Having got the statutory whinge about the World Cup out of the way a few days ago (The World Cup is for the mentally negligible), it's time to pontificate about England's opening performance against Italy last night.
What is the aim of England football managers? Answer, to get out of the group stage and on to the quarter finals. Why? Because they know that if we get to the quarters they'll keep their job. That results in the kind of pragmatic football which makes fans curse at the TV in frustration. Because of course eventually we come up against a better team. Time after time we have subordinated our natural head-banging desire to attack to dreary conservatism. We should long ago have learned that we'll never win a competition playing this way, and never have any fun in the process either. Because fun should be the object. We know we aren't the best team in the world, and what we really want is to see England playing the kind of football we can be proud of.
I realise this makes me look an idiot for taking football seriously, but there we are.
If I had to point to the acme of stupidity in this respect it would be Sven Goran Eriksson's selection of midfielder Trevor Sinclair to go to the World Cup in Japan in 2002. Sinclair was a decent club pro, not good enough to hold down a regular place in the first team, and he took the place of the maverick genius Steve McManaman. I remember fulminating about this at the time. Even if McManaman didn't get a start, I thought, he was exactly the kind of player you'd want to come on with 20 minutes to go when you were a goal down to Brazil and facing exit from the competition. He might just create something.
Unfortunately this scenario came to pass exactly on 21st June 2002 when, in the quarter finals against Brazil, England were a goal down thanks to Ronaldinho's miraculous lob over David Seaman. Eriksson looked along his subs bench for a player who could change the game. Not finding one, he instructed Trevor Sinclair to remove the tracksuit instead. I hope that at this moment he realised the awfulness of his mistake. Steve McManaman, who, to be fair, might also have achieved as little as Sinclair, was watching at home. England lost 2-1.
Like most England fans, I would have liked to see Harry Redknapp get the job in the wake of Fabio Capello's dreary reign. But in one crucial respect Roy Hodgson has proved we doubters wrong. He has revealed himself to be a gambler rather than a pragmatist, a Cavalier rather than a Roundhead, and a romantic rather than a rationalist. He has stuffed his squad with the kind of rapid, fearless youthful attacking talent that seasoned, experienced defenders hate playing against. Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley, Jack Wilshere, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Daniel Sturridge are exactly the kind of players England fans want to watch. I didn't like losing to Italy last night, but it was a game we could very well have won had things worked out very slightly differently, and it was a performance which will have made the world sit up and take notice. England actually aren't bad at football after all.
I hope Mr Hodgson does get us out of the group stage and into the quarters, but if he doesn't I hope the FA lets him keep the job. He's already shown that he understands more about football than any England manager since Terry Venables.
