FIFA Pitch

As the furore about alleged corruption within FIFA plods on, I thought I’d write a few words about the World Cup; especially as this has been a World Cup year – albeit yet another disappointing one for England fans. If the idea of this doesn’t appeal to you then please feel free to go and read something else, because I’m going to write it whether you like it or not.

The first ever World Cup as we know it was held in Uruguay in 1930. As the country which invented football, you’d think the inaugural tournament would be held here. But we didn’t even enter. There were 13 teams, only four of which were European; the rest were made up of North and South American teams.

In case you’re wondering, Uruguay won. They beat Argentina 4-2 in front of nearly 70,000 people at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo on 30^th July.

Anyone interested enough to still be reading this will know that the one and only time England won the World championships of the game we invented was 1966. You have to wonder why that is; especially when you think about the quality of the teams we’ve produced in my lifetime.

I think Italia ’90 should have been our year. When you look at the quality and pedigree of our squad and our manager, as well as the performances our boys put in, you end up scratching your head and just asking, “Why…?”

We did reach the semi-finals, only to be knocked out on penalties by our perennial rivals, West Germany. And I think that night in the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin illustrates why we don’t win the major tournaments. We bottled it.

There hasn’t been any shortage of quality players from England. I contend that that’s a myth; or an excuse. England has produced many world-class players over the years: Paul Gascoigne, Alan Shearer, Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell…the list goes on and on.

What the England team has been lacking is that little bit of mettle needed to respond and come up with the goods when the pressure’s on. We see the evidence of this every week in the Barclay’s Premier League when we watch them put in sometimes breathtaking displays. But they just can’t seem to carry that over to the big competitions.

No doubt everybody has an opinion on where we’re going wrong. Mine is that the ridiculous policy of not allowing competition in schools is playing a large part. This pandering to the mommies of the spoilt little fat boys who don’t like it because they never win at sports has bred a kind of apathy among our children. Then there are the school football teams and leagues – where have they gone? I remember every Monday in assembly; our school football team’s captain would read out a match report on that weekend’s game. We should be bringing that back.

Whatever your own personal theory on why England doesn’t bring it at the major tournaments, I’m sure we all agree that there has to be fundamental change from top to bottom. Unless and until this happens, the years of hurt are just going to keep rolling on. I hope not. I’d love to see an England captain raise the Jules Rimet trophy. Just once…