by Nick Adams

Created on: June 29, 2010

What to say about England? So much, and so little - there's not a lot of new insight one can bring to a discussion of England's failings.

Once again, the nation has departed the World Cup without ever really turning up, leaving us feeling like the world hasn't seen the "real" England, the one that stormed through qualifying and roasted Croatia over a lovingly-stoked fire of passion and talent, the one that we know *is* there, somewhere. However, with this being the latest in a string of dismal, depressing failures, and a good eight years having elapsed since our last impressive World Cup performance (a 1-0 victory over a fading Argentina in Japan), perhaps *this* is the real England when the pressure's really on - the winning eleven from qualifying the real imposters.

This begs the question, then - why are England so mentally weak? Who knows, but the problem appears to be chronic.

The commentator presiding over the BBC's showing of the 4-1 drubbing at German hands claimed defiantly that "no-one would take more than one or two of Germany's players for the England team." He was embarrassingly wrong, of course - I'd take the entire German team, even if the "German" part's kind of sketchy in a squad comprising three Poles, two Ghanaians, a Tunisian, a Brazilian, a Bosnian, a Turk and a Spaniard. What Germany have, if not an abundance of heavily-hyped superstars, is a team that plays like one; that knows how to function as a unit and is more important than any individual. This being a concept England just can't get to grips with.

Alongside this persistent failing, there are more specific ones. England - with their oldest-ever squad - looked tired, uninspired and something else negative ending with -ired. Players like Gerrard, Lampard and Terry have tried and failed several times now to reproduce their club form on the biggest stage - we can safely assume now, surely, that it's never going to happen for them. The young talent is there for England, it's just ignored; of the squad that reached the 2009 Under-21 European Championships, only two were chosen to go to South Africa, and only one (James Milner) made it onto the pitch. Fabio Capello seems to have little faith in the up-and-coming footballers of the country, a position which seems strange when a reliance on experience has worked out so badly.

In truth, though it's disappointing to see your country exit, the World Cup won't miss England, for whom a brilliant performance, like the top of a mountain, seems perennially just around the next corner without ever arriving. Perhaps a new generation will bring more rewarding efforts to an ever-eager, expectant public. For our part, we could do with managing our expectations a little and accepting that perhaps our team aren't all they're supposed to be. But hey, half the fun of the World Cup's getting absurdly over-excited about your country's chances, be they giants or minnows, or, in England's case, something quite different entirely.

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