Yesterday's England v Germany match - some thoughts

Now that the dust has settled a little I thought that I would put my thoughts down for posterity.

England played very poorly it is true and even if the Lampard non-goal had been allowed England would probably have lost, however the key word is probably and Sepp Blatter and FIFA should hang their heads in shame for their decision earlier this year not to use goal line technology. The replay that showed clearly that the ball had crossed the line was available within seconds. However this morning it seems that Fifa did not send any officials with responsibility for referees to its daily briefing. Fifa spokesman Nicolas Maingot faced hostile questioning but said it was "obviously not the place" to debate refereeing errors or the merits of video technology. "We obviously will not open any debate," Maingot said. "This is obviously not the place for this." Obviously!

I would suggest that the FA call for the resignation of Sepp Blatter but they will be too busy sucking up to FIFA in an attempt to get the 2018 World Cup hosted in England. If we do host that tournament then I wonder if we will become the second host country not to make it beyond the group stage, following South Africa this year?

As to the tournament itself, what went wrong? Before the tournament Fabio Capello was talking about only playing in-form players. However what he actually did was to bring players who were injured like Ledley King, recovering from injury like Gareth Barry and out of form players like Emile Heskey. Capello left behind Adam Johnson who has been keeping Sean Wright Phillips out of his club side and is a true left-sided midfielder, preferring to play Gerrard out of position on the left. Meanwhile Wright Phillips and Lennon got partial games and showed why they are not international standard wingers. Heskey was Capello's preferred partner for Rooney "because he brings out the best in him" although he has an appalling international scoring record (actually he has a appalling club scoring record as well). Defoe played well, Rooney did not. Why did Capello not think of bringing Crouch (a man with the best goals to international matches ratio of any of the England strikers) to play alongside Defoe? In defence Terry was played on the wrong side of central defence so ruining his positioning sense and the in-form centre back Dawson never played a game, Capello preferring Upson or Carragher.

Capello like Ericsson before him has taken the FA's money and produced a mediocre team. It is time for an English manager to manage the English football team, not for xenophobic reasons, but so that the team have no excuses about language difficulties or cultural issues. Give the job to Harry Rednapp or Roy Hodgson they couldn't do any worse than Fabio Capello.