Why England's so-called Golden Generation are to blame for World Cup exit

By Martin Lipton in 2010 World Cup Blog

Published 23:00 27/06/10

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The crop may have died in the grainfields of Free State.

But the seeds of England’s World Cup demise were sown even before they left for Austria six weeks ago.

And as the Golden Generation was proven, once and for all, to be tarnished, rusted base metal, so the questions must be asked about the management of the whole chaotic episode.

Last night, as Fabio Capello and his players headed back to Rustenburg to start packing for home, the inquests began in earnest.

Where we had expected certainty and conviction, we got a campaign that lurched into carnage and anarchy. Where we had expected meticulous planning, we got a manager who seemed to rely on superstition and a hope that it would all come right.

It began even before Capello named his preliminary 30-man squad, the begging letters to Jamie Carragher and Paul Scholes sending out a message to the players who had got England to South Africa that the manager did not actually think they were good enough.

But then, too, there was the inconsistency. History teaches lessons and one is that you don’t take injured players to the World Cup, no matter how important they are.

Maybe Capello cares nothing about English football but somebody should have pointed to Kevin Keegan and Trevor Brooking in 1982, David Beckham in 2002, and Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen four years ago.

Capello himself had promised it would be different. “At a tournament you have to play, not wait 10 days to play another game. You have to be fit. Always, every game, every training session, every day. You have to arrive fit. After, you have to create the style of the play and the spirit of the group, but the most important thing is to be fit.”

And so, having made that vow, Capello selected Gareth Barry, who had not played since May 5, Ledley King, who had made just 20 starts for Spurs this season, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney. You could perhaps justify one or two gambles. But four? Sheer madness.

The Capello Index was a case of somebody whose priorities were all wrong but it was in the boot camp of Austria that the Italian must have realised Rooney was not right, that the injury he sustained when he was clipped by Mario Gomes in the last seconds of Manchester United’s defeat in Munich was still hampering him.

We will never know, of course, but it looks now that Capello sensed it was going wrong and decided to play a game of bluff with the FA, encouraging the interest of Inter Milan to force his paymasters into giving him the guarantee of a two-year pay-off.

That contract was signed barely two hours before England flew to Johannesburg – and within two days Ferdinand’s tournament was over before it began.

It got worse. There was the indecision over the goalkeepers, the growing frustrations of players, and the decision to hang John Terry out to dry.

Capello’s position may end up being decided by the financial cost of cutting him free. If Capello can’t do it, then you wonder who can. Does anybody, in their heart of hearts, believe Roy Hodgson or Harry Redknapp will change everything for the better?

But while Capello’s errors were the root cause of the debacle that played out in Bloemfontein yesterday, there comes a time when you have to look at what any England manager has to work with.

The players who are lauded for their displays at club level have failed, time and again, when wearing the Three Lions.

Perhaps unwittingly, Capello put his finger on the biggest frailty of all, when asked about Frank Lampard’s “goal” yesterday. “The problem is you don’t know the psychology or the mind of the players,” he said.

“What happened, after we had been 2-0 down, to get back to 2-2 would have been different. Sometimes the most important thing is what you think.”

When push comes to shove, Capello believes the players look for excuses. In that he is right.

Yet what is really scary is what comes next. If this is the end of Lampard and Gerrard, David James and John Terry, Ferdinand and Carragher at World Cup level, what about the replacements?

Last summer, Germany beat England in the European Under-21 Championships. Of that Germany side, Manuel Neuer, Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil all started in Bloemfontein, with three more on the bench.

James Milner and Joe Hart were in Stuart Pearce’s side, while Theo Walcott and Adam Johnson might have been. But would anybody say Lee Cattermole, Andrew Taylor, Fabrice Muamba, Michael Mancienne or Richard Stearman are international players?

Last night felt like the end of the road, for Capello and many of his players. Yet it is starting to look as though the Sven Goran Eriksson era represents the glory years.

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