Σπιτάκι

Πάρτε το απόφαση. You suck.

When you look at Owen Hargreaves’ performance in the quarter-final against Portugal and the penalty shoot-out that followed, and consider that the man of the match was the only England player never to have played in England, there is good reason to suppose that some sort of corrupting influence must be at work at home. There is a suggestion that too many English players believed their own publicity, thought they only had to turn up to win games and were totally ill-equipped to impose themselves on opponents who refused to accept their superstar status. To a large extent this might be true.

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If Eriksson was supposed to be adding technical sophistication and tactical finesse to those virtues, he must be judged a complete failure. It is too easy just to blame Eriksson though. He was not much help, but he must have been as numbed by England’s awfulness as everyone else. As countless readers have been pointing out, dating back in some cases to before the tournament started, England are mainly handicapped by having players who are not as good as they think they are. This is where the ‘English problem’ comes in. It is not that the players are not good enough, and not that they play in an uncompetitive or unrecognised league, it is that for some reason they think they are God’s gift to football. They definitely visualised themselves running round Berlin with this World Cup, and that, as their almighty struggles to overcome Trinidad and Ecuador showed, was a big, big mistake.

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The unmistakeable signs of hubris were everywhere. Eriksson and Frank Lampard both said they thought England deserved to win. Rio Ferdinand, the same one who now says he was embarrassed by England’s performances, said fans would forgive the team playing poorly if they won the World Cup. Michael Owen unwisely predicted he would be tournament top scorer.

So. Right.