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World Cup 2014: England have got everything right – apart from the football
England have a 72-strong entourage with them in Brazil, including a psychiatrist, nutritionists and a turf specialist. The only thing they do not have are any World Cup points
Steven Gerrard and dejected England team-mates after the defeat to Uruguay. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
Ultimately, it always comes back to the same thing. When Roy Hodgson and his players arrived back in Rio de Janeiro it was to the best training facilities in the city. They have a 72-strong entourage from the Football Association including a psychiatrist, nutritionists, a turf specialist, a cook and at least one guy whose job seems to be to spray the players with water when they start overheating. They have industrial fans and heat chambers and individually tailored recovery drinks after inviting scientists from Loughborough University to study their sweat patterns. (woooiiieee mi epidermis!!)
Hodgson has talked to Sir Dave Brailsford and Lord Coe about how to co-ordinate a successful team and everyone is agreed: nothing more could have been done to create the right environment. “No excuses,” Wayne Rooney had said. Steven Gerrard described it as the most meticulously planned operation he had ever known. Hodgson could scarcely have sounded more confident. “Anyone who thinks we can’t win the World Cup has to be barking up the wrong tree,” he said, two days before landing in Brazil.
Yet here we are, embarking on the first inquest before half the teams have even played a second game. England were the team that wanted to play like Spain and, eventually, they managed it. Except the headline in Marca on Thursday was “The End”. England could conceivably have the same written about them later on Friday. They would be out before they have even finished their week-long course of malaria tablets.
And this is what it all comes back to: if everything was arranged so meticulously, every box ticked and everyone approving, there is only one place to begin and that is with the football, the old-fashioned way. England’s World Cup is not unravelling because of injuries, or fatigue, or mutinies, or disagreements, or logistical nightmares. It is purely an issue about how they have treated the ball and the now-familiar story that seems to crop up every time they encounter decent opposition. Or, in Uruguay’s case, half-decent opposition, bearing in mind Óscar Tabárez’s side finished fifth in their qualifying group, and required a play-off against Jordan just to be here. Uruguay, for all Luis Suárez’s gifts, really were no great shakes.
England have a 72-strong entourage with them in Brazil, including a psychiatrist, nutritionists and a turf specialist. The only thing they do not have are any World Cup points
Steven Gerrard and dejected England team-mates after the defeat to Uruguay. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
Ultimately, it always comes back to the same thing. When Roy Hodgson and his players arrived back in Rio de Janeiro it was to the best training facilities in the city. They have a 72-strong entourage from the Football Association including a psychiatrist, nutritionists, a turf specialist, a cook and at least one guy whose job seems to be to spray the players with water when they start overheating. They have industrial fans and heat chambers and individually tailored recovery drinks after inviting scientists from Loughborough University to study their sweat patterns. (woooiiieee mi epidermis!!)
Hodgson has talked to Sir Dave Brailsford and Lord Coe about how to co-ordinate a successful team and everyone is agreed: nothing more could have been done to create the right environment. “No excuses,” Wayne Rooney had said. Steven Gerrard described it as the most meticulously planned operation he had ever known. Hodgson could scarcely have sounded more confident. “Anyone who thinks we can’t win the World Cup has to be barking up the wrong tree,” he said, two days before landing in Brazil.
Yet here we are, embarking on the first inquest before half the teams have even played a second game. England were the team that wanted to play like Spain and, eventually, they managed it. Except the headline in Marca on Thursday was “The End”. England could conceivably have the same written about them later on Friday. They would be out before they have even finished their week-long course of malaria tablets.
And this is what it all comes back to: if everything was arranged so meticulously, every box ticked and everyone approving, there is only one place to begin and that is with the football, the old-fashioned way. England’s World Cup is not unravelling because of injuries, or fatigue, or mutinies, or disagreements, or logistical nightmares. It is purely an issue about how they have treated the ball and the now-familiar story that seems to crop up every time they encounter decent opposition. Or, in Uruguay’s case, half-decent opposition, bearing in mind Óscar Tabárez’s side finished fifth in their qualifying group, and required a play-off against Jordan just to be here. Uruguay, for all Luis Suárez’s gifts, really were no great shakes.
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