by Greg Marsh

Created on: June 04, 2007

It may be expected that England would struggle from time to time against quality opposition, but the team don't seem to be able to dominate football matches like they used to, especially against the more mediocre teams.

My view is that this is largely down to managerial incompetence.

In the last few years, and especially in major tournaments, the England team has been a bit naive tactically, and coaches have picked players on reputation rather than form or fitness.

In the 2002 World Cup David Beckham was clearly not up to match fitness after several months out through injury, and in 2006 both Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney looked tired and rusty after long layoffs and hardly made an impact. In the same tournament, players who had struggled in the group phrase (Frank Lampard being a notable example) were still picked for the knockout phrase. Coaches of other national teams don't seem to be as worried in dropping star players, but Sven Goran Eriksson (England's coach from 2001-2006) was notoriously generous to the more renowned players. Steve McClaren, the current national coach, seems equally committed to rewarding poor performances with more caps. Players who are clearly out of their depth at international level, Stewart Downing, Wes Brown, Kieran Dyer to name just three, continue to come on as ineffective substitutes.

The days when prolific strikers and star players can single handedly win tournaments are over. For evidence, look no further than Greece's European Championship winning side of 2004 and Italy's World Cup Champions in 2006. Both teams won because they were highly organised, could grind out 1-0 wins, and had hard working defensive formations.
Boring? Yes. Effective? Absolutely! If England keep starting matches with a flat 4-4-2 playing four attacking midfielders (e.g Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, J Cole) we can't expect them to be successful in competitive matches. Teams such as France, Argentina, Spain and Brazil wouldn't dream of playing with such a one dimensional approach. Where's the depth, where's the organisation?

Of course, England are not blessed with the same talent as the most successful Premiership club sides, (Note that Chelsea, Man United and Liverpool very rarely play a flat 4-4-2) but they have got to be more tactically astute and stop giving places to under-achieving superstars.

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