Is English Football an incurable disease? Part 2

The truth always comes and it's always a shock

What, then, is the 'disease'? Beckenbauer describes the English footballing problem as 'kick and rush'. It's impatience, according to Wenger. It's all shorthand for an unthinking, unintelligent approach, one that gets rid of the ball as the first thought, if it ever wanted it in the first place. No possession, poor passing, constantly looking for the instant, quick breakthrough. And all played at an energy-sapping, breakneck pace. Or, in the case of the South African World Cup, at a lethargic, can't-be-arsed, tortoise-challenging pace.

That font of footballing wisdom, David Beckham, says it was the players who were at fault in South Africa. Well, of course it was, David. They are at the pointy end of the big pyramid called English Football. Out there, on the pitch, only 11 can represent what it all stands for.

While it wasn't always 'kick and rush' (and it's important to understand when and how it became so), England has never been as good at international football as we have been billed, either by ourselves or by those canny foreigners. Being upgraded to 7th in the latest FIFA listings, after our worst ever performance at a World Cup finals, is another mockery upon us. For English players from this or any other era were never consistently good at any level of football as they themselves or their public believed.

Amazingly, what began with under-exposure to foreign football is now blighted by over-exposure to it. But the same problems remain. In the mid 20th century we could put this down to ignorance and over confidence, which together allowed the English to style themselves 'kings of football'. All reinforced by an old sense of Empire-based, World War-winning superiority. We had invented the game, been playing it longer than anyone else. We had to be better at it than any other nation. Prior to the 1950 World Cup finals in Brazil, England's post-war record of 23 wins, 4 losses and 3 draws was all the proof we needed about ourselves versus the world.

The truth came with the proverbial kick. It was England's first World Cup. In spite of a star-studded team featuring Billy Wright, Wilf Mannion, Tom Finney and Stan Mortensen, the 1-0 defeat to lowly USA set a disastrous template for many future tournaments. Here was the first showing of the English inability to play tournament football away from home - an issue that is still paramount today, but which has never been discussed as a 'reason'. After all, as Beckham said, they had everything they needed, they just didn't play. You get the feeling that, for the frontline troops watching the footballing debacle from Afghanistan, the situation was the other way round.

Notably, two of the three English appearances in semi-final or final have occurred in our two home soil tournaments of 1966 and 1996. As a Mensa-inspired Steven Gerrard said in South Africa, winning or losing is all in the detail. In both home tournaments, England scraped through games and got fortunate or favourable match-changing refereeing decisions. First, there was the Rattin sending off on the 1966 Argentina quarter final. Then the Russian linesman's decision on Geoff Hurst's second goal in the 1966 final against Germany. These two agenda-setting decisions have placed us at the top of Argentinian and German hitlists to this day and they're still wreaking their revenge. The oddly disallowed Spanish goals in the 1996 European Championships quarter final allowed England to win through to the semis on penalties; where a wrongly disallowed Bierhoff goal enabled us to face penalties against the Germans and lose. If only details were details, Stevie, but it seems that these particular details are still playing out a historical and cultural drama that adds to our English problem with football.

Playing the Europeans at their (our) own game

If losing to USA in 1950 came as the first shock, it happened a long way from home. Closer to home, in Europe, big change came throughout the 1950s. For the first time, England began to engage with these European types in order to understand what made them tick. This even extended to trying (and failing) to join the Common Market we had forced upon France and Germany at the end of the Second World War. Peace and harmony had broken out everywhere except austerity-bound post-War England (sound familiar?).

1953 proved to be a year when what happened at English club level cast a rose-tinted cloud over what took place at national level, exactly as it does today in 2010, when a successful FA Premier League is supposed to magically translate into a successful national football team.

First, Wolverhampton Wanderers played a series of friendly matches against European and South American opposition, success in which led the club to announce itself as 'champions of the world'. Yet months after this and the famous Stanley Matthews FA Cup Final, England was soundly thrashed 6-3 at Wembley by a Hungarian team playing unbelievably different, effective football in a new formation never before seen in this country. England had been playing the accepted 3-2-5 formation (which my school sports master still taught into the early 70s), using 'half backs', paying little attention to 'midfield', then not a well known term (plus ca change...). The Magic Magyars ignored the wings and played right through the middle. (And Spain today?!) This was a traumatic experience. After the self pity, the English began to see, perhaps for the first time, that others could be better. Strangely, what failed in translation was the idea that we just weren't as good.

The deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance can be a great prompt for action. Stung by Wolves' bragging, the Europeans were encouraged to press the point by starting their own pan-European footballing competition for season 1955-56. But get this, English Football League official, Alan Hardaker, denied 1955 champions, Chelsea, the right to enter, on the grounds that it would be in the best interests of football in general. So Hibernian became the first British side to play in it. By the time English teams got their act together to join it, Real Madrid had won it several times and we were miles behind what it took to compete and win. The Munich Air Disaster of early 1958 robbed our only club of pedigree of its early European chance, as well as depriving the English national team of several quality players. That we finally did match the Europeans with a European Cup win in 1968 was the result of a long-term strategy at a club that believed in footballing excellence. Oh, and a great deal of luck - again, it was a final won on home turf at Wembley. Like England, Manchester United was not the same team away from home.

But then, as now, English club teams were never wholly full of English players. In 1968, Manchester United's European Cup final team actually boasted 8 English players. Often they would play with fewer than that. The rest were not foreign, however. They were British. And here we have one of the first big and rarely discussed reasons for English backwardness at football at the highest level, when it counts, in the detail.


markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk