the course of friendlies between now and June 2012. If England qualify for the quarter-final, is it realistic to suddenly change back to a Rooney-centric style of play?

I'm afraid it's best to write off Rooney from international football until the start of the 2012-13 season and the next set of World Cup qualifiers.

Sir Alex Ferguson must be delighted!

Euro2012 qualifiers

The qualifiers for  Euro2012 in Poland and Ukraine are shaping up.

The 12 countries who have already qualified are:

Poland

Ukraine

Germany

Russia

Italy

France

Netherlands

Greece

England

Denmark

Spain

Sweden

There are 8 countries who have qualified for the two-legged play-offs in November. If they are seeded by the FIFA rankings, then they will come out like this:

• Portugal (5th)
• Croatia (9th)
• Bosnia-Herzegovina (22nd)
• Montenegro (26th)
• Turkey (27th)
• Republic of Ireland (29th)
• Czech Republic (40th)
• Estonia (58th)

Thus, the top four would be seeded, and drawn randonly against the bottom four.

The draw takes place tomorrow (Thursday 13 October).

England end on a poor note

And so another football season comes to a close, and it ended, for Englnad, on a pretty gloomy note. The performance in the 2-2 draw at home to Switzerland in Saturday's Euro 2012 qualifier was poor, to say the least.

Excuses of tiredness; some lame claims that they had done well to come back from 2-0 down, can't disguise the fact that a home draw against the Swiss is simply not good enough.

There was some respite in the group as Montenegro could only draw at home to Bulgaria, and so missed their own chance to claim top spot ahead of England.

So what's wrong with England? People like to blame the manager and his tactics ("too cautious"). Tiredness has been blamed. Apparently England players averaged 46 games to Switzerland's 31. Yet, Glen Johnson has missed half the season, as has Rio Ferdinand; Milner's not a regular at Manchester City, and Scott Parker has missed several games for West Ham. For Switzerland, Senderos, Djourou and Behrami all played in the Premiership last year, so I'm not sure about that stat.

It was supposed to be a good thing that Ferdinand and Terry were back together in central defence; that Wilshere was playing; that England played 4-3-3 (4-5-1, take your pick). They were all "good things" until Switzerland took a quick-fire two-goal lead in the first half. The recovery to grab a draw only partly disguised the dismal performance.

Top passers in the England team were John Terry (71) and Rio Ferdinand (57). Why? Because they spent most of the game passing to each other! Why? Because there's little or no significant movement ahead of them. They are then left to chip the ball forward (England's disease) and possession is lost.

We have no thrusting midfielders; none who can make a 20-yard run so that our possession is in the middle of the opposition half rather than in the middle of our own (indeed the Swiss had several who could do this: Shaqiri and Xhaka being two); none who slip quietly into open space in dangerous positions (like Xavi or Iniesta of Barcelona); none who can play quick one-twos to open up the opposition; and, more crucuially, none who can instantly control a ball and be ready for the next pass or move immediately. They call it technique and they've been going on about it for years, but nothing improves.

I think England fans live on in (blind) optimism that things will get better, but really they know they won't. We want England to be good, but we don't really believe they are or can be.

Teams like Switzerland are better than we are.